I just finished watching Legends of the Fall finally... I've been meaning to see it for months and ages and I finally saw it.

I almost wished I hadn't. I connected way too much with that movie and the protagonist Tristan. I feel kind of crushed by how the movie went.

Tristan reminds me of myself in some ways: independent, naturally reverts to going against authority and rules (both God's and man's sad to say), emotionally distant from even those he loved, a traveler and lover of the wild.

Now I'm not half as macho as he is... fighting bears, charging trench to trench in WWI, winning the hearts of any woman he's ever desired (though I haven't really tried that one honestly).

But there's something the old chief says about Tristan at the end of the movie in conclusion to all that occurs:

"I remember, when he was a boy, I thought Tristan would never live to be an old man. I was wrong about that... I was wrong about many things. It was those he loved that died young. He was the rock that they broke themselves against no matter how hard he tried to protect them."

I feel like that so much. I want to die... not because I'm depressed, emotional, or suicidal but I really want to experience the freedom that comes with death. We die and we are no longer beings of flesh bound by our own flaws but creatures of the spirit, perfect and whole in every way. It's so exciting to me. I still don't really want to live past 40. And I want to die actively... mauled by a wild animal or shot in a gunfight or pushing someone else out the way of a car. Dying of a wasting disease as an old and useless fart is the ultimate suck.

But so often I see instead those I love dying before me. and I see those who try to love me, hurt when they break across my heart of stone. I'm not an unfeeling wretch as I was, but I nonetheless find all my efforts to protect people from loving me and the pains I know it brings them... they are fruitless. I'm not malicious, I'm not unkind, I'm not menacing, and I'm not evil... I'm just reckless. Tack yourself to me and though I don't feel the animal's claw, the bullet, or the car... you will. That fancy with the grave that I relish will be a dark cloud over you the rest of your life. Leave me to my wanderings... and my ponderings... live in happiness.

Is death really so morbid (apart from the latin "Mortem" for death being the derivative of the word morbid)? It's always seemed glorious to me provided it's mine and not someone else's.

Times like this I have to tell myself it's just a movie, it's not real... I hate it when arts evoke things that have been stewing on the back burner for a long time. They normally are charred black from simmering too long.

GEOFF