End Credits

Do you know what happened earlier today? Well, I had gone to the movies with my friend, see, and the moment the screen dissolved into the final shot and the titles began along with the swelling score, my buddy got up and started shuffling towards the exit. And, to be fair to him, so did almost everyone else in the crowded theater. So of course I had to follow him out, but I did so with great reluctance because I don't, for the life of me, see why anyone would want to leave before the end credits are complete.

Even if you don't feel, like I strongly do, that everyone involved in the work that was entertaining you for the last few hours deserves, at the very least, your respect and attention as their name rolls by, there are, I would think, other somewhat more selfish reasons to not run out of the screening right away. For one, more and more films have been adding outtakes and gag sequences and hiding many other different kinds of Easter eggs during the end credits, and some even have nifty post-end-credit sequences that advance or better explain the plot. Also, for me, this is just a great time to collect and gather my thoughts about the movie I have just finished watching while I am still physically sitting in the same dark theater, not quite out of the spell the film has put me under yet but, at the same time, starting the slow and inevitable process of distancing myself to better appreciate and critically examine it, enjoying the soundtrack as I find out who that very unexpected and familiar face - the one whose name was on the tip of my tongue but I would be darned if I could remember it - doing the interesting cameo was.

But I guess that's just me. And I also guess that it wouldn't be any time soon that I would find a movie watching buddy who would share my passion for the end credits; but I certainly hope this doesn't mean that I would just have to get used to going to the movies by myself.

Solace & Despair

So, remember how I said that I was having really bad luck meeting people lately? Seemed like every one of my dates was turning out to be a complete weirdo or a psychopath, you know. Well, maybe not quite that bad, maybe just sociopaths, but you get the point.

Then I meet you, and it's like a symphony has started playing suddenly, and even the fortune in my cookie after our Chinese dinner predicts a cozy and rosy future (and I didn't even have to add 'in bed' to it). But of course, I don't wait for my chickens to hatch before being happy, and my world has now come crashing down pretty much like the subprime market. I thought you were too good to be true, and you know what? I couldn't be more correct. Oh well, life goes on, you would say. But I did certainly believe that maybe this time around, I deserved some semblance of luck.

However, I have to admit that this incident offers me both solace and despair, and at least for the former I give gratitude and thanks. It tells me that there still are people like you out there and the dating demographic is not completely as hopeless as I am often wont to think it is. But at the same time, it also offers the chilling realization that this may have been it, that I may have blown my once in a lifetime chance at everlasting peace and happiness.

Heartbreak

I think you have done it at last. You have finally and completely broken my heart and pushed me right over the edge, to a place even you may find it difficult to bring me back from.

Not that you haven't been trying, not that I shouldn't have seen this coming had I not had my head blissfully buried in sand. It was always quite clear that I was your very last priority, and you would only choose me - if it can be called choice - once you had exhausted every other realistic opportunity; and even then you would be perennially poised on the brink of departure, a part of you ceaselessly scanning the social airwaves, should something else turn up. I don't think I ever asked for much but you were cautious even with careless crumbs. You made me beg for the smallest audience with you and never once did you make me feel that you actually cared for me, that I was even on your radar. I do not recall your ever making any effort to be with me or doing something delicious and unpredictable for me, and I wonder to this day if you ever actually realized that I am a proper human with feelings that could be hurt.

I guess now you know. Or, do you?