after Richard Linklater’s Boyhood

First let me say I’m glad Mason didn’t kill himself. I thought, at times,
that is where the film was going. Second, I’m comforted, and not surprised, that
the story moves and ends, at least for the moment, in the natural realm – in The
Big Bend under endless sky, alone with a few friends, looking up at eternal sky,
standing on solid rock howling a primal howl – a howl of catharsis – a yearning,
a cry to be, just to fucking be.

So much happens in this film but Nature, the constant, the glory of the
indifferent organic universe frames it and confirms the story. At the end, the new
friend says it best: “the moment seizes us” rather than all of our useless striving
to seize the moments, our futile attempts to control this magic called life.

So Texas, so America – so sad in a hopeful way, hopeful in a fearful way – makes
me feel guilty and broken – but relieved. It is our story: yours and mine, all of us
who have failed our children by trying to be happy.

Third, the kids, the young adults, the children who have been imperfectly raised
in an imperfect world by imperfect parents, in the end, choose to play the game.
They don’t check out. Though they see the hypocrisy, see through the emptiness,
the meaninglessness staring them in the face, they bravely choose to adapt and
survive. They go on, on their own terms. I admire this. Sure, some of their angst
is just evidence of the natural maturing process. Like their parents and their
parents’ parents, they rebel against the structures, then grow old and conform –
I’m sure that happens to us all on some level. But Mason, and his generation,
have seen more and survived in a new way, and in some ironic way, their
adaptation and survival is also ours, their imperfect predecessors. The future
is not over, and we don’t know what its final pages will read. But I’m proud of
them – they go on. They choose to face life. When things don’t make sense, they
go on, not unlike a Camus rebel of the absurd. And in their gentle and subtle
perseverance, the moments seize us. The moments seize us. What great news after
all.