In Need of a Break?

I confess that I have never been so behind in schoolwork as I am this week.

I am hundreds of pages behind in reading.

I had only read half the assigned reading for class yesterday, yet I still passed the pass or fail quiz.

I think I must resign myself to spending my whole weekend catching up--though I usually need to take a part of the weekend to get started on work for the coming week, not for the previous one.

Even, however, in times like these, there must be pauses. Enter my friend Netflix. (Let's not talk about the plan/price changes--even with them, it's still a great deal.) Although I sometimes end up giving more praise to the movies that affect me more and make me think more, sometimes I also turn to movies to allow me to pause. It was for this reason that I watched Dear Lemon Lima last week and rejoiced in its complete simplicity and the knowledge that I would never find the need to ponder this movie. It was for this reason that I clicked on the Switched at Birth pilot last month, finding myself watching the entire ten episodes in the days that followed. Sometimes I just need to watch simple things.

And sometimes I add many movies to my Instant Queue, more than I can watch; when they are about to expire from streaming, I finally watch them, even if they are not quite what I was looking for that day. So tonight, even though I am so behind in pages of reading and nearly bewildered by so many stories already, I watched In the Time of the Butterflies because this was the last day that it was streaming. That was just a bit more thought-provoking of a movie than I would have chosen for tonight and a bit more emotionally draining than perhaps I needed today.

Stories. My mind is filled with stories. This movie reminded me of the martyrdom in "The Life of St. Margaret," which I read this afternoon for one of my classes. It even reminds me of the themes of home in The Wind in the Willows, which I finished earlier in the week for another class.

Do the themes never cease to converge?

It would not be our world if they did cease.