memory, persistence of

saturday pm we went to see a mt eerie performance at the white stag building in downtown portland. in addition to being the best 5 bucks either of us had spent in a long while, the idea - an artist lives in the building for a wk, then creates something based on the experience - was intriguing to say the least and put me in a contemplative frame of mind.
Afterward we went to see The Class (which was great) and the theater happened to also be showing Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments which i had been hearing/reading about lately and I felt a sudden urgency to see it. I announced that I was coming back the next afternoon to see a matinee. mm was all too happy to have some time to herself.

the next afternoon, on a strange day of weather which would later include epic thunderstorm, the sun is out. I enter the theater and it's the bigger theater at the facility, one i haven't been in before, but it smells - along w/ the sunshine and the popcorn - exactly like the arcata theater did, way back in the day. this gets me thinking about how I used to go see movies all the time by myself then - the minor theater and arcata both - and how my interest/love/ambition filmwise can all be traced to back there, including me working at the broadway in eureka as a projectionist.

So the film begins. It's about a Swedish family in the 18th century but it's also about cameras and film and image and fleeting moments which dovetails nicely w/ the contemplative reflective place my mind has been hovering.

We're about 10 minutes in and the film stops suddently; and the film cel starts melting, seemingly, on the screen. I run out to the lobby and tell them. The projectionist runs in and stops the film and turns on the house lights. I suddenly see, with all that past swimming in the air, four rows in front of me, my first film professor from arcata, sitting, watching.