Crying fully, cathartically, wildly, and without restraint.
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The Leftovers aired its finale last night, and I lost 20 pounds of water weight directly through my face.
The Leftovers is, among so many things, a lachrymal diuretic. An ipecac for the heart. It’s an enema applied directly to the feelings.
And I loved every last goddamn drop of it.
Last night, while L. dozed beside me, I sat and watched, rapt in weepy silence – a pillow clamped in my arms, my nose a drippy faucet.
Oh, I adored The Leftovers.
I loved it so, so much.
I loved it with the same immensity I have for certain novels, or poems, or those pieces of minor key classical arrangement that detonate me into saline hysterics… like a fragile aunt at a graduation party.
I can’t think of a single piece of popular culture that’s even attempted to do what The Leftovers did, let alone accomplished it with this level of elegance and deftness and style. The Leftovers lovingly examined our most primordial anxieties – the ones we used to fashion out of stained glass, or etch into marble, or paint on cathedral ceilings. It’s a modern tale about Renaissance preoccupations – love, death, sex, and god (or his abject and crushing absence, as it were).
It’s the oldest story, told in the newest way. And I’ve spent 36 years failing to express what The Leftovers gorgeously conveyed in – all told – just under 28 hours. I cannot thank the makers of that show enough for their contribution to our culture, and to my own personal experience as a human being.
Also – it introduced me to Carrie Coon, upon whom I shall moon and pine and flutter and die until the day of my own departure. Oh, Carrie Coon. Let me sing of Carrie Coon. One of the most exciting, challenging, intense, heartbreaking actors I’ve ever seen.
And sweet. jesus. what. a. dish.
❤ Carrie Coon ❤
Okay, I’m done gushing.
Let’s get to the point, shall we?
This should surprise no one… but, I’m a crier.
I love it. I love a good cry. I’ll put on sad music, or watch a sad movie (or entire television series) just to whip myself into a lachrymal froth. I find the whole thing massively satisfying and even kinda fun.
Not about life, of course. If ever confronted with hardship or sorrow, I tend to veer all Western Philosophy and negotiate, argue, and berate myself back into relative comfort. I’m a grouchy, Liberal Arts educated rationalist all the way down to my fingernails. It’s probably my greatest emotional failing – I think I can think my way through a feeling.
But that’s about real life. Now… fake life – movies, books, music, theater (my god, theater) – that splits me open like a rotten melon. I can’t keep it together when it comes to the cultural sads. All I ever want to do is watch a tragedy and weep about it in the aisles.
So! To honor said weepiness… and The Leftovers which provided me so many nights of beautiful, sink-grappling, red-faced, hide from your girlfriend, “I just need to pee, I’ll be right back!” bathroom sobbing – here’s a list of some of those things that make me cry.
Openly.
Wildly.
With great drama and gesticulation:
Videos of dogs greeting their returning soldier parents.
Cochlear implant activation videos.
The scene where Connery dies in The Untouchables
The entire movie Summer Hours.
Same with the Clouds of Sils Maria
Every scene from The Leftovers…
The movie/play Wit – specifically designed to make me die
The scene where John Proctor refuses to sign his name.
Any scene from Certified Copy (it’s so French…)
Any scene from The Thin Red Line
This one from The Tree of Life
This is but a smattering. I have such an immense collection of little sobby clips.
Watch a few. Cry at work.
I do it all the time.
Words That Aren't 