Friday, October 8, 2010

Reflections on Garden State..."the idea of home is gone"

Garden State has to be one of my top 10 (or maybe even top 5) favorite movies. And no, I'm not just saying that because I live in New Jersey. I've liked the movie ever since I watched it several years ago when Kyle and I were living at the Mandeville Mill Lofts in good old Carrollton, Ga.

In a nutshell, the movie depicts the coming-of-age of 26-year-old Andrew Largeman, who lived a repressed childhood full of psychiatric drugs, and not to mention a pretty f-ed up family. After living in Los Angeles for the last few years, he returns home to the Garden State for his mom's funeral, and while there, he re-discovers himself and, for the first time in years, is able to show any sort of emotion - both laughter and tears. (And he falls in love with Natalie Portman = awesome).

I'd like to share a few quotes that Andrew said that really spoke to me, especially considering this new part in my life being far away from home, and considering some issues that have transpired in my own family.

"You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone... You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

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