Building a better heaven...

I was skyping with a dear friend the other day and she asked me what my vision of heaven would look like. Interesting question indeed. My utopia would look like any one of my favorite theaters. The walls would be lined with film posters from all the eras of film. It would be a place where time would stand still and time wouldn’t be as fleeting. To know me is to know that me being in an Eden full of cinema is not that big of a stretch. To me, being in a cinema with time on my hands is akin to “heaven.” To me, seeing the poster boards for all the upcoming releases relegates me to being a kid on Christmas morning again. But my Eden isn’t only about films. For me, my Eden has a bit more simplistic in nature. It’s the glow of the outfield grass at Wrigley as night settles down upon it. It’s riding in a car with the woman I was madly in love with down I 90 and watching her sleep as we officially left Chicago behind. It’s the thrill of seeing a new city for the first time in ages, of getting to know the names of streets in a big wide unexplored space. It’s watching a dear friend blossom into everything I knew she could be and watching her settle rather nicely into the skin she was meant to be in. Shut up Jules, I know I’m being corny. Moving on. My heaven, if I could recreate it would be the moment where I knew that I was in love; when I knew that I wanted to be with this particular woman and that nothing else mattered. It just so happened that this moment occurred at Wrigley Field. It was a night game and as day became night, the outfield grass seemed to illuminate and pop somehow. And all I could think of, as I watched this beautiful woman sitting next to me was….. For the love of god please don’t screw this up somehow. I know, you’re confusing heaven and sentimentality you’re saying. Maybe, but for an old misanthrope like me there’s nothing like having the pleasure of loving someone you have no earthly business being with. There’s nothing more perfect or utopian, if you will, then feeling like the world has been shrunk to its most comfortable point; that everything, in that space of time, seems to make perfect sense. Oh Catherine, what I wouldn’t give for one of those stupid arguments we usually had about compliments and the merits of them. What I wouldn’t give to hear your voice or to hear you laugh one more time.