Today I woke up to my phone ringing. “Hey!” my friend said, she wanted to know if I could join her at a concert tonight. I knew the name of the performer but didn’t like his music. “You know, I’d like to but I just don’t think I have 57 dollars for it.”
“Okay that’s fine, it was late notice anyways.” Cecilia replied.
I looked at the time trying to think who would have a concert on a Monday night.
12:43 my phone read.
“Oh shoot! I just slept through work. I have to go CC, I have to clean up a mess.”
“See you soon!”
I felt horrible. This plain and simple guilt weighed down on me, hard like iron. The stress mounting already, I went downstairs and grabbed a movie. I wasn’t ready to think about the predicament I just got myself in. The other day at the library, my work and the place I had just blown off for sleep, I had checked out Babel (2006) from the audio/visual section. The back description didn’t really tell me the plot. I took it out knowing it was supposed to be good. Still feeling like a waste, I watched the movie.
In Morocco, America, Mexico, and Japan people were linked by the purchase of one gun. A mother commits suicide, two brothers kill a tourist, a wife is shot on her vacation meant to rekindle her relationship with her husband, a child watches a chicken be killed, a mother watches her son get married, a babysitter and her charges are chased by the border police, two children are left in the desert, a deaf girl battles with the death of her mother and resorts to mind numbing drugs and alcohol, a brother dies.
As I watch this movie I can’t get over it. I am torn apart by missing work. I feel irresponsible. I need to go to work to get money, to buy a video camera, to become a cinematographer so I can let people feel what I feel now, this deep sensation. I wish I cared less about missing, when there are people all over the world going through problems much more trivial. Now I can feel the weight of both missing work and the horrors of the world. It’s sort of hard to breathe. I know I have to go to work tomorrow and face my boss. I don’t want to make an excuse because there is no excuse to make. What I did was something I can’t reproach.
The Tower Of Babel, I learned about the story in Hebrew school. In a town way back before Judaism was even a religion, there was a town called Babel that wanted to build a tower that reached the heavens. The people of Babel wanted some kind of grasp on their own fates. God lived in heaven. If they reached heaven they would have some sort of equivalence to him. The fable tells that God was so disturbed by the city’s means that he mixed up their languages so no one could understand each other. The confusion meant no work could be done. God left the town babbling.
I wish I could blame my missing work on babbling, on miscommunication. I know it’s not true. I can see why this movie influenced me so much. Nothing can be done when people don’t talk and more importantly, understand. Tomorrow I will walk into work, apologize for my misconduct, and work as diligently as I can. And the day after that I will do the same thing. Hopefully someday I can inspire someone else to learn a lesson like I did with Babel. I want to show people my visions through film. I want to make documentaries, to make people aware. Awareness is one more step in stopping the babble.
I know this isn't as much about the movie as it is about my life but it feels relevant to this blog.
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