“it is not your job to interpret tears.”

There are ones that seem to fix everything.
Ones that gently shift the quiet tightening of your stomach to your chest all the way up to the microscopic peaks of your eyelashes
So the tears that follow might dilute the smile splayed so comfortably across your eager lips.
You decipher your interpretation of the human psyche through a screen
and make sense of the way we work with a language consisting of the perfect combination of camera and conversation
And stories
People
Stories about people
Movies about stories about people
Because what could possibly be more captivating
More beautifully unattainable than capturing that amazingly horribly complicated and endless plethora of confusing entities we labelled “emotions" caught inside the specks of dust brought to life by the light of a projection beam

In smiles exchanged through eyelines coupled with passing glances
Things that we know but yet somehow choose to forget
Things we hold familiar yet still at a safe distance too close to call far
Things that define us under the word “human” in an improbable world where the only certainty is knowing that we will never fully understand the sheer tremendous mass of what it really means to be alive.
What it really means to hurt.
What it means to know that there is unimaginable pain hidden away in bastions of solitude we never have enough energy to track down
Or place paper flag pins on just to remember where they were last seen.

But in these moments of utterly unmitigated bewilderment as to what the **** is happening inside our heads,
There is that same recognisable sense of comfort we can find in a bed
shared with someone else whose story we haven’t yet read
Shadowed by waves of apprehension tangled with fear and sheer joy at being reminded of what it is like to feel the unabashed velocity of every single one of your heartbeats again
dulled only by the confines of your sacred home of flesh and bone.

We gather without question
in darkened rooms only lit momentarily with hushed flickers
and the soft kiss of a silent stream of light carrying the burden of a story on it’s back
We sit the same way in synchronised straightforward stares
because sometimes we find it impossible to turn and face what it is we are most afraid of knowing
So within 3 walls and a never-ending silver plane of infinite realities
Some communicate with hesitant hands
clumsily clashing amid every popcorn induced action
And lingering touches in places we know all too well but are terrified of letting the other into
Memorise the way it felt to have shoulders happily heavy with holding a head up high for 90 minutes
and the fading imprint of their fingers as they grazed the small space of your lower back while you both exited stage left
Eyes dizzy and dreamy with what they had just witnessed
Thoughts shared and thoughts kept secret
Locked away for safe keeping because there are some revelations that have to deepen before they can be divulged to the company still beside you
already wondering when the next time will be before the credits have even concluded
“We should do this again sometime.”

And sometimes it’s easier to watch other people doing what we don’t do best
To see carefully constructed characters holding broken mirrors to our shattered internal anatomies
To see them go through things we ache to be reminded of
Or things we could never have considered imagining for the sake of understanding
We will continue to watch these people succeed within limits we can only dream of
But with every scene we see ourselves in
With every subdued smile and uncontrolled laugh
will come more hope
With every subtle tear and inconspicuous frown
will come more wisdom
As we continue to teach ourselves with the help of those who have made it their vocation to teach life through a language of moving pictures
To show us how to dissect the pieces of our world we don’t know how to disassemble  

We will keep trying to make sense of where exactly it is we come in the grand scheme of the ever-changing eclectic cosmos

I start my search in a cinema.