“the sweet child in repose”, 2026

(taken for ****** but too cute not to post . . .)

. . . some would call it a lucky number. a holy number!

SAFETY . . .
OBSCURITY . . .
JUST ANOTHER FREAK
IN THE FREAK KINGDOM

. . . it’s a place where you can touch the truth of the universe . . . going there may bring sorrow . . .

There is a particular little sadness or ache I have felt throughout my life that perhaps becomes sharper with age . . . which is the feeling of wishing you had met someone who is special to you sooner in life. When I met Laura, I remember wishing we had grown up together, that we had missed out on so many years of being best friends simply because we hadn’t found each other yet. We could have been best friends all along! Of course, I was not a little boy in French Canada, nor was Laura a little girl in the United States, and so for 24 years, the 580 miles (and international border) between our respective homes made meeting impossible.

Who’s to say: maybe a younger Laura would have sized me up and thought, “Ew!” Maybe a younger Ryan would have taken Laura’s friendship for granted, or worse . . . fucked it up! In that sense, I recognize that I’m lucky to have even met her when I did. That we did end up meeting at all, and many thousands of miles away in California, was a sort of air-thin miracle. My life would be lesser and far worse had we not met. I can’t even remember what life was like without having Laura in it. I don’t want to!

Though yeah: I sometimes think about this with different people I know . . . I feel that little ache, wishing I had found them sooner in life, and wondering how I even got along without them in the time before, such is their specialness to me. There is a sort of tenderness there. What can I say: I’m prone to this sort of feeling.

moebius

i realize this comes off as self-congratulatory . . . but two separate people from The Past recently said essentially the same thing to me about movies, and it was extremely validating to me because, WHAT CAN I SAY, i enjoy showing cool movies to people i love! i don’t just put on the same movies for everyone . . . i try to choose movies that are both important to me and ones i think they would actually enjoy. even still: it’s a moment of vulnerability to show someone a thing you love. i did not know if any of it had landed, so to hear this years later from these two fine people was really touching. thanks for watching them with me!

:,-)