after noon. in before sunrise, a movie i can't remember at all, julie delphy and ethan hawke walk the streets of vienna after randomly meeting on the euro-rail. they have one night to soak up each other's energies and they quickly form a friendship (or a love?) that seems quite magical. but then in the morning -- at or before or just after sunrise -- they part ways, ethan home to america, julie to the sorbonne in paris. wham bam thank you ma'am. can i have another?

ever have moments like this? i'm sure we all have. i've had my fair share of mine, you've most likely had your fair share of yours -- so i need to hear about them, all of them. having just watched lost in translation, i'm forced to think about some themes in the movie. sofia coppola observes in an interview that lost in translation is "about moments in life that are great but don't last. they don't go on, but you always have the memory and they have an effect on you." i just quoted the same line twice in one day's post. this must be a blogger faux pas, along with horrific grammar and boring entries. i have blogger fouled, shoot me.

scarlett johansson's character says to bill murray (played by bill murray), "let's never come here (japan) again because it will never be as much fun (without you)." and that line was so damn true it scared me. sometimes you associate a place so much with a person and a particular experience that it can never be the same again. these moments only have a very limited lifespan and after they're gone, they're gone. poof.

so my criteria for a "before sunrise / lost in translation moment" goes as follows. you meet a stranger, maybe a friend of a friend, a complete stranger, whatever, somebody you didn't know as more than an acquaintance until that moment. the two of you (maybe more) share time together. no more than a week, no less than five hours (this is negotiable). there was no hooking up. none. do not confuse a "what happens in vegas stays in vegas moment" with a "before sunrise / lost in translation moment." one was sponsored by trojan, the other by kodak. do not confuse. further requirements for this experience is as ms coppola said, "you always have the memory and they have an effect on you."

i think for most of my peers, a moment like this involves an all nighter. it just happens that way. conversation that lasts far into the night and spills over into the next morning. and then you sit down and you realize that you've made a new friend. you are just juiced on finding out about another person, excited by how much you just clicked and shared. moments like these are amazing to me. it's astounding how close you can feel to someone after having spent only a limited time with them. it just happens suddenly, a binding closeness where before there was only empty air.

and then you're forced to part. and it's just an intense emptiness, lasting probably much longer than the actual interaction. the fumes from this moment can carry a friendship for years but i've found that if something doesn't come along to stoke the flames, it just becomes a memory of a moment that really cannot last or be lived up to in the present. and you end up missing something that is metaphysically impossible to recreate and is thus, gone forever.

i think my inability to stay up past the witching hour seriously curtails the opportunity for these (or roughly these) moments to happen. it used to be semi-frequent but it's hard to have a six hour conversation when every four hours, a nap beckons. i should go work out and build stamina in the pursuit of "before sunrise / lost in translation moments." but then i would be too tired from training to actually stay awake. quite the quandary. i guess i'll just have to make do with what i have.