the curious case of jeffrey gustafson

Heavenly Father seems to have the same affinity for non-linear storytelling that i do.

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in the days of film print projection, movies were shipped to the theater in reels. each reel would be about twenty minutes in length--my best estimate, anyway--and an average movie would be made up of six to eight reels. before the movie can be shown, the projectionist will spool the reels sequentially one by one onto the giant platter. done correctly, it's simply a matter of being able to count single digits. in most theaters, the projectionist will watch the movie before it opens to the public, to ensure that each reel is in its proper order. in a free-to-the-public theater such as the international cinema where i worked for two years, we couldn't afford such a luxury and occasionally a splice would be done incorrectly and yadda yadda yadda i was luckily able to talk them into rehiring me.

having been "building" films for a year or so, i appreciated the humor of the situation when a friend told me about the time he built pulp fiction when he worked as a projectionist. the movie is told non-linearly, with the storylines happening out of chronological sequence and the movie ending on the same scene it opened. after putting it together, he watched the film and was sure he'd screwed up. to make matters worse, he said, some of the story breaks happened at reel changes, making it very easily seem like they had simply been spliced together incorrectly. only a phone call to his boss who was familiar with the film's structure reassured him that he hadn't gotten it wrong.
strangely, i don't think the film would have nearly the same the impact if it were told in chronological order, although i can't necessarily define why.

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i can't help but wonder sometimes if the same thing hasn't happened in my life; if a couple of reels have been spliced together out of order. i kind of started suspecting this last fall, looking at things around me and really feeling like they were lessons that would've been much more helpful a few years earlier.
as of this point, i'm still perplexed. it feels like i'm going in reverse through my life; like being on jeopardy, where i'm getting the answers first and then the questions.

and so i'm just waiting for the moment when tim roth raises his hand to say "garcon! coffee!" and suddenly all of the wrong turns and stumbles and falls make sense and i see in amazement where it's going and what's going to happen. until that point, though, i'll be honest: i'm a little confused at times.
but, yeah, that's part of the excitement of storytelling.

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some people were born to sit by a river. some get struck by lightning. some have an ear for music. some are artists. some swim. some know buttons. some know shakespeare. some are mothers...