Arthur Miller‘s words spoken by Marilyn Monroe in a breathy sigh while looking over Montgomery Clift‘s broken head into an uncertain future in the movie the Misfits.
What will be the next thing? Not even John Huston when he directed the scene, nor Miller, himself, knew that when he wrote it. Who knows maybe Marilyn messed up the line, and they kept it. What is the next thing? Life! What was next for Marilyn was a very sad death. The next thing for Montgomery Clift was a sad bit of life full of addictions and confusion with a couple more movie parts to play. Things happen. Sometimes they are things that help you and sometimes not. Some people would say that the things that happened to Marilyn and Montgomery, the fame and fortune parts, were things to be envied. I wonder if things might have worked out better for them if they had failed and struggled more, and never made it to that scene in the Misfits. The problem is nobody has a lot of control over what actually happens, only how they respond to it and what paths they choose to take as they go from one thing to the next. Things will happen that we neither plan nor want, even if you are able to arrange your life so you get what you think you want you can’t know you want it until it happens. All we can do is move on to the next thing in whatever way makes sense at the time. It is like we are all short people working our way across a crowded train station during rush hour. Many things may happen but all’s we can see of where we are going is a bunch of people trying to get where they are going. How did I get into this train station from a movie? Where am I headed with this? Who knows?
Anyway I am hoping my next things are a little more positive after the weekend I have had. I am so done with being sick. Bring on the next thing! It’s bound to be an improvement, though I know I can’t be sure until it happens.
Myriad Ways 