Gump

Forest is a sympathetic character. He is a needed addition to the American vocabulary. To me he is as important as Batman or Jim Carrey who plays the Mask. He is a human symbol who says something about our culture. In the way that OJ says something or Madonna or Michael Jackson. He represents our culture in the way our culture is good or it is bad. He is a figure to think on like Steve Young of the Forty-niners, a courageous footballer. And a successful one or one to think on like Sir Charles Barkley of the Phoenix Suns. He is such a character and he plays so well. He is so moody and then he breaks out in a million dollar smile and it makes me like him so much.

Forest is an American character who is in the category of special type, similar to Charles Barkley or Steve Young. Or Jim Carrey. I am saying one should take him and the movie seriously, as seriously as any fine work of art that is found in our world. He shakes my world. He makes me think about what we Americans think about... and what is that? We think about making it. Getting wildly rich. Winning in a state lottery. Forest wins without trying. He doesn't seem to want to win, but he does. There is a message there. If you want to be a winner, don't even think about it! Something like that. But there are so many layers to this Gumpy story. He is dumb and smart too. He is off the wall and very realistic, both. He is tender and strong, sensible and romantic, this and that, too.

The movie is a myth-poem. From start to finish. You gotta see it. Tom Hanks is terrific. He knows how to play goofy. He makes you want to cry 'cause you know people like him. Hanks is Forest. You know people who act and look and feel like Tom Hanks. He is a marvelous actor. We have so many fine actors and directors here in America. They assault us with their brilliance. Forest is a creation. He is a major miracle who just appears one day in America with all the other miracle we are used to seeing in our homes on the tv or in print in People Magazine. This place is full of miracles, heroes, heroines, saints, sinners, martyrs, evil-doers, repentants, born- agains, instant millionaires, not so instant millionaires. Any thing at all can happen here in America any time. It can happen to you if you don't watch out. Good and bad. Money lots of it or death by cancer from too much second hand smoke. The place is a fairyland. America, the fairy land where anything can happen. Even a Gump!

We have Nell who can't tie her shoe. She ain't never seen one. We got astronauts who fly out weekly like a businessman who flies on a Monday to Columbus and comes back to Boston that night from Ohio to eat supper with his family. We got Roseanne who sings a bad Stars Spangled Banner , but can act and we got Hillary who seriously cares about our nation's health. We got Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street who says greed is good and we got Mother Theresa starting another outfit for the dying . We have trials on tv that try us, when we get home at night. We got cops to let us know there is danger and a lot of slimy people out there and we got Marge Simpson to remind us that moms are great 'cause they always end up acting like moms are supposed to. We have sportsfigures who have that toughness we so admire and politicals who are actually very smart and decent. We got gays and straights and sometimes straights and not so straights and downright crookeds and on and on. America, the supermarket of types and character figures from the central casting rooms of Hollywood and the studio out there in Astoria, Long Island that brings you so much great sit-com and downright mellow drama. A nation of dreams that recreates itself anew every few days or weeks at the least.

My name is Forest Gump. I am the sum total of my stigmata. The stew festers and renders me thought ful. I am Forest Gump.

I live in the movie of my life.

I run to experience.....run to the light.

I just wanna live. Everybody just wants ta live.

I go where more sensible people do not dare tread.

IQ? I call it the insidious quotient. It is what they, some they, always some they, use to deny us what we need to live. Money, food, love, shelter, self-esteem.

I may have the line in my movie about the chocolates, but don't you forget, please, that the chocolates are a gift to you too; that they taste good and sweet.

EE Cummings has this line somewhere in his poems about the sweet moron. I am one. I can't help it. Let me be it. The silly human, funny, naive, gullible, simple, talking funny, never sure of women, not all there. The flag doesn't go to the top of the pole. The elevator doesn't go to the top floor. My immigrant aunt used to tap her noggin and go, "nobody home." Nobody home, that is me.

I love. There is nothing more to say. I love all humans. I share their sense of pride, their aloneness, their fears, their inferiorities. I am they and they are somehow never me. But , oh, well, this is just a story that never happened. I just made myself up or some smart writers in California did. But you know, if I didn't exist, some one would invent me because America needs morality plays about saints who are a little goofy, but whose goodness wins out in the end. Because it is good to be good. Because I am Gump the good.

I may be a gump, but I am a good gump.

They shut doors when they see me.

Kids pelt me with turds.

The lady of the house steers me to the refrigerator to put food on me they don't want.

The boss . I go for a job. He really said this. "Don't call us.... we'll call you."

I spend hours going from store to store in Wellesley Square on a frigid day in January looking for work. No one wants to hire me.

They say to me. We already filled the job. Maybe some other time.

THey say I'm crazy. Stupid. Slow. Goofy.

They say, stand back. Turn back. They never answer my letters. My heart aches. I too have a heart. I have feelings even though you might not think so. I wish. I think . I care . I am a human too. Even though you might not think so.

Then, I go to the party at the big house. Mysteriously, the cosmetics disappear from the medicine chest in the bathroom. Maybe I would steal them.

I sit at the dinner table and they look at me as if they are witnessing the miracle of the ape talking.

I stutter. THey laugh.

I talk. They look the other way.

They wish I weren't there.

They wish I would disappear.

THey want me lost. Not found.

I wish to speak. THey watch tv.

I run. They chase. THey catch me.

No one listens or sees any more. There are no witnesses any more.

Fight, kill, maim, hate, exclude. It's ok.

I ask myself two questions. I asked myself two questions one time.

They ran something like this.

What can an idiot like me do with his life that they deem worthless,

and

ain't there any joy in this town?

Now they know me in Hollywood, on Wall Street, on the bayou, on Main Street and on South Street in Wrentham, Ma.

THey know more about Forest Gump.

ADVICE FROM THE PEN OF FOREST GUMP

Live the movie of your life.

Do good.

Give and expect nothing.

Love all with no reservations.

Take stupid as a label. Accept it. It becomes you. It is no big deal.

Dekse pios eisai. In Greek it says admit who you are. It may not be enough, but it is all there is. It may be enough. Stretch it out and it may just be enough.

Look for the little smile.

Be kind . Notice other people. Take time to talk to other people.

Commit random acts of kindness.

Be casual, warm. Be innocent.

Revere those around you. They are somebody's child.

Care, not matter what the consequences. Dare to.

GUMPERS

Despair is to sadness as joy is to love.

Life is a box of chocolates. Sweet is the taste.

Gump the good does good.

See better.

You're no fool. Maybe your own, but nobody else's.

I am so simple I am special.

Simple is as special does.

I love; therefore I am.

Be your best. It is good enough.

No-one can ever do more than their best.

Smile at the world. The world smiles back.

You have a big glass. It is half full or is it half empty.? Half full. Feel free to drink from it.

A smile is worth a thousand words.

CONCLUSION. Our very own little idiot. By golly, he seems to me like God's llittle pauper. Any movie has its credits. I owe a debt to Tom Hanks for giving me Forest Gump to put on my shelf above my bed alongside the three bears and pusss in boots. I give credit to the following poem by Langston Hughes wherein I got a few lines that made the movie more real to me. Lines I use in my little collage you are looking at. So I wish to say good day. Have fun. It is nine o clock in the morning and I am about to go out and say goodmorning to the world. Anyway, here is another certifiable great American, coming at you from a dusty street in Harlem, New York, U S of A.

RUBY BROWN.

She was young and beautiful

And golden like the sunshine

that warmed her body.

And because she was colored

Mayville had no place to offer her,

No fuel for the clean flame of joy

that tried to burn within her soul.

One day,

Sitting on old Mrs. Latham's back porch

Polishing the silver,

She asked herself two questions

And they ran something like this;

What can a colored girl do

On the money from a white woman's kitchen?

And ain't there any joy in this town?