The Da Vinci Code was a fantastic book and, while well acted, is only a good movie. The story is too cerebral for American audiences who want explosions and sex rather than murky, esoteric dialog about what is or isn’t true of the history of Christianity. Still, it was as faithful a rendition of the book as you are apt to find.
Rating: How symbolic that the furor before its release was greater than the actual impact
As anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one knows all too well, “what if” questions can become the bane of your existence. At every turn you are faced with some thought or question that makes you wonder if things could have turned out differently. Did you miss an indication or opportunity? Was what ultimately happened fated or could it have been delayed or avoided?
Being human I have wrestled with many what if questions in the last eight months. They all follow largely the same pattern: if I did (or didn’t) do (or allow) something to happen, would Michele still be alive? For much of the last eight months I have managed to convince myself that there was nothing I could do either way to prevent either her manner of dying or her death itself. As much as I’d like to think my ability to resist the trap of what if thinking is the result of my character or personality the truth lies in understanding Michele and her mindset.
While there were lots of factors contributing to her mental state just prior to her death I think the overriding, indeed overwhelming, factor was the prognosis of cancer. In private on more than one occasion Michele shared with me her fear of some horrific disease or illness causing her death. When she would have symptoms that weren’t immediately correlated to some mundane cause her fear was that she had cancer. She survived breast cancer in the 1990s, and took it as a sign that she needed to change her life or die. She responded to that cancer by completely altering her life; moving from Florida to Colorado, and ultimately marrying me.
Personally I believe even the potential of having cancer again was more that she wanted to bear. Combined with her understanding of the challenges facing humanity today, indeed the plight our planet is in culturally, politically, and environmentally, and her belief that my family was ostracizing me due to her, dying was the way out.
I’ll never truly stop asking myself what if questions. What if I hadn’t fucked up my job in Illinois and we had been able to stay? What if we hadn’t been mired in debt allowing us to buy a house here rather than endure apartment living? And on, and on. But at least I know in my heart that nothing I did or didn’t do caused her fear of cancer, and ultimately that was the straw that broke her resolve.
This morning about 3:30 am I kept waking up thinking I was hearing music. I’d lie in bed straining my ears and finally convince myself that I was dreaming. By 4:00 am I was wide awake and still hearing music. As the new upstairs neighbors moved in yesterday I was ready to accuse them as the source of the noise but Taz clued me into the real source.
She was sitting facing the French door to my seldom using patio, and as I moved towards her I could hear the music distinctly. There appeared to be a light on at the patio next door, which is recessed and can’t be seen from my patio. Grabbing my shoes and made my way out side and around the corner. Sitting on the ground was a teenage girl and standing, holding a can of beer, was a skinny teenage boy. They had a radio blaring some God-awful atonal fingernails-on-a-chalkboard music. She was very started to see me standing there and even more startled when I said, “it was fucking 4:00 am and your music woke me up at the far end of my apartment.” She looked scared and he was too drunk to realize much, but he did say, “it’s over,” and they turned their radio off.
As much as I absolutely hate the idea of having to move, if I had a detached house I could rent I wouldn’t have to put up with upstairs neighbors, idiots who flunked parking lot politeness, and drunk teenagers at 4:00 am. I have until the end of this month - just over two weeks - to give notice; my lease is up August 31st and requires a sixty-day notice. Between deposits and renting a truck, not to mention finding a place I’d like to live, I fear it is impossible to move without potentially getting myself into a worse situation.
I guess I’ll stay here and be the grumpy guy who complains about all his idiot neighbors.
Recently I have been having increasing feelings of jealous or envy, particularly when I am around couples. That they have a partner, companion, lover, friend, et cetera with them all the time and I don’t is almost more than I can bear. Being the odd man out, once again, at parties or other gatherings is a painful reminder of how my life used to be before Michele.
Over the years I have learned that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. I really don’t mind being alone; as an introvert I have a rather complicated internal dialog that requires a fair amount of tending on a daily basis. The amount of time necessary to keep an even keel varies from day to day, but an hour or two of alone time isn’t an imposition. Being lonely, on the other hand, is far tougher to deal with and causes me a great deal of pain at times.
I realize that I am the only person who can determine my future and whether it is a lonely one or one filled with people. For instance, yesterday I choose to attend a party for a friend’s twenty-fifth work anniversary with the same company, and had a wonderful time. I was able to overcome my natural inclination to be introverted (i.e., stay home and watch television) and participate. Of course, being in a group of people who are all made up of couples, really accentuated my feelings of loneliness, and woke up the green monster.
Perhaps the hardest part of all of this was the realization afterwards that while I was envious of each and everyone of them, I strongly suspect none of them were envious of me. I am not ready yet to talk about seeking out a new relationship but I am aware that I am headed in that direction. Michele was always aware when I had some difficult emotional issue to discuss and she was lovingly relentless about getting me to uncover it through talking. Truth be told, I was always aware of the signs too. They are present again, cloaked in envy, and I need to expose them in order to move forward. I just need to find a way to reconcile the feeling that I am betraying Michele to even think about having another relationship.
Easily one of my favorite books, Cryptonomicon combines World War II cryptography with nerdy dotcom era technology in a globe spanning tale that is just as good the second (or third) time you read it, as it was the first.
Rating: One of my five all-time favorite books.
I’ve always enjoyed John Sandford’s Prey series and I especially like the Kidd books, so I was interested to see what Dead Watch, a standalone story, would be like. I wasn’t able to put it down.
Rating: The only problem with finishing this in one day is that I have nothing to read tomorrow.
Today’s kendo workout was a good one for me. I blew it off on Wednesday evening mostly because I didn’t want to go, but in part because I was tired. I ended up going to sleep about 8:30 that evening; getting almost nine hours that night. A fair trade I think.
Even though I haven’t worked out in two weeks I’m not too sore this evening. I think the conditioning in my legs will return fairly quickly. What is going to give me fits for a while are my shoulders. Much of the work in kendo involves holding your arms out in front of you, doing this continuously for a couple of hours really strains the muscles in your shoulders and upper back.
We started with the usually practice cuts, alternating men (head) strikes with kote (wrist) strikes. The hardest exercise is called hiya suburi, which involves rapid strikes and footwork. You shift backward while preparing for a men strike, and then step forward while executing the strike. Then repeat. Fifty times. Adding speed until you are basically running in place and striking as fast as you can. It’s a lot harder to do that it sounds from my meager description. It’s the only aerobic exercise in the lot, and it leaves everyone winded.
I had some reluctance about going again today, but felt good about it afterwards. The hardest part is starting over again at the beginning. When I made my decision o set aside active participation in karate-do it was the the right decision. I have not truly regretted it in the years that have passed. However, starting back in a dojo seriously is a reminder of what might have been.
Seems I’m getting a lot of that these days.
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It wasn’t really 108 here today, but that was the temperature according to the car after it had sat in the late afternoon sun (5:30 - 6:30 pm) while I had dinner at Outback Steakhouse.
One hundred and eight degrees.
Summer doesn’t start for another two weeks.
Yee-haw.
(Forgive the blurry picture, in my haste to get the picture I held the camera phone too close to the gauge.)
A year ago yesterday our phone rang at 2:30 in the morning bringing the news the Michele’s mom was in the hospital and not expected to survive the day. By 11:00 pm that evening her mom was dead and, I think, Michele’s depression had started a slide that would ultimately contribute to her own death just four scant months later.
At the time I couldn’t begin to relate to what she was feeling. Losing her mom orphaned her in a way that I am only now starting to glimpse, much less understand. Her father was already dead; having died in an automobile accident the previous October, and she was estranged from her brother, so losing her mom left her without any immediate family. Since learning in February that my own mother was terminally ill I’ve been preparing myself for her death. What I haven’t been prepared for however, is the sharp realization that my father is next. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten years, but he will eventually die and I’ll be without my parents.
I wish I could reach out to Michele and let her know that I finally understand what she was going through and feeling last summer. There were other factors involved in her decision to die; losing both her parents was only a part of the whole. I know it is pointless to wonder “what if” in the aftermath of a death; I can’t help but wonder, though, if there was more I could have done to give her a place to express herself in the weeks following her mom’s death. Were she here today she would tell me not to live in the past as there is no present in it. So I try not to dwell on what might have been.
Still, I am now faced with the same realizations she had following the death of her father and I can’t help but wonder how I’ll deal with this challenge in the days and weeks to come.
Yesterday when I got home from work there was a crew working on the apartment above me, which has been empty since April 1st. I guess the lease finally ran out and the new tenant is due to move in tomorrow (Friday). The parking area between my building and the one to the east holds eight cars. The boobs on the work crew had three vehicles and managed to use up five of the spaces: a truck packed in two, and a car parked perpendicularly to the spaces in three more. Also they had a pickup backed up to the garage door on a diagonal so that they were blocking my garage door. I guess any form of thinking, much less critical thinking skills, aren’t taught in the schools these days.
This morning when I left for work I noticed that the boob-squad from yesterday not only left the garage door open, they left the interior door to the apartment open as well; and every light in the place was brightly burning. Maybe the term “boob-squad” is being generous?
Speaking of boobs… The building where I work has three doors, however before 6:00 AM only two are available for use as the full compliment of guards hasn’t started their shift yet. On those days when I am here before 6:00 AM (Yes. I know. That’s the topic of another post.) I still park near the unmanned door and walk to one of the manned ones. There is a guy, however, who must get there around 5:20 or 5:30 as he is always in the first space by the door, who sits and waits in his car for the 6:00 AM guard to come and open the door before going into work. I cannot imagine getting to work and sitting in my car for 30 or 40 minutes just so I won’t have to walk a few hundred feet around the building to another door.