Popcorn

Okay, so he had made a mistake. Anyone can make a mistake. You don’t have to be old to make a mistake. You can be young and still make a mistake. The only difference is that no one stands around bitching about it and telling you how stupid you are and how you could have burned down the whole damn house and then goes on and on about it like you can’t hear or comprehend or put two-and-damn-two together anymore. It was just a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes.

Popcorn. That’s all it was. Or all he meant it to be, anyway. He had a taste for popcorn. Not this dry, super salty shit in a microwave bag that they sell nowadays, but popcorn, real popcorn, the way his mother used to make it. You put some butter in the bottom of a skillet, you heat it up, you pour in just enough of the un-popped kernels to cover the bottom of the pan, and then clamp on a lid before the fireworks start. It’s fun, and it tastes better, and you can salt it to taste and butter it to taste. And then you have something – something you’ve made yourself – something that took some care – and you can pour it in a bowl big enough for everyone and get a coke and go sit down and watch your movie or the TV or whatever the hell.

The point is, he didn’t mean to forget about the damn popcorn! Who puts popcorn on to pop and then purposely decides to forget about it? Talk about stupid. Who’s the stupid one here?

And so this is what had driven him to the end of his rope. Popcorn. He walked out the door, along with the smoke, both of them billowing angrily, and slammed the door behind him even as she, still quacking unending complaints – I cannot believe it! What were you thinking! – threw open windows, dramatically tore back the damn sashes and all that, and announced everything to everyone in the whole damn neighborhood; and moreover, yes, moreover, let the snow come blowing in through every possible entry.

Now, how stupid is that?

The Way Things Are

Most of us quickly get used to a certain process in our lives where our health is concerned. From childhood on, there is this common, reliable pattern: We become ill and then we regain our health. That's just the way it works. It's always that way. You get the flu, you suffer for some days, and then you get well again. You break a bone, and then you need to nurse the injury for a while, but before you know it, the thing is only a memory. Renewal, for the majority of people, is simply a given, and you do not doubt that renewal will always proceed from injury.

Until it doesn't, that is. 

With a disease like multiple sclerosis, one finds himself facing a new order, a new reality. Or, rather, one finds himself not facing it, because it is not in harmony with the order one knows so well as part of the experience of his life. Now things have changed. Something happens and one automatically awaits resolution, renewal. But the days drag on, then the months, and you finally realize that this disease, this reality, is not behaving in accordance with what you have always experienced in the past. Your foot goes numb, it stays numb. Your hand goes numb, it stays numb. You become confused. You stay confused. There is no restoration. There is no pill to fix the thing. There is no operation. There is no therapy that will undo the deficit. 

This is a very hard thing to learn. It is not something one wants to learn. In fact, it has taken me seven months to acknowledge that the aching and stiffness in my neck and right shoulder blade is not going to be coaxed away with medicine or exercise or massage or meditation or even with time. It is permanent. Even now, that is a very hard word to say, for it is so ... well, so permanent. It is hard, very hard indeed, to release the hope that you will heal, that you will return to the status quo, that what you're facing now is not a matter of injury, but of destruction. This is the disease, MS. 

You build around what is left. Curing is no longer in the cards. Coping is what remains. 

Silent Wife

The publisher of A.S.A. Harrison's novel, Silent Wife, seems to have thought that touting it as somehow "like" Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl would be a good selling point. And it probably was. But that's really as far as the 'point' goes, unless it can be said that any novel about the dissolution of a marriage is like every other novel about the dissolution of a marriage. Which, of course, it can't. Given the expectations conveyed in the advertisement, it is not surprising that quite a number of readers, apparently, came away disappointed. They had expected to read Gone Girl again, but found themselves wrestling with a very different creature instead.

Silent Wife is a deep study of the nature of men and women, the expectations that the genders bring to love and marriage, their response to infidelity, their differing capacities for both love and outrage. It is a study, also, of the deeply ingrained foundations of character strengths and weaknesses that each participant brings to the marriage. In some sense, the thing is a settled matter before it even gets started - settled long ago in the essential events of childhood. For each couple, according to the nature of gender expectations, the mythologies in force, there exists a fair playing field, with mutually recognized boundaries, upon which the relationship may proceed without fatal injury. The field is wide, the options are many; and yet there are certain lines which, when crossed, constitute an unforgivable transgression - both of the marriage contract and of the safe boundaries of the individual psyche.

I have rarely found myself so immersed in a story, so involved - such that I felt that I knew the characters personally and, over time, more and more completely, and was taking part in their personal drama. Like the title, it is all "quietly", and very artfully accomplished. Ultimately, one knows what the characters will do because he has learned who they are as individuals.

Sadly, Ms. Harrison passed away while at work on a second novel, and so Silent Wife must remain a standalone experience. Happily, however, the novel easily bears the depth to be read again in the future.

Good Night

I was feeling astounded this evening at how quickly time seems to pass these days. Or, I may as well not say "seems to", because it simply does. Here it is 8:30 pm already, and I very clearly remember getting out of bed this morning, perhaps a half hour ago. How can it be? It was not 12 hours ago. Certainly not. Could not have been. I remember waking up, getting out of bed, making a cup of coffee. My God, I just got done drinking the thing. I swear it! 

So I decided to investigate. Easy to do with Google at one's fingertips. Everything is on Google. Including explanations for why time seems to pass more quickly as one grows older. 

But I didn't buy the explanations.  It's all about perception, and activity, and this old cliche about time flying if you're having fun. 

Bah. That's not it at all. Quite simply, the hours in my life, the hours of my personal existence, are passing faster than other hours. They are certainly passing faster than the hours I used to be acquainted with. And because of this, let me tell you, I can't get a damn thing done! I awake with certain plans, I awake with definite intentions, but then suddenly it is nighttime, and the day has not given me a fair chance to get started. How frustrating is that? 

Or here's a thought ... Could it be that I have simply forgotten what I've done, or spent a significant amount of time forgetting to remember what I was doing? How can I say, if indeed I have forgotten the thing? Have the hours passed quickly because they have simply dropped out of my memory. That is, they may have passed quite appropriately, time-wise, but, having dropped out of recollection, they need not have passed at all, for all practical purposes. The reason they went quickly is that they did not go at all, for they did not exist (again, for all practical purposes). 

Well, it bears further examination. It is an engaging question (though, as I must admit, I may soon forget the matter). It is, after all, bedtime, and I'm tired, even though I just got up.

Mertesari

Took a walk down at Mertesari Beach this morning, but a short one, as it was just too damn hot. 31C, which becomes 39C with humidity factored in, which translates to 102.2F. So, yeah ... hot. 

Overall, though, this is really my favorite beach on the Sanur oceanfront. A good place to swim. Wish I would have had my trunks along!

Mertesari is the last beach to the west in Sanur. It is not nearly as built-up as the beaches before it, although things are changing quickly. In just the last six years, new hotel properties have sprung up all along the Sanur oceanfront, and a new one was built at Mertesari last year. It is well back from the beach, however, and so fairly unobtrusive. Otherwise, the beach at Mertesari retains much of the original character of the place, with an open, unobstructed beachfront, brightly painted catamarans bobbing at anchor, small open-air shops and warungs (local food stalls) dotting the sandy pathway, which can be followed all the way to the east end of Sanur, if you have more energy than I, and which ends just after Mertesari in the rich growth of an estuary, which itself extends all the way to Serangan Beach, perhaps 7 miles further to the west.   

Mertesari seems the favorite spot of the locals as well, who gather there every Sunday for a swim and a picnic. For them - many of whom work in some way with the tourist industry in Sanur - it's a good way to get away from the Bules (foreigners) and gather with family members or friends. And I don't blame em a bit. I like to get away from the Bules, too :) At Mertesari, one can find a more restful experience, a quieter, less crowded experience (in fact, you might find yourself practically alone on the beach), and a cheaper one to boot, as the warung prices for food and drink outside the tourist hot spots are far less expensive. You can get a nice plate of fried rice, for instance, for Rupiah 15000 (about a buck ten US, and a nice Bali coffee for about 50 cents. 

Tender is the NIght

There is a 1986 miniseries version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, Tender is the Night. I discovered it today on the 123movies site and tolerated a mere 15 minutes or so of the thing before logging out in disappointment. The actors are wrong, the dialogue is wrong, the delivery of the lines is wrong, the mood is wrong, the atmosphere is wrong, the screenplay is wrong, the focus is wrong. In short, it's just wrong. 

Tender is the Night, published in 1934, was Fitzgerald's 4th, and last complete novel. For me, the novel is far beyond his previous efforts, far beyond even The Great Gatsby, in its presentation of story, its perfection of style, the fullness of characters, the flow of the prose. It is, as Ernest Hemingway noted after Fitzgerald's death, so good that it's scary. One looks at the accomplishment and is in awe.

For me, this novel has settled in to some part of my person. It is like something that happened, a memory. It is either part of me, or I am part of it. And how in the word did Fitzgerald do that? 

I've read the darn thing four times now since somewhere in the early 1980s; and, coincidentally, may embark upon a fifth reading, having seen the book in the Gramedia store here. This in itself is actually a bit weird, as Gramedia pretty much sells only books in the Indonesian language, and books that are either by Indonesian authors or are translations of contemporary western bestsellers. This copy of Tender is the Night is in English and on a table apart from the other bookshelves. 

Perhaps it has followed me here. 

Collateral Beauty

OMG, tearjerker alert. Collateral Beauty, starring Will Smith. Funny thing - for most of my life, I have felt distinctly removed emotionally from things that I would watch. In my mind, I knew that a sad movie was sad, but it never translated to my heart, never resulted in tears. It was, after all, just a movie. But I must have become, in my old age, a real wus, because here I am weeping, tears running down my cheeks, glasses fogging up, I suppose that some would not find this movie so very sad, but for anyone who has suffered a severe loss, of any kind, this will really yank at the heartstrings. I have become so soft now; but not weak, I think. This is a softness that does not fear, that does not avoid, that has somehow forgotten how.