Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I watched "Arrival" last night again.  It's a favorite of ours and we have the DVD.  Ironically, it is not just Louise Banks who is unmoored from linear time, but us as we watch.  And the certainty she has of her daughter's death and her ultimate decision to conceive knowing what is coming is actually what we all face.  We bring children into the world knowing they, as we all do, are going to die.  So living becomes those treasured moments between birth and death, and we need to slow down and be awake and aware of each minute experience.  I love the moments Louise "sees".  Big ones like her daughter's diagnosis and death, little ones like playing tickle fingers in the back yard, watching her splash in rubber boots, rubbing noses with Hannah when she is a baby.  There is an equality to all those moments, because each is fully lived. 
As Louise slowly understands the speech of the septopods, she enters their world, through symbols and empathy.  When we learn another language, we also embrace a different culture and worldview.  But all of us, earthbound or not, face extinction.  It's what makes us "human".

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had just finished texting a friend about seeing the film "The Rider" when I saw an email from another friend urging me to see that very film.  Coincidence?  This advising friend is older, and sees all the "important" movies that come out, but before I get a chance to, and she doesn't really heed my advice if I do like a movie.  She's a bit like my husband:  she decides without taking a chance on seeing something she may not like.  I prefer the companionship of moviegoing.  I'll compromise on a film just to share the experience with another person.  I don't really care if the film disappoints, and besides, that kind of film still often nets lots to discuss.  She'll tell me to see a film, but we never discuss it, because by then she's already had her fill of analyzing.  She recommends books as well, but hasn't the time to talk with me after I've read it.  She genuinely  WANTS me to read it, thinks I will enjoy it, but she's moved on.  When I've given her books she often doesn't read them, or puts them off a long time.  She's older, and my intuition tells me she's guiding me.  We used to share, but now she's in a different place, with people she prefers to share with, but she loves me and wants me to experience the pleasure she's had.  It's subtle, this change, but I do feel a loss.  Yes, I have books and movies to see, but alone, the experience is dampened. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had a long talk with an old friend this afternoon.  We've had years of hurried emails and strangled phone calls, as we were both busy with families and work, and thousands of miles apart, but now that she is retired there is that precious time to luxuriate in, and we could not just cover the basics, but indulge in some of the lesser stuff that actually makes us feel closer to each other.  I admire her so much, and how she's kept her integrity and carved a beautiful life out for herself.  She's a great writer, and successful, and I am proud of her and the determination she has shown.  Her enthusiasm, always her most attractive quality to me, is undiminished, and her writing demonstrates it.  She, many years ago, shared her passion for art and museums with me, and I've continued on with those pursuits, albeit with a local friend mostly these past few years.  She's fun, and that is a great thing in a friend, and intelligent and perceptive about literature and life.  I'm grateful for her friendship.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've just had two days of eye tests.  My eyes are holding, but dilated eyes are no fun.  It makes me see the world through vaseline lenses.  Yet I am grateful, that there is a treatment that keeps the bleeds at bay, and for my compassionate doctors.  Yesterday, the retinal specialist, who does the injections when I need them discussed a class in Dostoyevsky and Russian psychology he'd taken and coincidentally I had also had a class reading all his works with a Nobel Winner in Literature.  I'm still a great admirer and have reread some of the novels.  When I was a teenager, I told friends I was going through my Doestoyevsky period, and my brother claimed he did too, and that it was my fault.  I think the author especially appeals to the turmoil of teenage angst, and also the overflow of feeling.  He keeps it complex.  Anyway, my eye doctor, after several minutes, laughed and said we know your eye is good, or else we'd be talking about it!  We were both joyful, because:  so far so good.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Coming home from a trip it feels great to do the ordinary things:  the laundry, get groceries, water the plants, sweep the kitchen.  The drudgery is lifted for a moment.  We took a walk around the reservoir, I returned phone messages, and my calendar is all caught up.  I finished a book I bought at the airport - Dark Matter -which turned out to be fascinating and left me with much to think about.  The plot involves the paths we do not take, what would happen if we could see who and what we would become.  The protagonist is likeable and loving, and he does not regret what he gave up to marry young and have a son.  I think at my age, I'm way past regret or even curiousity about what I might have done differently.  My life is so full and blessed, I could care less if I'd had more professional success.  I chose wisely, as the Crusader says in the Indiana Jones movie.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We just returned after midnight last night from a week in Hawaii with our younger daughter, her husband, and their son.  We got along really well and compromised and shared easily.  Our grandson had to be pulled from the water.  He adored the beach and had no fear.  He dug and splashed and crawled through the water like a minnow.  But on the flight home he would not sleep:  he'd clearly had enough changes and disruptions, and he likes to sleep on his tummy, so the plane ride was crying, laughing, being passed from grandparents to parents until finally, fifteen minutes from landing, he succumbed, totally exhausted.  He'd been a champ, but he was done.  I loved the flowers and birds.  There was a huge flock of wild parrots, green, which flew to the palm trees by our condo at dusk and flew away in a huge cloud with a racket like trumpets sounding every dawn.  And since we were up at dawn, due to the toddler, we got to see them rise and explode in the air.  The plants, flowers, roar of the ocean, birds, especially cardinals black and white with orangy red heads, the Hawaiian music, the green lushness, waterfalls, ponds and pools everywhere, did seem like paradise.  As close to heaven as you can get.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I went on a walk with a friend who lost her wife six months ago, suddenly.  And she has been traveling the last month back and forth to her her son who "died" and was resurrected by amazing doctors and is now hoping to be released from the hospital in a week or so.  She's going to travel back and forth for only several days from now on.  He's single, with no relatives nearby, so she feels she needs to check in on him from time to time.  She said her friends were dropping like flies.   She's eight years older than I, but I assured her I'm also disturbed by our vulnerability at this age.  I told her about going to the drugstore and buying loads of Get Well, Sympathy, and Pet Sympathy cards.  I said mostly it was Get Well, as many friends are having surgery as our knees and hips and backs give out.  But I've had losses as well, and perhaps will never fully get over my younger brother's death.  How do we go on, knowing what's to come?  Knowing our turn is soon?  The answer for me is treasuring each minute on this earth, as she and I did yesterday, stopping to admire the dogwood trees and bearded irises and bird of paradise plants on our walk.  I told her I was trying not to sit much, as it was so bad for my body, and was cultivating ADD a bit, jumping up every few minutes with little tasks.  My body otherwise wants to fold into it's resting spot, and give up the struggle.  But I'm not done yet, though I could be tomorrow.  But like a hummingbird, I wish to take in the nectar and beauty of this world while I'm able.