21 September 2024

Does the passage from one season to another account for my mercurial shifts of mood?  I wonder.  More tired than I’ve any right to be, I blame my fatigue on having been away from home three weekends in a row.  As Earth was to Antaeus, Tara to Scarlett O’Hara, Gnawwood is to me.  While time spent first on Star Island, then among friends back in Kentucky, and finally this past weekend in Portsmouth at the Telluride-by-the-Sea film festival was all most enjoyable, I find I wake every morning anxious about something.  Maybe it’s the toxic infusion of the 24/7 news cycle.  Or maybe it comes down to some underlying dread of whatever circumstance might force my move away from Gnawwood.  “What comes next” is a frequent topic of conversation among us 70-somethings, and my 72nd birthday looms.

Joints, heart, and eyesight are not what they once were of course, though given my privileged access to healthcare, I really can’t complain (though I do when the cardiologist recommends against the taking of wine with dinner.  Really??).  It does seem queer that my outlook on life can be so suddenly, absurdly brightened by discovering that the Drano Max Gel I poured into my hair-clogged bathroom sink ultimately worked its magic after more than 24 hours so I didn’t have to call our wonderful plumber Ed back after he’d just been here attending to another issue.  I can be blithe and bonny over something so trivial and then sigh over the discovery that if I ever want to buy again the now-discontinued little Clinique travel soaps I’ve been using since 1976, I will have to depend on consumercare-US@gcc.gbnf.estee.com, a resource for finding remaindered inventory.

Or it may be that I’m just anxious about the imminent arrival from Amazon of my book:  customers who pay full price for it can have it within two days, but my author’s copy, ordered on 9 September, takes two weeks.  As of today, I’ve sold all of 18 copies, but have not yet seen it myself.  My friend Stephanie, who joined me for a lovely lunch at Wentworth-by-the-Sea’s Salt yesterday (we recommend the Basil Lime Rickey) tells me that first sight of one’s book may well be surprisingly unaffecting; one was, after all, done with that, creatively, quite a while ago.  We’ll see.  Soon.  I expect the Amazon truck momentarily.

Meanwhile, the time speeds apace.  The Telluride-by-the-Sea festival was both very enjoyable and instructive; I saw six of the seven films on offer and REALLY liked four of those.

I skipped the claymation Memoir of a Snail, and barely tolerated the assaultive cinematic indulgence of RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel Nickel Boys.  Promoted as a “visually adventurous coming-of-age story set in Jim Crow-era Florida,” it proved narratively impenetrable to me until glossed by our more informed seatmate Brian.  But the star-studded Conclave lived up to its program blub, turning the cinematically gorgeous, mysterious protocols of a papal election into an “elegantly satisfying thriller, a thoughtful meditation on the mystery of faith, and a reminder:  election season is not for the weak.”

Two comedies, one a believably fictional recreation of the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in October 1975, and the other a documentary of Will Ferrell’s cross-country road trip with dear friend and comedy writer Harper Steele, who came out as a transwoman at age 61, both entertained and left a surprisingly long-lasting impression.

Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is often hilarious in its uncanny representation of then unknown but soon-to-be all-star comedians (Belushi, Ackroyd, Radnor, Chase, Curtain, et al), and even poignant in its evocation of a half-century past.  And in Josh Greenbaum’s Will and Harper, two very funny people reveal with extraordinary candor both the depth of their abiding love and the range of our diverse country’s response to celebrity and to difference.

But the real gem of the festival was Iran’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, already a winner at Cannes.  Even at 168 minutes, this oh-so-gradual revelation of how an unjust system perniciously abrades the ties that bind even a loving family never fails to compel attention as it builds to its remarkable conclusion—predicted in the title, but only at last apparent in the experience of a film that explicates the iniquity of a totalitarian regime, incorporating footage of real protests on the streets of Tehran with brilliantly acted fiction.

Seeing six films over one weekend at the Portsmouth Music Hall can be brutal on the backside, but by Sunday, my fellow film buff friend Carol and I had figured out how to provision ourselves and take advantage of Portsmouth’s nearby Hearth Market.

I’ve also recommended that the Music Hall provide interstitial Tai Chi in the pedestrian Chestnut Street space outside the theatre.  Motion is the lotion.

Though I personally accomplished few of my household chores over the past weekend—even under pressure as the days grow appreciably shorter—I was lucky to have the expertise of Bosnian father/son team Emir and Ezmet restore Gnawwood’s stucco, and their boss Greg Thulander of Facades, Inc. not only re-caulk the joins between the portico’s stucco and its granite steps, but trim back the rhododendrons threatening to compromise the stucco on the east side of the house.  I’m hoping that Greg, personable, skilled in his trade and a former historian/preservationist, will one day finish the book he told me he began years ago:  I offered him my testament to retirement as a good time to revive a manuscript once abandoned.

And then came one last summer’s evening picnic at the New Castle Common with friends Jennifer, Martha, and Phyllis and all the paparazzi assembled with tripods and telephoto lenses to photograph the rise of the Harvest Supermoon over the Wood Island Life Saving Station.  The haze made the silent sails of two crafts crossing the moonglade all the more poetic.

And so, on we go, sailing into autumn and all the anxieties of this unprecedented, terrifying election season.

Courage, Dear Readers!  Namaste.