Tag: Death

  • Edgy

    I guess it was this weekend, that I started to notice that I was getting edgy. The wife refers to it as “being feisty” because I find reasons to argue over little things. It’s not like they are real arguments, more like just contradictory comments – never ending comments. Either way, it gets on people’s nerves.

    And it first, I don’t know why everything is rubbing me the wrong way. I have a twitch in my eye and jaw, FYI. Then I look at the calendar and see that on Saturday it’s been five years since my mom’s passing.

    Now it makes sense.

    After my mom passed, I remember reading an essay about how the author was dealing with their grief, and how the week of their parent’s passing, they would find themselves angry, and lashing out. They knew why they were doing it, and even though they tried to stop it, they couldn’t.

    I feel like that. I feel I should know better, and not do it, but also, doing it feels correct.

    What I was surprised by was forgetting, or a better phrase to use would be, not remembering that my mom’s passing was coming. A little of it was avoiding the anniversary. Another bit was that I actually forgot. I went into October thinking about Fall, leaves, gourds, apple picking, and Halloween. Like you should. This was the first year where October didn’t mean “mom’s death.”

    But sub-consciously, I did know. Maybe it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, but it was rattling around back there. It was always be there, and that’s okay.

  • Short Story Review: “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao (Translated from the Chinese, by Jeremy Tiang.)

    (The short story “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao appeared in the October 9th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Sally Deng

    If you write a story about a parent/child relationship, and then throw in a dying parent, you pretty much are half way to claiming a small place in my heart. My logically analytical side gets thrown out the window, and I am running on emotions. And let’s be honest, if you’re creating art, you want people to have an emotional reaction – it’s like the whole point. I say this because I can be completely biased when it comes to certain subject matters, which can complicate things when I try to review short stories from an objective place.

    Which is why it’s strange for me to say that I didn’t feel an emotional connection to “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao. This is a fine story, well written, engaging, and just odd enough to keep me intrigued with what was happening. And as I was reading this piece, I kept expecting it to “click” into place and tap that raw parent/child emotion in me, but it never came. But I don’t begrudge the story for this, nor am I left feeling that the story “misfired” in its execution. Oddly, I feel this might have been exactly the reaction the story was attempting to create in the reader.

    The story mainly takes places on a medical bus that is driving late at night to Beijing. The passengers are an older man dying of heart disease, his son, a driver, and ER doctor who agreed to accompany the father and son. We learn from the narrator, who is the son, that the heart disease that is killing his father skips every other generation, meaning the son is immune from the fate of his father.

    The tone of the story is straightforward, logical, and there are no literary flourishes. But the events in this story slightly graze the edge of surrealism – just slightly. It’s enough touches to make the story feel that it’s not completely in reality. But still I had to wonder why these touches were there. What did the father’s daily boxing routine really symbolize? Why was the driver sleeping as he drove the vehicle? Also, what about the doctor’s sleeping? Was this all a dream? And the need for the son to have to use the bathroom? Was there a meaning to the son’s self-described laziness and his recent decision to stop working, while the father worked every day; even when he retired, he went and found a new job to keep working? All of these questions left me feeling uncertain, unsettled, and wondering what I was supposed to make of this?

    And then there is a moment in the story where the son wonders what he is supposed to do when his father does pass away. He thinks of all the work that will come with making the arrangements for a funeral; contacting family and people his father worked with, raising money to pay for it all, and cars for the procession. Then the son thinks that once his father is gone, that he will truly be alone and by himself. To that the narrator says, “I guess that’s what freedom looks like nowadays,…” A sobering, and heartbreaking realization, that can also feel overwhelming to the point where one can be left numb, and disconnected.

    There isn’t one way to mourn, and that’s what “Heart” reminded me of. I don’t know what all of these pieces in this story amounted to, but I don’t think Shuang Xuetao is wrong for presenting that either, if that was the intention. Maybe not having a feeling right away is still a sort of feeling. Maybe.

  • Short Story Review: “On the Agenda” by Lore Segal

    (The short story “On the Agenda” by Lore Segal appeared in the September 18th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Riccardo Vecchio

    “On the Agenda” by Lore Segal is an interesting exercise. I read it twice, enjoyed it both times, but I’m still wondering about the ending. Each time I read it, and I can’t put my finger on why, or where the example is in the story, but I kept thinking about French Absurdist one-act theatre. (I was a theatre major, I read a lot of their works.) Something about this story seemed to parallel that. This story isn’t blatantly absurdist. It does have a foot in reality, but there is something off, which works.

    The story is about ladies who lunch, but not the Sondheim “ladies.” The story of these ladies is broken up into sections; the first being “JANUARY: THE FORGETTING OLYMPICS,” which also happens to be an agenda item for the meeting of the ladies. What if forgetting was an Olympic sport? And the ladies give examples of their forgetting, comparing, and expanding this idea. At this point, the story could be about aging. But with the next section “MARCH: NEXT TO GODLINESS” and “JUNE: FUNK” we are given examples of the ladies friendship, and how they are dealing with their forgetting. And again, it all feels purposefully off center, ever so slightly. But when the final section comes along, “NOVEMBER: NO MORE TRAINS” which is broken up into three sections, with the last being the one I questioned the most – It’s a single paragraph with no dialogue, which is different and shorter than all other sections of the whole story. This paragraph thuds the story to a close, help with a rhetorical last question “For now?”

    From the way the story started with that absurdist feeling I had while reading, I never was expecting this to be a story that would wrap up cleanly, or even conclusively for that matter.  But that last paragraph is completely and radically different from the rest of the story – what was the point? Then I remembered the French Absurdists, who sometimes made the point of not having a point, and just ending things.

    Or it’s about death?

    I’m going with death.

  • The Feels Rollercoaster

    The last couple of years have been a rough go for most of us. I’m not taking a huge leap with that idea, I know. Covid threw everyone for a loop, changed the ways of the world, brought up many issues people had to deal with, and I will also say that on the whole, we are all living in a Post-Covid world now.

    For me, this dark period of life started in 2018 with my mother’s death. She felt a lump in her throat in July, and passed away in October. Three months isn’t necessarily a short period of time, but it still feels like it all happened in the blink of an eye. I’m still dealing with her passing, and probably will forever, but I do know that I am in a better place about it.

    There are many things that can be said about losing a parent, and have been said many times over and over. What I found was that nothing brought me joy or happiness. I was sad all of the time. Not depressed, or withdrawn – just sad. And this sadness was always just below the surface, and if I felt anything too much – laughed too hard, or lost myself in a movie or a song – then I would start crying. And I would allow it to happen, and it felt cathartic, but it also made me feel like I was unhinged, and not in control. I knew I needed to mourn my mother, but I also needed to go to work, and take care of my kid, and that was important too.

    When Covid hit, I still wasn’t in a good place, but I was functional. It was a little strange to be isolated from everyone, but our little family unit clung together. I found that my marriage actually got stronger, and I enjoyed being with my wife all the time. And getting to spend so much time with my kid – playing and teaching her how to read – is a treasured gift that I am so fortunate I was able to take part in. Not that we all didn’t have moments where we needed our space, or got on each other’s nerves; we are human.

    And as 2023 started, I started feeling good again. And I started acknowledging that I had changed. I’m not the same person that I was in 2018. It was tough, but I had to admit that I am no longer a theatre artist or a puppeteer. That was a tough one, as that is how I had thought of myself since 2000, all the way back in college. For the last five years, I hadn’t done a show, and I didn’t have a desire to go back. Same thing with my career in arts management. Though I know I don’t want to go back to it, I also know that I do have some anger with the way I was treated in my last two jobs, and I need to take responsibility for the way I behaved as well. That’s an issue I am still working on.

    What I have changed into is a stay at home dad; that’s my role in the family. It took me a bit of time to come around to it. There is still a pull in me to go get a job, as it is stuck in my head that the only “real” way to contribute to my family is by bringing in money. There is a good chance that I will do that, or need to do that in the near future, but as of now – I got a kid, a home, and a financial future that I am responsible for.

    But I still have to do something creative, which is what you are seeing/reading right now. I have always written something – in a journal since high school, plays, an article for a rock zine, college lit journal, and several on and off blogs. There was a five-year period after high school when I tried my hand at getting published, but other that a handwritten from an editor at STORY Magazine telling me to “keep at it, don’t get discouraged,” nothing ever came of it. This blog that you are reading now, was started back in 2017, back at the tail end of my performing days, so writing has always been hanging around in my life. Sure, in the middle of the Pandemic, I had this crazy notion that I was going to “earn money” through writing… And I have re-assessed this idea. If it happens – great! But I am not counting on it. I’m writing because it makes me feel good, gives me a purpose, and is something to work at that is for me. And right now, that’s what I need most in my life.

    Like I said, with all of these changes, I started feeling good about myself, my place in the world. I started feeling grateful for the like I share with my wife, and kid, my family and my friends. I have a good life – filled my struggles – but it is a good life that I am proud of.

    And then I saw a picture. It was a simple, picture of seven people standing in front of a theatre upstate. One of the people in the picture was a friend of mine, who got tagged in the shot, and it was from an organization that he was working for this summer developing a new theatre piece that involved mime and physical theatre – all the stuff I used to do.

    And that picture made me feel like shit. I was shocked at how awful I felt by looking at it. I wasn’t upset with my friend, nor was I jealous of what he was doing, as he’s been taking part in camp, workshops, and art commune things like this since I met him. I felt like shit looking at that picture because the thought that crept into my head was, “That could have been you if you didn’t quit.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had given up on myself, and that nothing mattered.

    I feel that I have a normal level of anxiety and self-doubt. Normal level meaning that I have to work to overcome my anxiety and self-doubt, but it is never so great to keep me from getting out of bed in the morning, or to stop me from trying. But this feeling was more like I had wasted my life – that I could have been doing the cool stuff, creating works of art. That I was just one step away from it, and I was the loser who quit.

    And it was like all the progress that I had made over the past year – working through my mom’s passing, my new role in my family, leaving my career, and working on a new form of expression – was meaningless. It had the added effect of making me feel totally alone and isolated. One picture triggered all of that in me.

    You have to make a choice in a moment like that, and I did what any healthy, well balanced person does – I ate potato chips on the couch while playing video games trying very hard to act like I didn’t feel what I felt. Because I felt ashamed at who I am, and for trying to grow into something else.

    But it passed – all those feels. It passed because I talked to my wife about it. It passed because I took my kid to the community pool on a hot Summer day in Harlem, and we swam and talked about music and going away to camp. It passed because I talked to my partner about it, and it passed because I spent time with my daughter – the person I am trying to better myself for.

    It passed but it still lingers in my mind. It’s there because I still need to take the time and mourn the passing of who I used to be. That’s not to say that I won’t find my way back to a theatre, but if I do return, I won’t be the same person doing it for that old reason. It lingers because I am human, and I will always wonder to some degree if I made the right choice. I wish I was so completely confidant in my decisions that I never look back. That’s not me, and I know that about myself.

    I know a few more things about myself now, that I didn’t know awhile ago. It’s progress. I am happier, and that is a win.

  • Personal Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

    (You better believe there will be SPOLIERS!)

    Let me just start with this; I consider Raiders of the Lost Ark to be the greatest action movie, and I dare say that it is also one of the best movies ever. I could go on and on about how Raiders changed the notion of what an action movie could be, how it’s Harrison Ford’s best performance, and the music is iconic!

    I have done my best not to be a “fanboy” when it comes to all things Indiana Jones, and just let be what it is. I came to terms years ago that nothing will ever match that feeling I had watching Raiders for the first time – the excitement, awe, gasps, and that strange feeling of not knowing where the story was going to go next. I will never get “that” feeling back, and that’s okay. I can still have fun with the other movies in the series.

    But I still went into Dial of Destiny with a well of anxious feelings in the pit of my stomach. Not for me, but for Harrison Ford – he said this was the last Indy film, and I just wanted it to have the conclusion that both he and the character deserve. And I wanted the de-aging CGI to not look all fake.

    And for what Dial of Destiny was, I enjoyed. It was not an Indiana Jones movie in the model of Raiders, Temple, or Crusade. No, what Destiny reminded me of was the “Indiana Jones: Find Your Fate” book series from Ballentine Books which came out in the late 1980’s. Yes, they were a knock off of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” book series, but for this kid, they were an easy continuation of Indy adventures, which kept the morality simple, with this version of Indy always being the good guy looking to keep treasures out of the wrong hands, and hopefully, back into a museum. The stories took place all over the world, Indy always had a “friend” in whatever location who could help out, and there was a very simplified history lesson thrown in for good measure. At least, that’s what I remember, and that’s what Destiny felt like.

    Except in Destiny, after kicking some Nazi ass in the intro sequence, Indy is about to get divorced, retiring from teaching at Hunter College in Manhattan, and acts like a man who has given up. You gotta start low if you need your hero to surmount something. This set up was veering into the world of tropes, as I think this is how Die Hard with a Vengeance starts. After this shaky beginning with older Indy, some life gets injected into the movie when Phoebe Waller-Bridge shows up. She can handle the action and has a gift for delivering the quippy lines.

    And thus, we have our set up, which brings me to why Destiny felt like the “Find Your Fate” books, and that’s not a complaint. The action is split between Indy and this new character, Waller-Bridge, which in the books would have been you, the reader. We jet and sail around the Mediterranean, meet Indy’s friends who always die, and we get a nice history lesson about the Siege of Syracuse and Archimedes. It felt familiar without being fan service.

    What this movie got right was not treating Indy’s age as a joke, or a running gag, or just ignoring it like I think lesser talented writers would do. Destiny had a theme that it stuck to, which was the fear that life has passed you by, the best days are behind you, and there is no where left to go. I know some people will think killing Mutt off was a bit of fan service, but I disagree. That’s a death that would deeply wound, and break a parent, and Indy’s inability to open up about that loss was played very well by Ford. This Indy has serious regrets, and those regrets create an understandable motivation. When Indy and Marion reconcile at the end (and Karen Allen was disgracefully underused in this movie) we can see that these are two people who are hurt and need each other, but have to grow together in dealing with their grief. It is a much more serious ending than I was expecting, but for the totality of the series, Indy needed to not end as a tragic hero that always misses out on getting the treasure; he needed to get the girl and understand his place in the world.

    So, where does Destiny place in the cannon? Here’s my list:

    1. Raider of the Lost Ark
    2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
    3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
    4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

    5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull