Our carnival life forever

We had one full day in New Jersey when at around two in the morning I heard someone leave a message on my cell phone. When I listened, it was Gus letting us know that the alarm for the sump pump was going off and water was rising in the well at a pretty quick rate.
To begin, long before the layoff we had made arrangements to travel east and visit with friends and families we've managed to travel with for years and actually want to keep doing so.
As the tide of events that began to deconstruct our financial stability started in late May, we had already put down a bunch of deposits and such so that canceling them would have been an enormous waste.
Yet, there 's nothing like having a tremendously fun time, all the while in the back of your mind you know what awaits on your return home; or you think you know.
We stayed up through the night, trying to figure out how to save thousands of dollars worth of film equipment but more important, you can't insure all of the stories, screenplays, pictures and memorabilia that were locked in an office completely inaccessible.
The next day instead of surfing, shopping and eating, we drove home, tired yet hopeful we would make it before the next storm hit. And, we did. We arrived home, replaced the pump and relocated all that matters, in hopes that the roof holds.

I'm the fortress

On the phone with Gus this morning, I wished him a happy birthday and also thanked him for liberating me from a tremendous amount of fear and, I guess ignorance; that would be about what I was capable of, and what I could manage through. His birth was the start of a lot of exploration into the possibilities. I think of late, I've forgotten how completely I was altered and for lack of a better word, humbled by the most simplest of things, the six or seven inch journey of birth.
It was not pretty, but challenging and growing experiences rarely are. I can say it was wildly cool and mildly humorous but what I have taken and what remains is that the world will only give you as much as you possibly can take. So perhaps, I should yield.

Fire

For years, a tradition in the Fall for Eamon has been to go to Fin Feather and Fur which is about an hour drive from us. He likes to procure his winter collection; heavy wool socks, long johns and usually a new pair of uber rugged boots.
Recently, one has been built a mere few miles from us and we have been waiting for the opening with baited breath (hah).
Yesterday, we had an opportunity to go there and ruin our entire perception and love for the store. And how did that happen? Well it's called guns and the people who buy them. The original store we used to travel to had weapons, but they were on the second floor and maybe because the store had been there forever, it wasn't a circus of camouflage, Obamanation t-shirts and any image one could conjure of last person on earth who should ever own a gun, but the buzz over by the counter was not unlike the sound of the swarm of a thousand angry bees ready for what ever may come based on all of the movies they've seen. It could be Sectarians, Zombies, Commies or even the Iceman. Either way, they are locked loaded and ready.

It was not lost on me

Gus didn't talk to me for a week. Well, he spoke, but it was terse and brief and only when absolutely necessary. I'm used to this kind of behavior from his brother, but it has actually never happened before with him.
It's unsettling to say the least, me not being a fan of the silent treatment, first get mad then full of regrets for the ultimatums I spew. Nothing new there, just a different person for the same lame approach.
As this went on, I talked to his Dad about it and subsequently a conversation took place between them that included the sentence "women set up booby traps" and some sort of additional rubbish about how we want way too much and ask for more, when enough is already being done. All this because I mentioned that it hurt to be ignored, now I'm mad at both of them. Problem solved!

Run deep

I did see 2001 a Space Odyssey the year it came out. It was a sunny afternoon in Asbury Park New Jersey and my mom took my sisters and I to the matinee. that would have made me six years old by the way. It was a goofy movie, (okay actually a Goofy movie was better), and that's not just from the child's perspective, I still feel that way.
Tree of Life touched on some of the goof, but managed to pull off about two hours of a masterpiece about family and mostly about unforgiving Fathers and their weird predilection for belittling and maligning their sons/selves.
The gasp that came out of my mouth when (stop reading if you haven't seen it, all eleven of you.) Brad Pitt, the father of three sons, lost his job, was so not my usual giant lump in the throat movie etiquette. So, it's obvious that the movie touched me as it does many viewers who wish they had grown up in a Calvin Klein commercial sans the harsh dad.
I am being critical here, I am an lover not a hater of Malick and his contemporaries, Carlos Reygadas, Hsiao Hsien Hou or Pedro Gonzalez Rubio. It's not the slow, plodding static shots, it's the superficial, getting stuck in the sheer presence of beauty and simplicity see, right here, stuff.
My bottom line is, that it's better than any movie I'm going to make, but not as good as it should have been.

Soon forgotten

After having gone to a party with some sort of reference to the 4th of July, I ended up feeling a little out of sorts. Mostly because I've known more than half of the people there for thirty years, but have either never spoken to or have shared only a few minutes with most of them.
There are annual or semi annual friends and acquaintances sure, but when I thought about how I'd taken to a musical interest, and went to shows relentlessly for years, as in three a week sometimes more, yet rarely or never connected with most of the people I saw, it kind of made me, sad.
Now, that 's a feeling I must get a lot of comfort from, or I wouldn't visit with it so often, but I don't know how else to experience the emotion. I guess my thoughts are there's a commonality that is obviously shared, but apparently not beyond the tunes. My expectations may be too high here and I may be expecting some silly connectedness , but it is what it is, recognizing that the fear is still there and the coping is still substance, just leaves me lachrymose .

In the cold light of mourning

Sometimes something more tragic, more painful and harder to stand, can bring balance where otherwise there was despondency.
On my birthday, the cat died, Eamon's job ended and I got a year older.
With the cat situation, in a sense, Eamon was released from his other worries and could merely focus on the task at hand. Jake, Gus and I helped him bury her in the backyard. Though solemn, we made it a ritual as many families do in the face of the loss of a pet. It's neither trite nor cheesy to demarcate the loss of a presence in your life. In fact, it's an integral part of the experience that moves us forward.