In a Chicago Hotel room. So cold. I washed my face with a scarf and a hat on. Why don’t I just go to bed? It’s all I want to do…the last beer long since bellied.
How come when I’m home I have a belly to pinch but when I’m cold there’s no fat to be found?
The way a girl plows the hair from her eyes, just the tender tips arcing a forehead road all the way to her ear, last two fingers held aloft, antenna to the delicate.
Ok. I’m finally home with my friendly bourbon, some candles lit, my laptop and a very empty house that hums. It’s not that I regret anything I did today. It isn’t that the day lacked enjoyment. But I’m so much happy to be here that I have to wonder why I didn’t get here sooner.
I came out of a screening of “Soldate Jeannette” during the Q&A but still a bit early so that my friend Jennette could have some gravity again. There were several though who left during the movie.
It’s true, the pace was challenging. It’s not true that not much happened. It is true that it took a while for it to not not happen. This wasn’t the movie we’re used to seeing.
We don’t actually wait in movies. We see signs that the movie waited but we don’t actually just wait on a lock off wide shot with the characters. This movie breathed. It waited. And while it waited, the audience left.
I don’t know what people were thinking. Maybe they were looking for steak and potatoes; maybe that’s why they left. But it’s Sundance. Independent film. Something different. You shouldn’t go to a fruit tree and curse it when you can’t find the bacon.
I appreciated those shots. One woman’s entire monologue was a beautiful wide and close shot of the back of her neck. Her pearl necklace almost bobbing with her speech. Like a leaf on a sleepy lake. It was a very almost moment, a not-quite moment, a moment without grip on it that gripped you and held you mid-jump.
There was a scene at night in the forest. A woman enters and closes her tent. She finds her place with her flashlight. The camera is outside, just sitting there, blank and un-opinionated. You see a light move around and then go out. It was absolute black. There was no “moon light.” No blue edge. It was beautiful. It was frank.
Probably the most pivotal arc of the story, the 3rd act or 4th act transformation, the moment between the springboard and the foam pad is told in song while the cows make their way up a hill. The camera is fixed to its spot. The scene was maybe four minutes. Four minutes of a bunch of cows coming up a hill while the brass section and the singer had a call and response. It was beautiful.
Then I stepped outside.
Outside from this inside of trolling cows to the worst outside street long college frat party dense with almost-dead cell phones, furs and a swirly-eyed-looking for the next swag, the next party. Thumpy candy music, high heeled sparkle boots, blonde hair, frantic drunk people trying to fill up the small sidewalks and push out the empty spaces. And smokers, so many smokers. It’s amazing that people still do that.
So and but for now, it’s nice to be home.
Sitting here in Sundance, the sun on my shoulders, watching the people walk toward me, all lit up by the brightness behind me. There’s so much air here. I burned some of it up last night with these dry logs I found. Tried to wet it all down by drinking me some bourbon. Not so much wrong with that.
I’ve never had a crazier airline month than this one. If you’re wondering whether spending an hour here or there on the phone with Expedia to change flights is a good idea I can tell you there are better ideas. Like eating chalk. That’s a better idea.
My dad passed away a few days ago. He had a bracelet on that said DNR. There was a second bracelet that indicated he was at high risk for falling. A third bracelet belonged him to the hospital.
In his living will he laid out a plan for not planning to strive on waking him up in any extreme fashion. I tell you, there’s the Bruce Willis version of DNR, some action adventure big bold and obvious scene, Captain Pike machines at the ready, and then there’s the real version which is much more grey and difficult to wade through.
If you have to decide on killing your dad, or at least on telling all the experts to stop trying to fix him you better have a strong stomach or at least get a red phone to God so you’s can know for certain he really wouldn’t come back, because pretending you know for certain at something in the morning is not something you will ever be ready for.
I thought of dad’s hands tonight.
The day he died his body started changing. His feet got cold. There was some word the nurses used in reference to his blueing skin. This word crept up his arms and legs towards his heart as it raced anxiously to beat, to barely hold a lifetime’s work together. And his hands, his hands started to bloat. One of them anyway. I’m not sure why the other one didn’t but it didn’t so there.
With all that fight going on inside, it was hard to see that hand swell. Maybe he had enough fight in him after all. Maybe I was wrong. I thought about those hands tonight.
And now what’s going to happen to mom? That keeps bouncing into my head too.
I had to decide my father’s fate and now I’m in charge of the sunset of my mother’s life.
It’s not that it isn’t fair. It’s not that it’s too much for me. It’s not that I’m incapable of making this decision on my own. It’s my mom. It was my pa and I’m just not used to making decisions for them.
8 months ago I nearly begged them to let me help with their bills but they would have none of it. A few days ago I killed my dad and now I’m burying my mom. It’s not exactly the Norman Rockwell coda I was planning for.
