Pondering My Life Experiences and Suddenly Discovered Limitations
by Jeff Jordan
The Beginning of the Long Weekend. Each year my wife travels to New Orleans for the Memorial Day Holiday. She visits her friends Linda and Melinda. I call them the Louisiana Coven. This is not meant as an insult. Rather its a bump in the ribs with a smile and a “You know I love you all” expression.
These ladies speak on a conference call at least once a week. They each represent the leg of a stool, which will not stand if one of them is not involved. My wife needs these trips to keep her sanity. I’m a load, so are our kids and then there’s the “job”.
Just before she left, my wife resigned from her job as the Executive Director of a Museum here in Milwaukee. She had been at this job for five and one-half years. Maria took it from a pile of problems to a well-managed institution. It’s not that her board looked at it that way. I could tell you why she quit but then I might be violating some clause of her resignation agreement. Let’s just say, the trophy husband (Me) will not be required to be nice to some people that done my baby wrong.
The Wreak She should have left town with the weight of the world lifted from her shoulders, because she finally resigned her job, but there was a cloud on her horizon and It was my fault. Prior to leaving for this traditional and long-planned trip, in a perfectly logical move, my wife bought new Dodge Caravan. She buys a new car every ten years.
The move was hastened by the fact that our son called to let us know his car had died. His mother had told him not to stick any money in his car, as we would be giving him our ten-year-old Santa Fe.
In a 48 hour turn-around, we got him our car. Three days later, we picked up our new Caravan. Four days later my foot slipped off of the brake, hit the accelerator and drove the car into a brick wall. Oh yeah! I can do that kind of thing these days. This one hurt. It isn’t enough my wife, my love, wasn’t going through enough I had to shit on her dream, one of a few good things happening to her.
We were going to the airport when we had an uncomfortable conversation. It seems that most of the members of our family don’t think I can drive and she shouldn’t allow me to be doing it. It was uncomfortable for her because she knew it would hurt me and I think she anticipated I’d probably be defensive.
It was uncomfortable for me because I knew without reflection they were right. My recovery from both my ankle fusion and recent knee replacement was inhibiting my leg control (the one that controls the accelerator and brake). It may rehab sufficiently, but it’s very possible it won’t. So I’m facing the possibility of my life without the freedom to walk out the door, get in my car and go where I may.
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The Job I was recovering from a successful knee replacement surgery only to experience, for some unknown reason, a stress fracture in my patella. I had scheduled my knee surgery so I would be healthy for my job as a narrator on the Milwaukee Boat Line. After the stress fracture was diagnosed. I put on a brace and realized I would be okay. What jumped up and bit my ass is I ‘m not going to be working on the boat. For a reason or reasons still unknown to me, I wasn’t scheduled when the season opened and I couldn’t get anyone to tell me why.
I loved that job and I got enough positive feedback to know I was very good at it. I told many people it was the only job I ever had that I didn’t experience one day where I woke up and thought “Damn, I have to go to work today.” I liked the people I worked with and never really had a bad experience with the customers. And here I was, no job no explanation why.
The Breakup A couple a few weeks ago Maria told me she was having dinner with a good friend of ours. She came home a little shocked. She confided in me that our friend was separated from her husband, who is also a friend of ours.
I’ve got a lot of experience in that department. My marriage to Maria is my third. My first wife left me for good reasons and while her life since his not been fabulous she was better off getting rid of me when she did. I left my second wife for what I think were good reasons, but what was consistent in both instances was the emotional pain. There is always a pain in these experiences. as I said to our friend’s husband when I ran into him. (He seemed to be trying to avoid me until I saw him at a local market) I never look back on my divorces and laugh.
What to Do When You Five Days Off from Your Marriage Needless to say things are beginning to wash up on my mental beach and the retreating tide is leaving a lot of junk laying on the sand. I only had two things I wanted to accomplish while Maria was gone. I was going to look for some movies on Netflix. I was going to watch all kinds of fluffy, stupid, incepted, gratuitous junk that I could find. I didn’t want to drive. I didn’t want to think of divorces. I didn’t want to ponder the reasons I wasn’t on the boat. I didn’t want to muse about life without a driver’s license or one that I could use besides as a photo ID. I sure as hell didn’t want to look at the front of our Dodge Caravan
After I dropped Maria off at the airport. I called my friend Anne and asked her to meet me for coffee. She couldn’t do that, but we agreed to go to a film on Saturday. The conversation we had that evening would result in what your reading now, but that comes later.
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And There Was Great Movement Throughout The Land It seems my wife bought some furniture. It needed to move from the back of our landlord’s pickup truck and put it into a U-Haul storage unit. What does this mean? It meant, as it turned out, I had to cancel two meetings I had scheduled that day. More relevant and frightening, I had to drive.
I picked up a band of merry movers at the museum. After turning the wheel over to our friend John and picking up the truck with the furniture, checking in at the storage company and packing the stuff away, we adjured to Sobelmens’ the legendary hamburger haven and tavern in the Menominee Valley.
It has been a belief of mine for many years that if you want to get old fast hang around old people. It’s true, I have a Peter Pan problem, but aside from that, I believe in making and keeping young people as friends. It was so pleasant to sit and listen to musings about the quality of the hamburgers, methods of how to record multitrack band sessions and how nice it felt to eat outside. For a few precious moments, my worries and concerns about the future went away, but they were merely cowering in the weeds. The sun would set, darkness would fall and the moon was nowhere to be seen.
When the Universe Speaks to You Through Film Thursday evening I sat down with a meal and looked at the TV offerings. Memorial Day marks the end of most of the network shows. No more “The Following”, “Blacklist” “The Good Wife” “Elementary” or “Selfridge” To make it worse, the summer replacements won’t start for a couple of weeks.
We don’t subscribe to cable. We get our network TV from an HD antenna. We subscribe to TIVO, Netflix and Amazon Prime. I went to Netflix and immediately got lost in the independent film section. If you don’t know how this works let me tell you what happened. I selected a film on Netflix. A screen immediately pops up that says” If you like this (Your Selection), you might like...”. So I picked another and another screen pops up... Well you get the picture (Pun intended)
Haute Cuisine I should have known this was going to be a bad choice given my mental state. It opens with a young man getting off a boat in the Antarctic. He is going to replace the cook at the research station. We meet the Chef he’s replacing, Hortense Laborie. Beloved by the people at this remote and desolate place, she has brought some light to their lives with her fabulous cooking and positive attitude. Just don’t ask her about the time she spent cooking for the President of France, Francois Mitterrand.
The film, Haute Cuisine, is based on the true-life experience of Danièle Mazet- Delpeuch, who hates to be called a chef. Through a series of flashbacks, we see a
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talented and opinionated women, who took her surprise appointment as a private chef to the French President as a personal mission.
We return to the Antarctic. Why Hortense is working in this remote place, is for reasons we will not know until the end. She carries on this bleak atmosphere not as something she doesn’t want to do, but a difficult thing to accomplish with class. We see her skill and daring as she prepares her final banquet for the staff and their affection for her as they honor her with a skit and songs of their appreciation.
Flashing back to her first face to face visit with Mitterrand, Hortense learns she has been selected because he likes the simple food of his youth. She rubs the cooking establishment in the Palace the wrong way by insisting on buying from her own suppliers, setting her own menus and generally rubbing her position close to the President in their faces. They in return try to make her life as miserable as possible regardless of the fact that Mitterrand is fully satisfied with her work.
I’m trying not to think about my wife and her job at the Museum, but Hortence’s problems with the power trippers that kept getting in her way and generally screwing up the operations were certainly comparative. Like my wife, Hortense didn’t see any way out but quitting and although her real-life counterpart got the last word via this movie, my wife and her accomplishments, will gradually become memories shaped by people who don’t like her. Moral of the story, ’Don’t kiss the ring at your own peril’.
If you like cooking at a high level if you like stories where the little guy wins in the end, if you like all things French, you will like Haute Cusine. Actress Catherine Frot develops Hortense as a woman who is comfortable in a kitchen no matter the Palace de Elysee or the remote Antarctic. She knows how to cook to please people and seems equally capable of loving as well as serving. Maybe It was Hortense came out of this on top that I was able to sleep that night with hope for my wives’ future as well.
Shopping (Driving), Or Shit Happens I put together my shopping list and mentally prepared for my trip to the Eastside. Did I mention we are fostering my landlord’s collie, Watson? Watson, a rescue dog, has been with Ken for just a short time. He is such a sweetheart, but he’s not on schedule yet.
When I woke up I knew something was not right. It took a few moments in the semi-dark light of predawn to realize that Watson, despite his size, had crawled under our bed and was trying to get out but he was stuck. Before I could shake off enough of my sleepy mind and regain full consciousness to help him, Watson had extradited himself, but he had crapped on the way out. The problem is I can’t get down on my hands and knees for anything. Ken was kind enough to come over and clean up what I couldn’t reach. And my day moved on.
Besides stopping at the grocery store, I had to shop at the hardware store, Breadsmith, the coffee roaster, and office supply. Based on my recent experience, getting the car
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home and parking it in the garage wasn’t at all compared to a space mission. It was slightly more nerve-wracking than a space shot.
But here I am, home. I have “gummy bears” and whole bean coffee. They are worth every drop of fear sweat I produced. I didn't have to drive anymore that day. I made myself a nice dinner, a salad with baked chicken, fresh berries and Texas Toast Croutons. I celebrated my successes of the day with an NA beer and flicked on the TV.
Last Love, It probably should be a rule that someone in my state of mind should not attempt anything associated with the word last, but hell, it starred Michael Caine.
In this 2013 film, Caine plays a retired and widowed professor of philosophy. Living in Paris in the apartment he and his wife purchased. Professor Mathew Morgan, expatriate American, lives a quietly desperate life. Stumbling about the city trying to fit in, when in fact he speaks little French. He depended on his wife to translate for him. He demonstrates his inability to relate to is adopted city other than through his memories of his wife.
Once we are exposed to his lonely existence, he has an accidental meeting with an attractive young girl on a bus. Mathew is standing on the bus when the driver accelerates he begins to fall. Those around him ware alternatively understanding and perturbed. The young lady jumps to his aide and ends up escorting him to his home, just to make sure he was okay. Given our exposure to his previous attitude, it is notable that he accepts this somewhat demeaning assistance with grace and humility. it is apparent that the girl has charmed him and brought something to him he needed. (Spoiler: They will not bed, thankfully)
Despite, or maybe because of the girl’s appearance in his life, he proceeds with a plan to kill himself. It fails. When he awakes in the hospital, she is there. Now we have to wonder what she wants from this relationship. And it’s simple really, she needs what he needs, someone that cares. Her parents are dead. His wife has passed, and what we will soon learn, his children live in the states.
As she embraces him in his hospital bed, his son, played by Justin Kirk, arrives. He is immediately suspicious of this young girl, who is so obviously part of his father’s life. What he’ll learn is that she is doing his job, caring for his dad. Gillian Anderson plays a cameo role, as his successful and self-centered daughter. Jane Alexander appears as his wife in some tasteful and wonderful flashback scenes.
We learn much more about everyone and their motivations, but the arc of Mathew’s experience is what has meaning for me. A lonely old man who feels useless, unnecessary and carries a huge load of guilt about helping his wife die, or in my case, smashing up her new car
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Really, do I need this? You know when you’re driving the car you wouldn’t even know it’s had an accident. And hey, I know as much, if not more, Spanish than my wife. And my friend Anne is like a daughter to me and she knows that. Anyway, I slept well that night The next day, Watson shit on schedule, outside as we hoped he would learn to do. Things were looking better but even lapsed Catholics know that feelings of happiness are the sure sign that something bad is on the horizon.
Thank God Some Films are Just Fun Anne and I decide we want to see, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Being on the upper Eastside is refreshing on a cool spring evening. It was warm enough for outside dining. We run into an old friend and his family who are enjoying the sidewalk scene at Hooligans. Despite a nice dinner, my desire to buy buttered popcorn has to be controlled.
Writer-Director, Wes Anderson is probably best described as a producer of films that reflect a combination of old-time silent film and British burlesque hall humor. This story told about a fictional but legendary grand hotel and it’s equally legendary Concierge Gustave H.
Typical of Anderson there is a legion of famous guest stars, but this film belongs to Ralph Fiennes. His portal of the exasperating, calculating and charming Gustave H is breathtaking in its delivery and spellbinding effect. Gustave has secured his place in the fading glamour of the Grand Budapest Hotel by successfully seducing many of the older, wealthy female guests. When one of them dies and leaves a valuable painting to him. His good fortune is interrupted as her heirs will not stand for the results of the estate and frame him for her murder.
The adventures of Gustave H and his faithful sidekick Zero played by Tony Revolori are ridiculous and farfetched, but with his slapstick style and brilliant comic presentation Anderson pulls you into the ridiculous and you embrace it as if you found a hundred dollar bill in an old sport coat pocket. This film did not speak to my guilt and doubts. It made me laugh out loud, and if not that, smile for extended periods of time.
It was before the film that Anne and I were conversing. I shared my feelings and she said, “My God Jeff, you have to write a story”. I thought about her recommendation as I fell asleep that night. After all, I got the car home and in the garage without even being close to an accident. Why not write about this. It’s always been my way to figure things out. It is cathartic. It’s fun. I’m good at it. Sleep came slowly that night as I began to outline this essay. But that was when I thought everything for the paper was there on the mental table. All I had to do was assemble the pieces and the puzzle would reveal the picture. But there would be more.
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Night Train to Lisbon All you have to do to evoke memories of The Wizard of Oz, reputed to be the most perfect screenplay ever written. is to take a rather ordinary person and put them in a place that is unknown and frightening to them.
Walking through a rainy night in Bern Switzerland, on his way to teach a class, Professor Raimund Gregorius sees a young girl posed on the railing of a bridge preparing to leap to certain death. He saves her, but she alludes to his continued help. As she slips back out of his life, she leaves behind a red coat and, in the pocket, a book. It is not the girl that sends him down the rabbit hole, but the book.
The book was written by a young Portuguese revolutionary, during the brutal reign of the Portuguese dictator Salazar. It is not the politics that allow Raimund to go against his nature and to impulsively jump on a train and go from Bern to Lisbon in search of the author of the book. The words, the philosophy of the writer in this book that causes Raimund to start looking inside his heart, reflect on his life and look at what is left of it. After all, he is widowed, lost and striving to make sense of his life. I’m really stuck here. Aren’t I?
When he finds the home of the author, Amadeu, he finds that he died in his youth. of an undiagnosed aneurysm. He is mystified by the reaction to his inquiry by the dead writer’s, Amadeu’s, sister, Adriana. When confronted by Raimund, she does not even admit Amadeu is dead, instead, the maid tells him on the sly. Baffled but still determined to find out more about this amazing writer, Raimund moves on.
Like Dorothy in Oz, Raimund begins to pick up allies, who will explain what was happening in this strange and, in its history anyway, frightening place. Raimund’s love interest, (it was pretty obvious), appears. She is an eye doctor who replaces his broken unbecoming shell rim glasses with a modern lighter frame. The black and white Raimund is replaced by the technicolor version, and the world becomes a more colorful place.
With the help of the attractive eye doctor, he finds two of Amadeu’s cohorts in the revolution who are still alive but bearing obvious scars of their battles. Through a series of flashback scenes, we follow the history of the younger versions of these people and their experiences in the revolution including the mysterious Estefania. Estefania, she who had committed the names, addresses and phone numbers of all of the sympathizers of the revolution who were in the government and military, was a lover to one of the revolutionary members, but later took up with Amadeu creating a crisis in the movement.
This journey has everything to do with opening the eyes of our protagonist. Jeremy Irons is an accomplished actor of tremendous range and ability. In this role, he had to reach a happy balance between the lost and hapless professor and the emerging knowing and stronger man, the man Raimund became because of this experience. To say he did it beautifully is to minimize a magnificent performance.
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When he committed to this adventure, Raimund impulsively jumped on the night train to Lisbon. The conclusion occurs in the train station in Lisbon. Will he take this experience and apply them to his life in Bern or stay with the lovely eye doctor in Lisbon? The outcome may surprise you.
At Long Last, The End, or At Least a Pause And isn’t that what most of life’s better moments consist of, surprises. We get so smug about our ability to navigate life-based on our ability to predict outcomes. Then, you drive your new car into a wall, your friends announce they are separating, people who love and care for you tell you something they know you don’t want to hear and you are forced to contemplate your limitations. Or possibly like voices in your head, films force you to think about your new limitations and challenging your beliefs. It’s been a long weekend.
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