Finsternis

Durch den Spiegel

This past weekend we travelled to Atlanta to take Brittan home, as she's decided her home is with Alora until she gets into grad school in the spring. This agenda was somewhat supplanted by Colleen, Cara's sister who is going through a rough patch in her life. I've been talking to Colleen a lot lately, commisserating about jobhunting, relationships, worldviews, politics and other things. I've really felt like she's been on the same wavelength with a lot of things. I have a very short time horizon right now. This is partially a function of my underemployment and partially from hedonistic activities occupying my free time.

I'm in the best shape of my life, running 5Ks nearly every weekend and trail runs with friends. I'm doing yoga several times a week. I've been painting. My mind is focused on my physical being and I have truly been existing in the present.

Being present and carpe diem - two sides of the same coin.

Seeing Colleen Sunday I saw myself. Cara, Aunt Cindy, Ray and others in their family were worried about her and pushed Cara to lead the charge to help her. Cara, who has been refusing to speak to her sister. Cara, who is struggling with grad school, being a mother, and a wife. Cara, who like her mother and grandfather, takes on projects of helping people in times of stress.

I've been talking to Colleen a lot lately and I did not see anything wrong. That level of angst, struggle, darkness punctuated by the rare overwhelming joy characterizes life, right? Seeing Colleen Sunday was different than talking to her online or on the phone; I could how much life's abuses had broken her. You can only be kicked down so many times by life; the psyche can only handle so much trama. Listening to Cara talk to Colleen I was transported and had to remind myself that she wasn't talking to me.

Mit Wut und Schmerz

Sunday morning before all this I woke per usual with the sun and began my typical non-running day situps. Maxwell heckled me with something like "training there, Bruce?" To say that the Batman myth is a central metaphor to our father-son dialogue, is, well, fairly accurate. I told him about how men are physical beings and how we cannot ignore that part of our reality and he joined me on the floor to talk and parrot my exercises. Situps, stretches, yoga. Zara woke up and joined us to try clapping pushups. Great things can happen just by being present with your children. After everyone else got up and we enjoyed some light conversation, Maxwell, Zara and I headed to the pool.

Music. Music is another way I've been embracing my physicality with my now so abundant free time. The music of Johnny Cash has been a recurrent theme in my corpus of performance throughout my thirties. The darkness of the real; the pain in fairness and unfairness; the hurt...

Wolverine was one of my favorite comic books growing up and when he first appeared on the big screen years ago I was over the moon about it. To see his story weaved through the movies year after year has been a cinema highlight, and the mash up in this trailer is too beautiful for words. Mimi, Alora and Brittan's friend from Mary Baldwin who's now going to GA Tech for grad school, when I told her about it summed it up as the perfect movie for someone going through a mid-life crisis. That stung with more than a bit of truth; Colleen has said similar.

The kids, who share my love for this superhero, have heard me slip into "Hurt" more than once over the past week since the trailer came out. I was mostly playing scales in the background as we all sat there talking in Alora's apartment, but when I slipped into "Hurt" Zara started singing.