January 15, 1999

Shakespeare In Love

Go see it. It's really funny and really cool and totally Tom Stoppard. I loved it. Kathy, my sister, really, really loved it, and I talked with her last night, on the phone, for a whole hour about it and about how both of us died laughing at twice as many things as the rest of the audience. But it was fun to think about and mull over. Love and life and times out of the realm of reality.

It's a very keen movie, clever, period accurate on the most part, and the portrayal of the theater of the times was very keen and as close as I've ever seen to what folks say it should have been. Lots of color, lots of acting as from a stage, in broad strokes rather than the fine things necessary on the big screen. It was really fun. Go see it.

It made me think a lot.

Sometimes sanity is overvalued. Stability and drowning in all the little decisions of everyday seems to have returned me my sanity. Given me a steady stream of small happinesses and little discontents that I can usually figure out or get over without even stretching. Sometimes I feel like I've made myself sane by saying 'I'm only human' just a few too many times, accepting way too much of my capacity for failure rather than angsting about my unused capacity for creation and for success. Angsting isn't right either, maybe a better word is being an ego-maniac or more self-assured or... perhaps just delusionally convinced of my capabilities and going with the delusion. To carry all with nothing more than will, especially not something as mundane as worrying about how to pay the bills or what will I live on when I retire. Or something.

Everyday... every single day I see hundreds if not thousands of people. People in grocery stores, on the streets, on the freeways. Thousands and thousands of people. All faceless, nameless, unknown, unknowing. How many would ever stand out? How many count? What does counting mean? Will any of them be remembered by me? Likely not.

What makes any of us greater or lesser? Remembered or forgotten? Is it how we touch other lives? Or is it something entirely orthogonal to any value system? I wonder that kind of stuff every time I wander through a grocery store, mall, or crowd. Weird stuff to constantly have on ones brain, but what makes us step out of the everyday into myth? What takes away the Death by Daily Concerns, drip-drop-drip, and pulls us into something that can be distilled into the essence of what it is to be human? Love and death, hope and hopelessness, despair and triumph, the spiritual essence of what it might be to be human. That seems to be what the stage is for, what books are for, what entertainment is for, to give everyone something of what it might like to live a more vivid life. Ones free or at least not caring of the everyday. I mean, there are reasons the original Enterprise had no bathrooms.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be if I'd followed up on different strengths. The painting/artist capabilities, or the steel-trap mind with an ability to distinguish and observe what most people miss, or the ability to listen and figure out what it is that someone else really means, or the snap-fast reflexes, perfectionist's aim, and love of driving faster than most people think. Rather than the happily married life of a stodgy sort of engineering type. Where would I be? What would I have done? Where would I go? I dunno. Is any of that realistic or am I just Walter Mitty, dreaming of what never really could be? Delusional rather than faithful?

But sometimes it's good to just dream and maybe capture something of that question of choice.

And when is a delusion not a delusion? When someone makes it real. Like Will Shakespeare taking his love, his ephemeral emotionals, and making a play from it that would echo in all young lovers for centuries after. Now that is real.

<grin> Yes. Real. Eventhough it's 'just' a movie, one where we have absolutely no assurance, whatsoever that any of it happened in the assigned and supposed space of the timestream of this universe. That's the real lesson, I think.

Had problems sleeping last night, mostly because of the things going on in my head. Eventhough my cold wasn't going away and seems to be getting a hold on my lungs again, I did take Fezzik outside for a walk, and it was like all the other nights, where the day was soggy, drippy mess, and when I finally got out it was dry and the sky had stars in it, in part, the other part was grey-white with clouds. Eventually got to sleep. Woke up in the morning with a pretty severe nose bleed, got it under control, but it left me a bit light-headed. Ah, the memories of youth. I was a sickly youth, with thick glasses and constant asthma and nose-bleeds and I seem to be reverting at the present time.

No more Soccer Angel Liralen to be seen. My insurance changed again, so I'm back to square one with my brace. Which has discouraged me sufficiently that I'm just giving up on it until this cold is cleared out. Which is likely the wrong way to go about this, as it's likely going to take at least that long for them to order the thing.

Took a long, slow shower and then eventually got my head clear again. Cleaned up the last bits of flotsam in the house, set out money for the House Cleaning Fairy and then took Fezzik outside. He really didn't want to go, but I didn't want the housecleaners to have to work around him, so I got him up with a Milkbone and he was stiff and creaking and his rear, left ankle wasn't working too well. So I let him stretch a bit, fed him his aspirin with some lox and eventually watched him hobble out to the run. I made sure he didn't fall off of anything. He got there safely enough.

I wandered off to Victor's and talked with Cathie a while about Boulder, and got a caramel latte from Victor, and then went to work for a bit. Talked with Mark really happily for a while, about what it is to pick something to bits and find that the magically whole is no longer to hand, that all one has left, afterwards, are the bits that it was picked to. Realized that some of my regret has been in making Mark human, fallible, failed. There's this line in the movie where Will and Viola say that now the other will never fade, grow old, nor will they ever lose the other to death... and I think I deliberately faded Mark to turn down the intensity. Though I'll admit that if I hadn't, I'd be even more burnt out than I am now. Sanity and intensity, how to balance obsession with reality?

For I must have both.

Sometimes I'm afraid that Cera was right, that the obsession I have with people, the ability to fall totally and completely into infatuation with a person is the same thing that I need to create with. To be utterly infatuated with something to the point where I will ignore my body, ignore my health, ignore reality to build it, give it the energy to grow and exist... Or, perhaps, I should be so lucky as to find a more realistic and less damaging way than before. I realize that the height of my writing on the Net was either when I was a graduate student with no local friends and nothing but work and school and Usenet to keep me company or when I had work that I hated and a husband who was never home because of his work. I would really hate to have to be in those kinds of situations in order to really write, but there may be some necessity for escape for me to do that kind of thing again.

Course, Mark pointed out that I was happily obsessed with quite a few things, lately, like noodles, knitting, spinning again, bath fizzies, Fezzik, cooking, and all kinds of other stuff. So to pronounce a doom like that is kinda silly. Probably I'm just fishing for excuses for why I'm not writing when the reality is simply that I'm not writing fiction.

Took off from work around 10:20 am to get to SeaTac by 11, and managed to actually find a parking spot in the pay lot without too much trouble. That was very nice indeed. Got to the gate at exactly the time the plane was supposed to arrive with Trip and Chrisber; but the plane was late. So I took the time for a bathroom break and the moment I came out, the first people had started coming up the runway. That was cool. Chrisber has given me the seat numbers they were assigned, so I knew they were in row 20, and with about six people in a row, I started counting heads, and at about 120, I started to expect to see them. They were about three people back from that 120 estimate, which amused me no end.

We talked happily on the way out and they hauled their carry on's with and we went out to the Passat, which they hadn't seen before. The trunk opened up and they recognized *that* from Bryant's Jetta. The enormous trunk. I explained that the Passat was pretty much the Jetta with just a bit more room, and they admired the fact that it wasn't even four-wheel drive! But it was diesel, which satisfied them well enough.

Bai Tong was well open, so we went in and ordered fairly quickly and the food came really fast. That was really cool. My cold is still bad enough that I really, really wanted soup, and they generously gave me the last of it when we were done with first helpings. Mmm... soothed my throat and lungs pretty well. Phad Thai and beef Masaman with plenty of spice later and my nose and sinuses were pretty clear as well. That was very cool. Then the two of them ganged up on me and instead of my paying for lunch, they did. Thank you, Trip and Chrisber!! They said that it was in thanks for saving them from Airport Hell, so I finally had to accept. That was cool of them. Very.

Trip was having problem with an ear, so after lunch, we went and found a pharmacy that carried what he needed. We wandered about there, a little bit, looking for something more entertaining than the airport terminals, but eventually ran out of stuff. So I dropped them off back at the Alaska ticketing counter, and then went back to work.

Inhaler and mint tea later, I was mostly okay and capable of making a report on the meeting we had, yesterday, with users. I had notes, but I also filled in some of the conclusions I'd had, which filled it out pretty well. Bob liked it, that was cool. Also realized three whole new branches of development I have to do to finish the 'small thing' I'd started nearly a month ago, now.

I am going to be *so* glad to have other resources.

John is making his way home tonight, himself. Dan is likely going to give him a ride home, in part so that he can taste John's new brew, it's a Holiday brew, with spices, nearly mulled ale, but the spices and things went in with the malt, rather than the ale being reheated with the spices. So it still has all its fizz as well as the lacings of ginger, cardamom, and clove. Sweeter than some of John's beers, it's also as light as an ale, and nice.

Anyway, it'll be good to have John back again.

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