2/20/23

Monday, February 20, 2023

In bed at 10, after watching 2 episodes of C. B. Strike, up at 7, wondering how I slept so long.  26℉, cloudy, high of 37℉, and wind is currently at 3 mph from NNW, 2 to 18 mph today with gusts up to 31mph, wind chill at 25, 22 to 29℉ today.  Sunrose at 6:42, before I did, sunset at 5:29, 10+46.

First Reformed.  I  watched this Ethan Hawke, and Amanda Seyfried film written and directed by Paul Schrader yesterday.  My memory is so poor I do not recall whether I had seen it before, or perhaps had seen it before and turned it off before its conclusion.  In any event, I was struck, for obvious reasons, by Hawkes' (Rev. Ernst Toller) opening lines: "I have decided to keep a journal.  Not in a word program or a digital file but in longhand, writing every word out so that every inflection of penmanship, every word chosen, scratched out, revised, is recorded.  To set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day factually and without hiding anything.  When writing about oneself, one should show no mercy.  I will keep this diary for one year, 12 months.  And at the end of that time, it will be destroyed.  Shredded, then burnt.  The experiment will be over.  These thoughts and recollections are not so different from those I confide to God every morning.  When it is possible.  When he is listening.  This journal is a form of speaking, of communication from one to the other.  A communication which can be achieved simply and in repose without prostration or abnegation.  It is a form of prayer. . . . 12 months.  Can I keep up an exercise that long?  When I read these words I see not truth but pride.  I wish I had not used the word pride but I cannot cross it out.  If only I could pray."

Some thoughts: (1) The only other Schrader film I have seen is Taxi Driver, for which he wrote the screenplay and Scorsese directed.  He was raised in a Calvinist Dutch Reformed household and attended Calvin College where he majored in philosophy and minored in theology.  Not exactly a light-hearted guy. (2) This is not an easy movie to watch or to grasp.  The theme of despair is easy enough to understand as is Toller's attraction to Mary, the widow of the suicide he counseled.  The way the plot unfolds just seems awfully strained, especially Mary's inviting Toller to play 'magical mystery tour' on the floor and the self-flagellation followed by passionate kissing.  I must be too conditioned, too constrained to get into 'resonance' with films like this.  (3) The opening lines about keeping a daily journal were written simply to provide a narrative vehicle or structure for the film, a way to let the viewer into the head of Ernst Toller via journal entries.  The lines did make me think however of my own journaling, why I do it, what's the point.  I have thought for some time that I seem to have a need to write, more of a need to write than to speak or converse.  Is that introversion or some form of it?  And I've known for some time that the journal is a substitute, a poor substitute for my morning text conversations with Kitty.  Even when she was unable to talk back with me, I kept sending her my morning thoughts.  I even kept doing it for days after she died.  Every now and then I post a fairly long entry on FaceBook, something that is more thought out than most entries.  Why?  I often wonder whether my FB 'friends think of me as an old crank, especially when I post entries about war, my Dad, PTSD and its effects on families, etc., as I did just yesterday.  Ditto my posts about racism, fascism, police brutality, etc.  Why bother?  What's the point? Am I just ranting, like Paul Belling or Sean Hannity?  Showing off my liberal bona fides?  Showing off an ability to write?  I have learned the truth of Flannery O'Connor's insight: “...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again. . . "  I discovered this in 2 ways.  The first was dealing with law students who occasionally would tell me that they understood some concept but just couldn't get it down in words.  I would respond that if you can't express it, you don't understand it.  The second was in writing my memoir, during which I often experienced how hard it was to express a thought accurately, honestly, how to say enough and not too much.  I also learned how writing about 'stuff' stimulated so many memories, so many thoughts related to what is written but not included in the writing.  Maybe I keep the journal mainly to persuade myself that I still have some 'executive function' and cognitive ability left in my 80s, not what I used to have but some.  I don't know why I sit every day with my laptop and pound out journal entries that will never be read by anyone but me.  What's the point?  Maybe there is no point.  Some people need to talk, some people need to write.  For that matter, why in the world have I spent so much time throashing around with paints and brushes when I have so little skill at drawing, composition, color mixing, color theory, etc.  Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.  

To stay healthy in old age, research finds building muscles is key  From this morning's papers: Independent living requires the ability to perform the activities of daily life — bathing or showering, dressing, getting in and out of bed or a chair, walking, using the toilet and eating.  Doing these things takes four physical attributes: cardiorespiratory fitness (how well the cardiovascular system and breathing apparatus supply oxygen during physical exertion); muscle strength and power; flexibility; and dynamic balance, meaning the ability to remain stable while moving. . . Biological aging takes a toll on each of these.  Cardiovascular fitness — the ability of heart and blood vessels to distribute and use oxygen during exertion — declines throughout adulthood as our circulatory capacity decreases. That decline speeds considerably late in life. Over 70, cardiovascular fitness falls by more than 21 percent per decade — and that’s for healthy people. Prolonged inactivity and common chronic conditions such as heart failure, diabetes and obesity make the situation worse. It is common for octogenarians to have cardiovascular function so low that it plays a part in preventing them from performing basic activities such as vacuuming and cooking.  Dynamic balance, essential for walking, stair-climbing and avoiding falls, declines also, thanks to deterioration of the musculoskeletal system and of neurologic function. And muscle mass decreases by about 3 to 8 percent per decade after 30, with decline accelerating after 60. That often reduces both muscular strength — the ability of muscles to exert force, allowing us to lift objects — and muscular power, the ability to do work quickly, which we need to climb stairs. The more immobile you are, the faster this wasting can proceed.  This muscle loss, known as sarcopenia, is why walking, one of the most popular forms of exercise, may not be enough to keep us operating independently.