6/26/23

 Monday, June 26, 2023

In bed at 9 unable to stay awake, then awake at 1:30 unable to sleep, up at 2:02 to let Lilly out, zap a cup of coffee.  65℉, high of 70℉, cloudy, windy day ahead, maybe some rain, the wind is WNW at 11 mph, 8 to 16 mph during the day with gusts up to 27 mph.  Sunrise at 5:13, sunset at 8:35, 15+22.

To see or not to see.  The New Yorker online has a 6/23/23 review by Richard Brody of a 2001 film by Christopher Munch - "The Primal Power of “The Sleepy Time Gal”.  The review makes me think that watching the film would probably have the same effect on me as reading D. M. Thomas' novel "The White Hotel" had on me decades ago, feeling an impulse to jump off a bridge.  But, wait a minute, did I see this film many year ago?  It seems to me that I did but I'm not at all sure of it.  In any event, Brody's description of the narrative's focus on growing old, decaying, and dying comes too close to home for anyone in his 80s.  Excerpts:

 --"“The Sleepy Time Gal” is a harrowing, emotionally punishing, bleak, and bitter view of old age—its infirmities, its regrets, its disappointments, and, especially, its proximity to death."

-- "In “The Sleepy Time Gal,” the characters’ backstory is no mere filling-in of motives or explanation of behavior; it’s the embodiment of history in memory, the connection of personal experience to the societal laws and mores that determined its crucial decisions. The warping power of social norms is inextricably bound to the movie’s crucial, dreadful subject: death. . . [The film] no less horrifyingly depicts Frances’s decline from wary vigor to bedridden pain to final exhaustion. And it does something that those films don’t: it suffuses the end with regret and with rage, memory and imagination, weak vision and wild emotions. The movie’s pivotal dilemma involves Frances’s desire to take her own life—and shows her nearest and dearest finding good rational reasons, whether emotional or professional, for dissuading or preventing her from doing so. Locating universal tragedy in family melodrama, Munch dramatizes the horror of when “To be or not to be?” is a question that one can no longer answer for oneself. ♦

Gloomy Day.  The day has been gray, windy,Canadian-wildfire-smoky, and drizzly all day.  The weather coupled with my lack of sleep last night have made for a long, unproductive day..

Garbage Day success.  My Swedish Death Cleaning in the basement resulted in what seemed like a ton of trash in the Monday mornng trash cart, so much that I was worried it might be too heavy for the lift mechanism on the garage truck.  All went well