Garth’s World

The first time I cried in a movie was junior year in high school.  Unfortunately, I saw this movie in History class, Sergeant York.  Immediately after watching this movie, we watched Yankee Doodle Dandy, where I cried again.  Crying in school was not ideal, but luckily the lights were out and half the class was asleep.  Both were proud and patriotic movies, where I cried out of happiness (and both won their leading actors an Oscar).  The next movie I really cried in was of a similar tone, A Few Good Men.  Are you seeing the theme for my future?  I must have at the age of 17.

After all those (and a few others along the way), the movie I cried the most in was a recent one…Stranger than Fiction.  As in the other movies, this was a happy cry.  This was one of best movies I have seen in years.  It may have gotten away from the patriotic military theme, but it caught another theme for me — I watched it on the plane. 

A very smart man I work with read my blog and, in response, sent me this poem.  Thanks, sir. 

May 24, 1980
  
 
I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country that bore and nursed me.
Those who forgot me would make a city.
I have waded the steppes that saw yelling Huns in saddles, worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter, planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables, guzzled everything save dry water.
I’ve admitted the sentries’ third eye into my wet and foul dreams. Munched the bread of exile; it’s stale and warty.
Granted my lungs all sounds except the howl; switched to a whisper. Now I am forty.
What should I say about my life? That it’s long and abhors transparence.
Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelet, though, makes me vomit.
Yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx, only gratitude will be gushing from it.  

– Joseph Brodsky

I hope to write my own poem when I am 40.  Until then, this blog will be my practice and part of my gratitude.  As for transparence, there is not much more than putting my life out for you to read here.  Maybe that is one difference between 33 and 40 and is where Mr. Brodsky and I will differ…for now. 

Oversleeping. Working regularly in four or more time zones, 5 to 10 hours ahead, in less than a week leaves my internal clock contstantly askew.   Me? Afraid of heights? Old news.   Waking up possessed with the fear of God convinced that I missed a flight somewhere?  That, my friends, is fear…and one way too real in my life this year.  Doing the same thing multiple times in a night?  Exhausting. Drinking countless steins of German beer at the Hofbrau Haus in Munich until a few hours before an early morning international flight will make it a bit more than a fear.  It will quickly make oversleeping a reality — fueling the fear. 

I am conquering it along with other fears.  I just need to be careful in Munich. 

For years, I dreamt I could fly — sometimes Superman-like, other times hovering while swimming a flailing freestyle through pudding.  Mostly, my dream powers were somewhere in between. Nothing comes closer to flying in the waking world than skydiving and scuba diving.  Maybe it was my pursuit of these that stopped my flying dreams.  Were the dreams actually premonitions of my future passions and abilities? Now, I have a recurring dream that I have The Force and can summon things to me like Yoda with an X-Wing fighter.  

Do my new dreams foretell a couch potato life spent beckoning the remote control from the sofa cushions and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon from the living room mini-fridge?