“Elegy”, the pork disaster, and other topics of random.

Well, I haven’t written anything around here for quite the while, have I?  I remember a few months ago feeling so dedicated to the idea of publishing at least one entry each day.  Right, that lasted long, didn’t it?

I have, since last I wrote, inherited a new typing device.  A Dell Laptop, lovely little black thing.  It had belonged to my Uncle.  Although I have called and said “Oh my god, quite a surprise, thank you very much!”,  I am still working on the official thank you letter.  Perhaps I’ll have to dedicate some of this Sunday afternoon to completing that and preparing it for the mail.  Yes.  I should, I did after all buy a new pen and some lovely stationary expressly for that purpose.  It is lovely to have a typing tool of my own, again.  It allows me to blog–as you see I am doing–while my beloved one is adding photographs to her sister’s ancestry website, in the chair next to me. 

Truth be told, it was never as annoying as I perhaps made it out to be to have to share the computer.  But it is very nice to have this lovely little lap-dwelling Dell.

Also, since last writing, I’ve found a new little coffee shop I love…  I’m not going to tell you what it’s called because I don’t want anyone to read about it, and for it to suddenly become popular, making it more difficult for me to find a table…  It is, however, near my Beloved one’s work.  I can drag my typing tool in there, and hammer at the keys while I wait for her to appear from beyond the dark doors of the modeling agency, at the end of the day.

I did apply for a second job, selling subscription packages and some light fundraising for Portland Opera, much like I did for Oregon Symphony.  Alas, I applied too late, someone nabbed it before me.  I did, however, receive a very sweet, very encouraging rejection letter.  I sent a ‘feeler’ email off to the local classical radio station, (89.9) inquiring about any positions, with particular curiosity about what is required to become a program host at some point in the future. . .  The program director wrote back a very helpful and supportive email, but of course, nothing will be happening at any point in the very near future. 

In spite of my absence on my blog, I have been able to devote a bit more time to non-blog-writing.  My novel is coming along nicely, although it’s changed titles and now begins in a different way.  Perhaps when I finish it, (if I finish it) it will be called something else, and begin in yet another way I don’t know anything about, as of yet.  Who knows, who knows, who knows.  I certainly don’t know.  Someone should tell me what I’m doing.  (Not that I’d listen, of course.)

Speaking of books and such: I haven’t read The Dying Animal, by Phillip Roth, but I did see the film loosely based upon it, called Elegy last night. 

ELEGY features Sir Ben Kingsley, and Penelope Cruz

I missed the first third of the film entirely, I was busy creating a dinner which no one (including myself) really ended up enjoying.  (Perhaps I’ll come back to that later.  Sometimes recipes make perfect sense in your mind as you walk through the shop, picking up herbs and vegetables and cuts of meat and bread and so on.  Then you get home and you put it all together the way you told yourself you would and it’s…hmm.  “Missed the mark there.  Why did I spend $30 to make this, when I could have done what I know how to do for $15?”) 

At any rate, I’ve heard mixed things about Elegy.  I have heard that it’s an enormous disappointment, if one has already read Phillip Roth’s The Dying Animal.  However, what I saw of the film put up a fair fight for itself.  I think it–like many films–might have been regarded very highly if there had never been a novel with which it was associated.  If it just suddenly appeared in the mind of a screen writer. 

What I did find very interesting about Elegy was its ability to make me feel very uncomfortable.  Kingsley’s character, reminded me very much of the vision I used to entertain of what I’d end up being like, at fifty/sixty years old.  Having said that, while I watched what I did watch, whilst tucking into the nearly disasterous pork experiment, I really didn’t like that man!  He was not terrible, he wasn’t a villain.  He could obviously do some things well–his work, mainly.  He seemed to play a few wicked tunes on the piano, he hosted a radio talk show about books, so on, so forth.  But he was quite a lonely, cut off, deceitful, sarcastic prick! 

I suppose it was difficult for me to watch, mainly, because it pointed out (again) that it takes some of us a long, long, long time to get where we’re going.  That’s if (yes, if) we do actually ever arrive at some form of honest, well-rounded, completedness or meaning at all. 

Yes, I think we all have an image of where we’d like to go in this terribly humbling chain of events called life.  That’s pretty common place, I’d say.  And, whether or not we get there…  that’s the rub, isn’t it?

I would like to try to see the first forty-five minutes or so that I missed, but, what I was able to see was a little painful.  Witty?  Yes!  I still love Ben Kingsley.  Some beautiful images and lovely lines were sprinkled throughout what I saw of the film.  But it was a little painful, watching someone who–somehow–vaguely reminded me of myself, choose to be wretched and miserable.

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009