Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Dedicated to the Sofa I Left Behind

A couple of years ago, I received a package that we had ordered. I always separate out recyclables from packing supplies, and make certain that things like cardboard boxes and random papers avoid the trash bin. That particular package had arrived in a cardboard box with a web address printed on it that allowed you to track a re-used cardboard box. The idea was that you would be able to see all of the extended life it received through re-use, and thus how many new boxes did not need to be made. A fun concept, I thought.

Sometimes, I wish that I could watch items that are important to our lives as they progress through their existence. There are things, for example, that weave in and out of our lists of possessions that manage to carve out nostalgic slices of our memories, but that we don’t hold on to when we downsize for whatever reason.

My parents had this sofa and chair when I was a child. They had very likely purchased it when they were first married. Imagine everything that was the 70’s, and you would find it encompassed in this sofa and chair. I don’t know this for certain, but I sort of imagine that they were my parents’ “starter furniture.” A few years later, of course, better furniture was purchased, but the sofa and chair simply migrated to a different room…a “spare room,” as it was called, that switched identities on a regular basis. That sofa and chair, as I recall, stayed with that room through its incarnation as a study just after it had given up its role as a guest room.

I went to college…the furniture was still around. It was covered and altered in appearance, but still there. Soon, the sofa wasn’t so comfortable any longer, but I slept on it once while visiting.

When Karen and I met during grad school and announced our wedding, we began searching for an apartment. Until that point, my bachelor apartments had always been furnished. Now, for the first time, I was looking at the prospect of furnishing an apartment while we were both poor grad students. My parents graciously offered to supply a sofa and chair for our living room. Guess which ones they brought?

Last year, as we were packing our apartment for the move to New England, we were deciding what to sell instead of move. Downsizing, as I’ve said, is a very liberating experience. We, too, had acquired another sofa since we had received the gift of that starter furniture, and now, we decided, the starter furniture had to move on.

That sofa and chair had witnessed my childhood, and witnessed the early years of our marriage, but now had to move on to new adventures.

They didn’t stay together. The chair went to a grad student’s apartment because she had eclectic tastes in furniture. The sofa was a perfect fit for an admissions counselor’s office at a local college. They went their separate ways. Sort of sad, actually, but their adventures are continuing.

Sometimes, I wish that I could look in on them and see how they’re faring.

Silly, I know, and I’m not nearly that sentimentally attached to our furniture, don’t get me wrong. I just think that it would be interesting to personify various things…that small table, or decoration on the wall, or a bedside stand…something that has come through our lives on its way elsewhere…and see what adventures they see, hear what stories they could tell.

An Italian Restaurant and Recollections

Pandora is my friend.

I was late onto the bandwagon, mind you, but I’ve been an enthusiastic fan ever since. Almost all of the time I use Pandora, I’m re-visiting old favorites from my younger days (and let’s pretend that statement didn’t make me sound as old as it did). I like to think that I have good taste in music, because good music takes you somewhere. It helps you realize things about yourself on a good day. It can assist in epiphanies.

That’s exactly what happened recently as I was listening to a song that I had heard on Pandora, experienced the “I haven’t heard that song in forever!!!” (while still knowing all of the lyrics) reaction, purchased it soon after, and listened to it repeatedly on the commute over subsequent weeks. The song is Scenes From an Italian Restaurant by Billy Joel, and this musical masterpiece has walked me through a huge realization about myself.

The song opens with two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a very long time, agreeing to meet at their old favorite Italian restaurant. Joel tells the different parts of his story with pointed musical changes, and the tempo picks up as the old friends begin to catch up, telling each other about their lives today. The music becomes more upbeat and begins to swing into a jazzy, New Orleans style as they begin to re-count their high school days “hanging out by the village green.” The friends reminisce about their glory days as we are moved into a musical interlude, and the tempo shifts again, this time accompanying a shift in the narrative to third person as we begin to be told the story of Brenda and Eddie.

Brenda and Eddie “were the popular steadies, and the king and the queen of the prom” in this story, whose high school relationship exemplified everything that these friends thought that they could ever want in life. This couple dated through high school, knew and loved everyone, and decided after high school to get married. We’re told in the song that they were advised against it by their friends, but married any way, because they were in love. The marriage began wonderfully, until financial stress begins to tear the relationship apart…leading us to a more tumultuous rock and roll interlude.

When we come down from Joel’s great keyboard work, we find out that Brenda and Eddie divorced and gone their separate ways as friends. A sad end to the couple that had been role models for all of their friends, and who suddenly find themselves without the life that had defined them for so long. So, they attempt to go back to their old friends and lives, only to find that those lives were no longer there and that their friends had moved on. The line that gives us this is, I think, the thesis of Joel’s thought here:

“Then the king and the queen went back to the green, but you can never go back there again.”

Brenda and Eddie had to keep moving forward.

The song shifts back to its slower roots, back to the friends meeting for dinner at the Italian restaurant, remembering great days (and I’m sometimes left to wonder, are we seeing Brenda and Eddie years later?).

As I said, this song is a masterpiece of rock n’ roll storytelling.

Now, about that epiphany.

When I graduated from high school and went to college my freshman year, I did not have a wonderful experience. In fact, it was quite terrible. I couldn’t adapt to everything…and I mean everything…changing. I had worked hard to be successful in high school, academically, socially, and artistically. Now, my friends were gone, I had no connections and no respect among my peers yet, my environment was completely foreign, and I was struggling.

I visited home often during that first year, nearly every weekend. I had had friends a grade below me when I graduated high school, and I ended up hanging out with them in my home town. I remember thinking that I had difficulty letting go of high school, that I wanted to hold on to that lifestyle longer. I think that maybe I lived vicariously until those friends a year behind me graduated. Then, I had let go and could move on, but damage had been done: I had been un-focused, I had landed myself on academic probation, and I had dropped out of school altogether. It took me a semester to get myself in order again, and then I transferred to the school that would become my alma mater, graduating dean’s list most semesters. I was successful, but it was a difficult road to get there.

When Karen and I moved to the Boston area in August, I had anticipated some difficulties, but none of them were ones of emotion or of acclimating to a new environment. We were familiar with the area, were more than ready to move on from where we had been living, and had prepared and planned the move. I would be in school again for a few months, and we were shifting back into the mode of living that goes with that.

I couldn’t have anticipated the emotional roller-coaster that ran over me when we arrived. I wanted our life from two months before back again, a sudden and irrational desire. I wanted our friends back, I wanted the city in which we had lived and with which I was familiar back, I even wanted our old jobs back. I wanted our apartment back, because I found myself inexplicably attached to the memory of that place. We had, after all, brought our daughter home to that apartment for the first time, and there were emotions tied to that place that I could never have predicted.

I want to tell you that I’ve moved through this, that school is successful, and that I have learned from experience. I can’t. I think that all of those things will be the case, but for the past three months (at least), I’ve been an emotional wreck on a regular basis, clinging to anything that feels remotely familiar and pining for what is behind us. I’ve been homesick, while recognizing that where we had lived is no longer home. That’s a feeling that is very out of character for me.

At least I thought that it was, until I remembered that freshman year of college from so long ago.

At the height of my angst, I was ready to make the impulsive decision to pack up everything and move back, even though I knew that would mean starting over professionally and that re-establishing ourselves in that area, even with friends, would have proven difficult to impossible. Just as in the thesis of Joel’s song, we could never go back there again. We had moved on, and so had life. The only direction to go is forward.

So I guess that I’ve had moments in which I’ve been trapped in the past, unable to move forward. It’s done harm to me both times, and it’s been very difficult to overcome. I’m not certain why, because I usually embrace change openly. I think, though, that there’s a theology of place…that where we are is not just where we are, but has a profound implication on our spirits and lives. Sometimes its a poor fit, but we find ourselves having to work through it anyway, because moving backward is never an option.

And so, I find myself in a spot where I’m struggling…a lot…to move forward, but inching in that direction. I don’t regret our decision to move when I’m thinking rationally, because I think we are, in fact, moving forward. I’ve tripped and fallen a bit along the way, but I’m pushing through now.

And, one afternoon, years from now, perhaps I’ll be sitting in an Italian restaurant with friends from the Southeast recalling those days that we hung out together.

We all have our own scenes, and the play never, ever goes backward. Here’s to the future…

Fuzzy Predictions

Science fiction has always had that annoying way of predicting this sort of thing.

To prove my point, I need go no further than directing you to this post that I read this morning talking about computer algorithms being used to predict which parolees are most likely to re-offend once they are out of prison, and thus used to direct which parolees receive extra supervision.

Scary stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an advocate of people incarcerated for violent crimes being treated with delicacy. Nor, though, am I an advocate for anyone being stripped of their basic human dignity, and that includes those behind bars. They are still human, and I find it tragic that our system doesn’t treat them as such.

I think, in fact, that that’s the core of my problem with this: the removal of the human factor. I love technology. I love what it does for us. I’ve said before, though, that there’s a line where it stops doing things for us, and starts to make us do things for it. If the tool assumes the role of the person using the tool, where does this leave the person?

I don’t think that human behavior can be reduced and quantified into mathematical formulae. We are way, way too complex for that. Our unpredictability, in fact, is part of what makes us endearingly human.

And what really concerns me about the topic at hand is that the software’s predictions are being used in place of the human parole officer’s instincts. Those people have been doing this for a while. They develop good instincts, the same as any of us do in our respective fields. Those instincts, I would argue, are far more valuable than a computer’s prediction.

To say nothing of the fact that I would rather our country’s parolees’ re-integration into society not be supervised by computer software in lieu of a person.

Talk about recidivism…

A Review of “The Bourne Legacy”

There are a few movies that are so great that I remember where I was the first time I watched them. Those are the movies that I can quote a large portion of dialogue with when I watch them because I’ve seen them so many times. They’re just that good. You have a few pop into your mind when I say that, I’m sure.

The Bourne Identity was one of those movies. I have a fond memory of watching it with friends for the first time in a small apartment, and then again, and then again, until I finally just purchased my own copy. The following two movies in the trilogy followed a similar pattern. The plot was engaging, the films exciting, the dialogue sharp and amazing, the action sequences well choreographed (remember that car chase from the first movie?). Moreover, there was a deeper message in the story, a through-line that weaved its way across all three films and required you to see all three to truly appreciate its depth.

Call me cynical, but when three movies are of such high calibre, I’m suspect of a fourth that boasts a parallel story arc, or a completely different take on the story. This cynicism is the reaction with which I met the first trailer for the Bourne Legacy. Knowing that Ludlam’s original series has continued with some success, though, I decided I’d give it a try at some point. It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve when some family decided to watch the copy that they’d received as a gift that I finally got around to watching the film.

And I’ll foreshadow the rest of this review by saying up front that staying awake through the movie was an issue for me.

Expecting any sort of parallel to the original Bourne story arc will leave you with profound disappointment. This movie is a completely different story line that is only loosely based on the same premise, this time with yet another incarnation of the covert assassination program that produced Jason Bourne. I already took issue with the premise, because having the program killed and then secretly resurrected was believable in the first three films. Having a third spin off defies believability, even if this is supposedly one of the first versions of the program. What’s worse, this time (and I won’t tell you the name of the program’s incarnation, I’ll just say that compared to “Treadstone” or “Black Briar”, it’s very bland) the program is designed to make the operatives highly advanced, bordering on super-soldiers, by keeping them on a steady diet of medications. Aaron Cross is in need of this medication, and spends a good part of the film attempting to find it after his superiors begin killing off his fellow agents in an attempt to tie up loose ends when the Bourne debacle begins to occur.

The premise itself, then, tinkers with the original story line by assuming that Aaron Cross’ program is the first, and thus making Treadstone and Black Briar seem less believable. This is in contradiction to the title, “Legacy,” which implies something that comes after. What’s most tragic is the manner in which the director has attempted to tie this story in with the original films by cutting away to scenes from the other movies in an attempt to make you see where this film’s events take place with respect to the other three, connections which felt random and completely contrived, almost as though they were tossed in as an afterthought to pay respect to the other films. Characters from the original movies are toyed with, leaving us with a different disposition for Pamela Landy, and calling into question who was loyal to whom. Again, completely contrived attempts to tie this movie in with the rest at the expense of the character development from the other films.

The story for this film moves hopelessly slow, with long sections of poorly written dialogue punctuated by brief and violent action sequences that felt far more gratuitous and far more poorly directed than those of the other three movies. Both lead actors turn in disappointing performances, showing difficulty in finding any motivation for lengthy sequences of dialogue that inevitably fall flat.

Perhaps I’m erring in making a comparison between the Bourne Legacy and its predecessors. That’s difficult not to do, however, when the movie is a continuation of the series. It just seems a shame to attach the name of such an excellent film franchise to such a hopelessly under-performing movie. This is a film that was made purely to earn profit from the excellent craft of others by keeping a name. Even if the goal were simply to make an action or espionage film, this would have been a poor endeavor, and there’s certainly no higher message to the film, at least not that I could find.

If you’re a fan of the previous Bourne films, then I would encourage you to not watch the Bourne Legacy. You don’t want the bad taste in your mouth. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend this film for any viewers at all because, when the goal of any creative endeavor is simply to make more money at the expense of good craft, I have a hard time justifying supporting that.

Go back and (re-)watch the first three, instead.

Waking to the New Year

Last night, with a quiet dinner, family, and a glass of wine, Karen and I relaxed as children played around us and the countdown to 2013 went on. The children were in bed by 9:00, the adults were soon in front of a movie (review to come…) and someone in the house was streaming some ball-dropping-coverage from Times Square. I made it a point to at least stay up to see that, because, as I determined last year, I needed some sort of marker in order to recognize the passing of one year into the next.

Of course, by 12:15, I was sound asleep. As I’ve said before…ah, parenthood.

Last year around this time, I put up a post about my goals for 2012. I’ve made some progress on most, less on some than others. In order to keep myself in check, here are my various states of progress:

1. I am in the process of changing careers for my day job. This was partly a need for a more creative outlet, and partly the need to be in a better position to meet family obligations. I’m attending an arts school for a quick technology certification that will be finished in May, at which point I will making a living in the world of the web and all of that snazzy code-writing that happens in the background. To that end, I’ll probably be brushing up some visual aesthetics around here, and I’ll be launching a page that will direct to all of my various adventures soon, and that will ultimately be my official author site when I finish this novel.

2. Speaking of the novel. I had a spurt of progress just as winter set in, during which I completed all but the most final section. That final section lives in outline form, so that all I have to do now is actually write it, which will bring me to the completion of my rough draft. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been working on Part II for a year now, and the entire project for over two, but it’s been a learning process as I’ve never written anything this long before, and I’m discovering just how much work goes into it.

3. I haven’t read nearly as much as I like, mostly because I’m a full-time student again, and so my reading is reading for class, not so much for pleasure. My two-books monthly rhythm has digressed into one novel per semester at my current rate, but, as I said, I’ll be finished in May. Until then, my to-read list keeps piling higher with each visit to Barnes & Noble.

4. Time for family has become a priority in that it’s such a precious commodity right now. That’s kept me from doing other things, but it’s been worth it. Comparing photos of our daughter from a year ago to where she is now takes my breath and makes my mind reel in disbelief at times.

Oh, and we moved to New England. I’m finding myself sorely in need of better gear in order to deal with these winters, but it’s a nice cultural change.

So, what does 2013 hold? The career change, firstly. I’m also determined to complete this novel and at least make serious editing progress to get it into the hands of beta-readers this year. Also, there are some side projects that have presented themselves to my word-smithing brain, and I’m hoping to dive into those, as well.

I wish you, my faithful readers, the best success and the most happiness in 2013. Let’s go on some adventures together…