After disappearing just before Christmas, the "Can you spare some change?" lady is back. I haven't spotted her myself, but heard of her return through others who call her the Looney lady. This is not due to some madness of mind but rather that she apparently approaches them with the more specific "Can you spare a Looney?" pitch. As I've indicated before, this is almost certainly guaranteed to fail, but I wish her luck nonetheless. But where was she over Christmas? I heard there were good deals to Florida. If she's wearing a Mickey Mouse sweat shirt the next time I see her, I'm going to pop a gasket.
Yellow coat dude has not been spotted in over a month. Greener pastures, I guess.
* * * * *
A dozen or so years ago, my mother said she had reached the point where it seemed that every second week she was going to a funeral. Having reached her 50s, many of the parents of her friends, acquaintances and co-workers were starting to die off. Occasionally, the funeral was for a contemporary. My brother Stephen, who despite his world travels is at heart a true Cape Bretoner, always showed an interest in knowing who had passed away, while most of the names my mother would give me were vague shadows in my memory. Having left for university at 18 and with only two extended returns since, both before I was 20, I simply did not feel connected to these passings.
In recent years, the names have become more familiar as my mother bears down on 65. Her generation - the parents of my contemporaries - is now approaching the end. On New Year's Day, one of her close friends died after years of cancer taking her body away one piece at a time. I knew this woman only slightly, but it does bring a little closer to home the fact of our mortality. I used to think a lot about this, which I don't believe most people do. I've always felt that I would live a long time (my genetic line on both sides is awe-inspiring), and thus had a lot of time to screw around before getting serious about professional goals. Well, now I'm 41, and those goals don't seem any closer than they were when I was 21 but I now have 20 years less to accomplish them in. This has a lot to do with my recent recovery of focus, including enrolling in film school.
When I was young, I wanted to be a boy wonder. As that hope died, I consoled myself by rationalizing that most people don't accomplish much artistically until their 30s. Now that I am in my 40s, I look to people who reached artistic success late in life (Joseph Conrad is always the name that comes to mind). I used to think that my evolving rationalizations were just a way of avoiding the fact that I wasn't good enough to succeed in my goals. I now feel I needed that delay to understand what my goals were. I wanted to make movies when I was a boy, and drifted into other interests, such as my ongoing flirtation with the law, later in life. But film was my first love, and I am encouraged by its return to primacy. That my children are also movie lovers and think my plans are the coolest thing going helps immensely. It should certainly make it easier for all of us to stomach any time lost together while I am continuing in my current career while trying to build a new one.
My hope is to develop a project in which the girls can be involved, both for the sake of togetherness but also so they can be exposed to things that I was denied but would have loved. This is part of the rationalization that put them in dancing. Maxine danced as a child, but there was almost no parental support, either economically or emotionally, and she was never able to pursue her dreams to the limits of her abilities, whatever they may have been. She resolved to expose her children to dance, and to support them wherever this went. The result is the most time- and income-consuming endeavour of our family life outside of necessities, but rewards beyond our dreams. I hope to get the same satisfaction out of sharing my love of movies with them that Maxine gets from dance. They certainly demonstrate the same enthusiasm going in.
On my 40th birthday, I resolved that my 40s would be superior to my 30s. My 30s were years of great personal accomplishments (marriage, fatherhood) and professional advancement, but artistic stagnation. It is heartening to think that, a year and a half later, I can honestly say I'm a better father/husband and my bill-paying career is going better than ever. Here's hoping I don't screw the rest of it up.
Yellow coat dude has not been spotted in over a month. Greener pastures, I guess.
* * * * *
A dozen or so years ago, my mother said she had reached the point where it seemed that every second week she was going to a funeral. Having reached her 50s, many of the parents of her friends, acquaintances and co-workers were starting to die off. Occasionally, the funeral was for a contemporary. My brother Stephen, who despite his world travels is at heart a true Cape Bretoner, always showed an interest in knowing who had passed away, while most of the names my mother would give me were vague shadows in my memory. Having left for university at 18 and with only two extended returns since, both before I was 20, I simply did not feel connected to these passings.
In recent years, the names have become more familiar as my mother bears down on 65. Her generation - the parents of my contemporaries - is now approaching the end. On New Year's Day, one of her close friends died after years of cancer taking her body away one piece at a time. I knew this woman only slightly, but it does bring a little closer to home the fact of our mortality. I used to think a lot about this, which I don't believe most people do. I've always felt that I would live a long time (my genetic line on both sides is awe-inspiring), and thus had a lot of time to screw around before getting serious about professional goals. Well, now I'm 41, and those goals don't seem any closer than they were when I was 21 but I now have 20 years less to accomplish them in. This has a lot to do with my recent recovery of focus, including enrolling in film school.
When I was young, I wanted to be a boy wonder. As that hope died, I consoled myself by rationalizing that most people don't accomplish much artistically until their 30s. Now that I am in my 40s, I look to people who reached artistic success late in life (Joseph Conrad is always the name that comes to mind). I used to think that my evolving rationalizations were just a way of avoiding the fact that I wasn't good enough to succeed in my goals. I now feel I needed that delay to understand what my goals were. I wanted to make movies when I was a boy, and drifted into other interests, such as my ongoing flirtation with the law, later in life. But film was my first love, and I am encouraged by its return to primacy. That my children are also movie lovers and think my plans are the coolest thing going helps immensely. It should certainly make it easier for all of us to stomach any time lost together while I am continuing in my current career while trying to build a new one.
My hope is to develop a project in which the girls can be involved, both for the sake of togetherness but also so they can be exposed to things that I was denied but would have loved. This is part of the rationalization that put them in dancing. Maxine danced as a child, but there was almost no parental support, either economically or emotionally, and she was never able to pursue her dreams to the limits of her abilities, whatever they may have been. She resolved to expose her children to dance, and to support them wherever this went. The result is the most time- and income-consuming endeavour of our family life outside of necessities, but rewards beyond our dreams. I hope to get the same satisfaction out of sharing my love of movies with them that Maxine gets from dance. They certainly demonstrate the same enthusiasm going in.
On my 40th birthday, I resolved that my 40s would be superior to my 30s. My 30s were years of great personal accomplishments (marriage, fatherhood) and professional advancement, but artistic stagnation. It is heartening to think that, a year and a half later, I can honestly say I'm a better father/husband and my bill-paying career is going better than ever. Here's hoping I don't screw the rest of it up.
posted by George @ 12:25 p.m.
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