Vacation

I have never been very good at vacation. I am not a planner, so any vacation that requires planning is dependent on someone else doing it and including me. I am from a big, close family and I moved from where my family is centered over twenty years ago, so most vacation time from work and holidays go to seeing them and catching up with old friends from that part of the US. I can think of very few memorable vacations.
This year is very different. My future wife and I purchased an old school in the countryside of her home country four years ago. I have never had a real vacation home before. As I wrote in previous entries, we spent a lot of time and effort this spring getting married a few times. I knew last winter that this would be a summer of transition, so I planned six weeks at the country house. This house is really a project, with a lot done, but a lot still to do. But this is the first summer that it has enough infrastructures to stay in for an extended period of time. It required a ton of work from us, family members from her family, neighbors, craftsmen and others. For the past two weekends we felt confident enough to invite friends to visit or in some cases stay with us. We hosted seven different friends and family visits or stays over the last week and a half.
We worked our butts off (really, my wife’s butt is gone) on the house. The location if the house is quite rural, so pushing nature back required me sacrificing my body to the insect world. I am pretty sure I have encephalitis and limes disease combined. My guests this weekend came back from a smoking break laughing and shared with me that the thought of a New Yorker in this countryside is hysterically funny to them. It occurred to me that I am living in a close to Green Acres world (New Yorker, Eastern European wife, Mr. Haney, Ralph and Alph, the whole woks. I am having the best vacation of my life.

Crying at Movies

I am movie fan. I like old movies (even some silent ones), new movies and everything in between. I am interested in not only the story, but the acting, directing, producing and technical aspects of film making. I buy movies on DVD and used to buy VHS because since living overseas, I do not subscribe to cable or satellite TV. With the DVD’s I watch not only the movie, but the Special Features, especially the short film on making the big film, and often re-watch the film with the directors comments. I usually then run to my computer and read whatever Wikipedia has on the movie, follow the links for the director, actors and writers. I rotate my reading with a broad variety of book types (biography, history, theology, philosophy, fiction) and a regular in the mix is movie making or movie makers. To sum it up, I am interested in movies.
Now I need to tell you that, while I can get through most of life’s events without a good cry, I cry at movies. The medium touches me. Without any real conscious knowledge of it, I am wiping my eyes somewhere in the first hour of a good movie. It has nothing to do with the plot; it is about being touched deeply, and appreciating it. That ability, the strength of that medium and the director’s execution of telling the story really are a deep pleasure for me. Tears of joy just flow. I am pretty sure this state of euphoria helps me to sleep soundly through repeat showings of a movie for visiting friends or family. I very comfortably sleep through my favorite movies during repeat performance. I can attempt to watch my favorite movies over 20 times, but I only get through it a few times before I use the film as a drug to induce a fulfilling hour or so nap. The nap and the cry are independent of each other and not mutually exclusive. I am not sure if I cry in my sleep during movies, but I do not cry in my dreams.
Last night my wife had to leave the last part of a movie we were watching together. It was a movie recommended by her son. It was a recent movie release and had won awards for its director and actors. I finished the movie (with some moist eyes, pretty under control for me) and went up stairs to see her. She was crying in bed. I asked what was wrong and she told me her son had told her the main character dies at the end and she did not want to see that. I asked why she recommended the movie and she said it was because it was supposed to be a good one, and was. She just did not want to see the character die at the end. I comforted her for 15 or 20 minutes and when I she looked ready to fall asleep, I ran to my computer to finish my movie experience.
Now I can only say that whenever I watch that movie again, I will be too scared to sleep and to be too anxious to cry. I will worry about her the entire time (assuming she is there). Empathy is not something I had ever brought to the movie couch. My life may have changed forever.