Not Stopping Now...What We Do and Why We Do It

The Visible Woman...ponders.

Pondering is that meandering kind of lazy thinking that can either give us great insights or put us in a muddle.

I was just reviewing entries in my real daily effort (with help from FFP and sometimes others): Austin, Texas Daily Photo. Because tomorrow we will display our favorite picture of 2013, as laid on in the strictures of the City Daily Photo And then I remembered that I have a busy day ahead and I haven't done an entry in this space. Which I have done for each of the prior thirty days to honor a Holidailies commitment. And it's December 31st!

Anyway...busy day. I have tennis in an hour. I'm up and dressed for it, having my coffee and getting ready to punch in an electronic reservation for tennis for Thursday at the strike of 8AM. I need to do the above review and put up a favorite from 2013 for that blog tomorrow. We have tickets for the little theater around the corner (Violet Crown) for seeing "American Hustle" at 1PM. After tennis I'd like to go to the post office and send my passport renewal stuff to the processing center priority mail. I probably have to get gas. I haven't bought gas in so long I don't remember when, but it's getting quite low. Then at 6PM we have a reservation for an early, special dinner for New Year's Eve. After which we will relax safely in our condo while people revel and fireworks explode.

So here are the things I'm pondering. What do the pictures we take and cull from the virtual stack say about us? What happens to the strangers inadvertently captured there? And what, if any, are the benefits of nostalgia? (Just sort of kidding on that last one.)

So...to have a picture for today I chose one from the small archive I have put in the cloud for saving.

This is FFP in 2005 on a very ambitious road trip we took. He has since lost weight. We drove all the way to Southern Maine with some stops. On the way home we spent two nights in Buffalo in order to visit Niagara Falls. He'd never been and I'd never been to the American side. He's standing next to the roar on the American side (I think).

For some reason I framed this picture to show a stranger, a dark-haired man crouching on the other side of the rail. I'm pretty sure he's shooting a picture but this seems dangerous. I think he might be Asian. We all walked away from the falls. And then, what? For us...we know that we moved to downtown. And we lost three more parents. And we weathered a health scare for Forrest. And we just keep getting older. The man in the red, white and blue jacket? How about him? I will never know.

I don't know why I framed the picture to include the stranger. But I'm betting he was just a bit of visual composition to me. Like the mist, the railing, my husband and the building looming (on the Canadian side?) across the way. I wonder: what the pictures the stranger took look like?

Looking back, fondly. Not nostalgia really. Not wanting to be there at that stage. Just wanting to think a bit about how it was to be there. For us. And for a stranger.

People You Know

Yes, Visible Woman is back after a long drought. I'm participating in Holidailies, a project courtesy of my friends Chip and Jette. Lots of other people are blogging daily (or some semblance thereof) for the rest of the holidays as a gift to themselves and others. So click through to the portal if you arrived at this new entry only to be bored with Visible Woman all over again.

Now onward to my first Holidaily of 2009:

This is a photo of Barbara Hammond and Colum McCann taken at Ulysses' Folk House in downtown Manhattan on June 16, 2009. I like the cigarette lighting ritual between these two friends. The point of using this picture today is just to show some interesting people to accompany this piece. These are some people I know a little. In Colum's case, I was introduced and that's it. (By Barbara.) In Barbara's case we met her at the Austin Film Festival and have corresponded and met up for some Bloomsday activities in New York, had some meals and drinks. (The picture was taken at one of the Bloomsday things at the Ulysses' place where we met Colum.)

How many people do I know? By 'know' I mean I have met them and, if we meet again, I will sort of know I know them and they might recognize me. Not celebrities or notables, local or otherwise, that would never in a million years be able to identify me. But people I am actually acquainted with and who would have at least a small possibility of knowing who I am, etc.

I doubt if Colum would remember me if we met again. Fact is I had to dig in brain and Internet to get his name right. I read this piece in the New York Times the same day I met him. He's a published author so there you go. But I'd forgotten his name's exact spelling and I haven't even read any of his books. Barbara is a playwright but we've exchanged enough e-mail and conversation that I feel like, more than that, she's a friend.

Through Barbara we met a talented niece of hers who happens to live in Austin. We had some food and drink together. We're facebook friends. I'd say I know her a little.

All these people. That one sort of 'knows.'

I have a database of contacts for mailing reference. There are 557 entries in it. I know plenty of people, some quite well, who aren't on this list because I've just never had snail mail correspondence with them or for some reason not added them to this database or had them on it and then deleted them because I lost track of their mailing address and other contact info. Then there are hundreds of contacts on my e-mail address book and some overlap with the mail database. There are facebook 'friends' (who are these people? I sometimes wonder). Based on this evidence I'd say I know a thousand people, probably two thousand counting spouses, children, dogs and hangers-on. Not that all of them could recall who I am, but most would.

Occasionally we need to canvas our 'contacts' looking for willing donors for some cause or, more often, to populate a social event. It's an interesting exercise to, for example, try to have a party for 10 people or 50. Who to choose? How many will say 'no.' How many will say 'yes' and not come? And we try to do an annual holiday mailing. When we moved in 2008, we did moving announcements. Then we have to choose who to create mailing labels for. We usually create 200-250 labels representing, I don't know, maybe 400 people.

This time of year I go through the over 500 names in the data base and adjust a column labeled 'XMAS' putting 'Y' in it or erasing it and thinking about the person or family. Who are they? How did I meet them? Are they still together? Are the kids still living at home? Did they send a card lately? And sometimes, sadly, I delete a name or an entry due to death. Or, if I don't hear from them often, I wonder...are they still alive?

At the end of the day, I think the holiday card thing is really just an attempt to come to grips with a certain group of people I know, reach out and receive the dreaded 'no forwarding address' for some and, for others, receive in turn cards, Christmas letters and who knows what. In today's world I guess it would be like writing on the wall of all your facebook 'friends' or something. Some cards go and don't come back but otherwise you have no evidence they've arrived.

My cards are out this year. There's been a certain amount of synchronicity. I was labeling one card to a relative's family when FFP came in with the mail from downstairs and there was a card from that family. I was reviewing a card address for a very recent widow when I realized FFP was speaking with her on the phone. I told someone Sunday night that I received their card and they said "I got yours! They must have crossed in the mail." I am more pleased with this than I have any right to be and my friend seemed to be, too. Makes no sense really. And I'm wondering what will replace that feeling when printed and stamped mail is well and truly obsolete.

In case you are still reading...here are some past thoughts on holiday cards and such: last year's holiday card wrap-up; a note after sending cards in 2007; a wrap-up for 2006. Anthropologists are welcome, in the future, to examine all this. There's more, too, buried in my old blogs. But it makes me tired seeking it out.

My Austin FIlm Festival, Part 5

[Photo is of the Signs at Butler Dance Education Center and our building reflected in an SUV window parked by the ballet. I'm feeling a little askew myself. I haven't driven my car, I don't think, since last Wednesday. I didn't leave the building yesterday until we walked to Long Center. It's a weird life in a way.]

The conference is over so chances to meet celebrities, hear writers talk about writing and attend script readings are fading. It's about the movies through Thursday and we only have through Wednesday because of another commitment. So...choose carefully? Or choose randomly? Of course, the latter. Based on timing and location and the blurbs in the info we chose two films that sounded like comic/dramas. A friend went along who likes one of the actors from a sit-com.

The films were at the Rollins. They threw us another curve walking over. Just twelve feet of the west pedestrian bridge on S. First was blocked. This was apparently to keep pedestrians from stumbling into concrete pourings in the dark. Only, well coming from the north you would have already done so. We had to go 150 feet back west down a steep path that is big enough for a car (and not blocked to cars so someone could easily turn down it and come to a bumpy end on the hike and bike). There we intersected the hike and bike and could go up a new (as of a week or two ago) path to intersect the ped bridge just beyond the twelve feet that were fenced off. It's making me crazy this project that never ends that inconveniences cars, yes, but especially walkers. I get this way when I haven't started my car since last Wednesday. But enough about getting to the venue.

First we saw "A Quiet Little Marriage" which was paired with a short, "Carry On." The short left one thinking about overhearing people in public and making certain assumptions. It was everything a short should be, revealing characters but leaving us with just a hint of their lives, like a short story. Then we were plunged into that quiet little marriage. Really Olive and Dax have a kind of idyllic, adult life but it turns out the world is going to put up a few more challenges for them. It was interesting seeing them work out their own little crisis, but the curves thrown at them by people around them really propelled the story. And just as the short knew when to end, so did this feature. It ended at the point that not everything is resolved but much is revealed. We queued up again to see "Shades of Ray."

The leads were handsome in the way that mixed race people often are although the male lead, Zachary Levi, is according to my friend who went with us, Jewish. The female lead, Sarah Shahi, has an Iranian father and a Latino mother apparently. One theme of the movie is how mixed race folks feel lost between cultures. The film is light-hearted and funny and brings home its messages in a package that amused throughout. Some of the minor characters weren't as believable as one might hope for, but they were accomplished actors and funny.

This last film was more relevant to the election, I think, than "W." Much has been made of Obama as a black man. But he is really more 21st century American than that. He is one of an ever growing number of Americans who count racial background in different columns and who are influenced by step family members. I think this trend constitutes hope for understanding on the one hand but I'm sure we will still find in the next few hundred years ways to hate one another by artificially adopting religions and political persuasions to separate ourselves. We have a need to fight pitched battles in groups with firm ideological differences. In a scene between the young Ray and his best friend Sal (seen later as his goofy roommate, well-played if a little over the top by Franz Kranz), Ray asks if Sal sees him as brown or white. The answer is something like "you're just Ray."

The film festival winds down. We will probably catch Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Synecdoche, New York" tonight. I mean is has Hoffman in it, its directed by Charlie Kaufman and its title is a pun. [By the way, I went to my dictionary site to look it up and, coincidence coming, it was the word of the day. I have a friend who would imbue such a thing with lots of meaning. I told FFP and we said "Call Bob!"]