Traveling and Funerals

Let's get one thing straight: all you deceitful people out there are making it tough for honest people (here, read: Me) trying to make the most out of compassionate people; or, you large corporations are compassion-less jerks that deserve to have something horrible happen to you so that you can see how expensive and complicated it can be to travel at a moment's notice.

This morning I woke to find that, after 90 amazing years, my Grandmother passed away. I was faced with a choice: travel home for the funeral, having only been in Aberystwyth for a week; or, stay in Aberystwyth. It really didn't take long to make that decision: go home. My Grandma was one of the most important people in my life, and nothing short of a personal goodbye would let me sleep comfortably. If nothing else, I owe her for reading this blog so steadily.

After a quick pow-wow with my Mom, I went right to the United website to book a flight. I wanted to book a Compassion Fare, since this was not a whimsical trip. Having flown United previously (see earlier blogs), I knew that a roundtrip ticket to Chicago should cost a certain amount. When I logged in to see that price was more than DOUBLE what I had paid not even two months ago (because the time between my flight and my booking was less than a day), I was livid. With the number of empty seats on the last flight, you would think that United would be keen to sell a Sunday flight. The prices on the screen were certainly prohibitive against last-minute travel.

So I tried to call someone to ask if I could get a better price, considering the circumstances. The United International Customer Service line is nothing short of the most annoying thing on the planet. There are no number options, and the interface is entirely audible. After navigating through the menus, I was told to say "Customer Relations" for customer relations. When I did so, I was told to go back to the website to leave a comment or complaint, and that was that. No option to talk to a person. So I tried to book a flight, thinking that certainly would drop me at a booking agent. Evidently not. An automated service offered to book me a return flight for $500, and I got excited. I went back to the website to book that flight and could not find it. This seemed odd to me, but I figured I would call again. After again going through all the menus ("Reservations"..."No"..."No"....etc.), I got to the automated booking agent and tried to get that $500 ticket price. Nothing doing. Evidently it was a phantom price.

By this point I was getting quite frustrated, and was cutting that automated machine short so that I could get through this process faster. The machine kept getting my responses confused until I was eventually transferred to a real person. This person quoted me a price at $300 more than the internet, which I guess was a booking fee. I told him that I was needed to get back for a funeral, and he said the most he could save me was %10.

Again, I wonder why the ticket is so much more now. I get that last minute purchases generally tend to cost more because the company is capitolizing off of the desperateness of people who fail to plan. But I didn't plan for my Grandma to die, and I felt pretty annoyed that United was trying to capitalize off my grief-driven need to get home.

I hung up and started looking for a cheap fare through the discount sites. After all, according to the commercials, these sites are making money off the desperate need of airlines to sell their seats. None of these sites were offering anything much better. I found a Swiss Air flight with a lay-over in Zurich for just about double what I paid for a direct flight to Chicago a month previous.

This flight is going to leave tomorrow at 8:40 AM for Zurich. This means that I needed a hotel room for night, as no trains get to Birmingham by 7:00 AM at the latest (the first train would get to the airport just as the flight was leaving). That's another 45 GBP at the cheapest hotel around the airport (which does allow me to walk, but still...). Here again, the hotel knows that I need this, so they know they can charge what they need to: 45 for the room, 5 for breakfast, 3 for this WiFi usage. Everything has a price tag. I haven't checked the shower yet, but if it was coin operated, I wouldn't be surprised.

All in all, I find this to be very annoying. It might be that my emotions are rubbed raw by the loss of a very important family member, or that I am really starting to turn into the dirty-hippie that I always and openly mock, but I am starting to wonder about this whole capitalism thing. It might be better to base our monetary interactions on compassion for our fellow man, and not the Almighty Dollar. That would require all of us to be a little more honest with one another, but really that can't hurt in the end.

Back At It

On my trip from London to America, I had a pretty horrible plane trip: 1) I was seated next to an entire clan of screaming children from Saudi Arabia; 2) the video screens were out; 3) I finished my book and didn't have another one with me; and 4) my iPod died, taking with it my movies and music. Suffice it to say, it was not the most pleasant way to go back home.

That said, I would certainly live through it again for all the added benefits it gave my return trip home.

When we were getting off the plane, the staff handed out tickets that were redeemable for either 10% of my next flight to America, or $150 off an US flight. Since I won't be home for some time, neither option was really awesome. I emailed the nice people at United Airways and was immediately upgraded to Economy Plus. It wouldn't seem like the added leg room would be all that necessary, but once seated, it was amazing.

I arrived at O'Hare at seven, and after being grilled by the airport staff as to why I was flying to the UK with no return trip booked, I queued up in the security line behind a group of Chinese nationals - teenage Chinese nationals who, evidently, have not ever flown. It took the lot of them a good fifteen minutes to get ready for the security check: forgetting to take off their shoes; forgetting to take off their pullover sweatshirts; trying to cram their bags into the metal detector bins; carrying massive piles of metal on their person; etc. etc. All of this raised, obviously, certain suspicions among the Homeland Security Staff, and most of their bags needed to be checked by hand.

While all of this was going on, a new lane opened up, and I was faced with a dilemma that faces anyone who goes grocery shopping a lot: to leave my lane or stay where I was. I figured, by the time one of these Chinese struggled with the security measures most people are familiar with that the rest would breeze through. Figuring that, I stayed in my lane. I found out quite quickly, though, that I had bet on the wrong pony. Each and every one of these Chinese students needed to be reminded that no, in fact, they could not wear their shoes; and no, actually, they did need to take off their coats. But I had made my choice, and if I had abandoned this line for the new one, I can only imagine how quickly the students would have shuffled through security, smiling and waving with the Homeland Security staff, as opposed to exchanging tense glances.

I made it to the gate, and noted that I was in the fourth seating section. This, I have found, is beneficial. When I am seated early, I spend the entire time wondering who will be seated next to me. Getting excited when the single, supermodel-like women walk by, and cringing with fear when the tired family with eight toddlers gets near. In the fourth seating area, I am the last to be seated, and can only accept what is given to me, rather than get disappointed by the inevitably sizeable person that squeezes in next to me.

The Economy Plus section is in the front economy cabin, and the seats are demarcated with a sky blue head rest cover. I found my seat quickly, and to my surprise there was no one else in the row. How can this be, I thought to myself, are the people who are supposed to sit next to me in the bathroom? Are they all children loading themselves up on free snacks in the breakroom? As the remainder of the passengers filed on, it became less and less likely that I was going to get any neighbors. When they sealed the doors and I was still alone, I was shocked: an entire row to myself. I shifted my carry-0n to the space under the seat next to me and enjoyed the extra leg room it provided. This is going to be sweet!

Once we had taken off, I thought about reclining my seat. This is always a delicate procedure. In economy, when you lean the seat back, the video screen becomes unclear, your seat back is forced into the face of the passenger behind you, and the space on the tray-table becomes limited. Some people don't care, but I know how horrible it is to have that happen, so I tried to get a good look behind me. To my surprise, that seat - the whole row, save one seat - was empty. The woman behind me, being a more seasoned traveler, used to being alone in a row, had turned her three seats into a bed of sorts, and had sprawled out comfortably.

I leaned the seat back to maximum recline.

Over the course of the flight, I eventually built a fort of pillows and blankets, stretching out in my opulence, secretly loving the envy of the passengers crammed in the back with the less leg room and filled rows. Despite this comfort, I was not able to get much sleep. I arrived, groggy and tired at Heathrow.

From there, I needed to take the Picadilly Line to the Leicester Square, and transfer to the Northern Line and exit at Euston St. As I came down the stairs at Heathrow, after walking what seemed like a mile to get there, the train pulled up to the station, and I was on my way. This might not seem like much, but it turned out to be quite advantageous.

It's a long ride from Heathrow, in Zone 6, to Leicester Square, in Zone 1. 19 stops to be precise. Unlike previous trips, though, I had arrive around noon, and the tube was relatively free of other passengers. Because I caught the tube train I did, I arrived at Euston at 12:40. The train to Aberystwyth left at 12:43. This was amazing luck, as the next train out towards Aberystwyth wouldn't leave for another hour, and it has considerably more stops. I hustled to the train and found a seat just as the train was about to depart.

After the short ride to Birmingham International, I made the switch from the Virgin Trains to the Arriva Trains, and took off for Aberystwyth. A word of warning to those traveling from London to Aberystwyth: always...ALWAYS...change at Birmingham International. There is a stop at Birmingham - New St., but there are always going to be more people there. I managed to get a pretty nice seat, and secure a spot for my bag. Something that might not have been possible had I waited.

I made it to Aberystwyth around 6:00 PM BST. I had woken up the previous day at 8:00 AM CST (or 2:00 PM BST). Which means I had not slept for some 30 hours. I felt gross, tired and hungry. But I was happy to be back.

The Great American Road Trip

When I talk to my friends in Aberystwyth about America, some conversations turn to the enormity of this country. 3,500 miles stretch from the northwestern tip of Washington state to the southeastern edge of Florida (and 3,400 from Maine to California). To put this in perspective, there are 3700 miles between Aberystwyth and Chicago. There are only 2,600 miles from Cadiz in southwestern Spain, to Utsjoki in northwestern Finland (at least according to distancefromto.net). In short, America at it's widest is 1,000 miles wider than all of Europe. [For more on scale, read an older post of mine.]

Because of this, and the impressive American highway system that connects the 48 lower states, America has developed a culture of car travel. Though there is a decent rail system and a network of airports in most major cities, Americans have a soft spot for the car trip, particularly when settling in a new place. This was the case on New Year's Eve, when my brother's girlfriend moved from Smithtown, New York, to Jefferson City, Missouri. The brunt of the trip was done before Christmas when Kiernan and Courtney came in for a visit. On New Year's Day, we packed up Kiernan's Jeep Compass and a 2010 Chevy Express Cargo Van and set out for Missouri. Kiernan and Courtney took off in the Compass and I followed in the van.

The Chevy Express cargo van is, simply put, spartan. There are two seats, and that's about it. The model had no back seats, leaving 239.7 cubic feet of storage space (which we used most of). There is no paneling or upholstery in the back, making for an echoy, loud ride. It sits pretty high and has industrial strength shocks, making the noise box bumpy as well. Though the website suggests that the standard model comes with a lot of accoutrement, this particular van came with just an AM/FM clock radio. No CD player, no extra ports, not even a tape deck. It didn't even have the standard power windows or locks. That said, it was not the most uncomfortable vehicle I have ever driven.

When I was in college, and for some time immediately following graduation, I drove a 16 foot box truck for both Phillips Interior Plants and Services and Marie's Off-site Catering. Over the course of several moves for both me and my friends, I have driven vehicles as large as a 22 foot diesel truck. For a while I toyed with the idea of getting my CDL license just to say that there was nothing I couldn't drive. Oddly enough, while the van itself was fairly comfortable, driving a cargo van is a little more difficult than a bigger truck. The key is the mirrors.

While the cargo van does have the added benefit of allowing the driver to see out the back, the rear-view mirrors, or wing mirrors as the British say, leave a lot to be desired. On the larger trucks, there is a massive, rectangular, flat mirror and a smaller, circular convex mirror on both sides. The convex mirror is the most useful, giving the driver a clear shot of both blind spots and the curb. Good blind-spot mirrors are circular, but on a cargo van, the blind-spot mirror is rectangular, which forces the driver to chose between the blind spot or the curb. This makes either backing up and taking corners difficult. Regardless, after picking up the van in Bolingbrook, IL, and driving to Sauk Village, IL, I had a pretty good feel for the controls. The wind proved problematic, and most of the drive was fraught with sudden shifts in steering due to some explosive gusts.

Courtney had everything shipped from Smithtown to Sauk Village in a Cube, and we packed that moveable storage cube into the back of the van. The next day, we finished packing the van with some new IKEA furniture, and took off on the 366 mile journey from Bolingbrook to Jefferson City. If taken without stops, it was meant to take about six hours, give or take. But because a car can only hold so much gas and a person can go for only so long without peeing and/or eating, the trip was likely to take closer to seven. Once there, we would unpack the van and settle the apartment. Nicely, the van was surprisingly fuel efficient and had a massive forty gallon tank. Most of the times we needed to stop, it was not because of the van. It could have made it quite a bit further than I could without stopping.

We left the suburban Chicago area around 10:30 in the morning. I was alone in the van, and one problem became immediately apparent: music was going to be an issue. On long car trips, I generally like to play my iPod through an FM transponder (even better if I can plug directly in through either a USB or AUX port). My transponder was locked in a car that broke down and was towed to a mechanic, so I was stuck with radio. When I was in college, I didn't mind the radio, but the iPod providing my music when I want it and without commercial interruption, has spoiled me, but thinking about this blog, I was excited to see how radio might supply me with an interesting story to relate.

Radio in central and southern Illinois is a lot like the scenery: a lot of country, and not a lot else. Generally, there is one pop station and a maybe a few classic rock stations. If lucky, there will be some college radio stations on the low end of the FM dial playing something interesting. The DJs are generally terrible: vapid chatter, thick with the southern accent. Larger cities have a larger pool of potential DJs; a benefit that smaller, rural stations lack. Couple that disadvantage with the lack of talent that most radio stations have for Saturday morning shifts, and I was bracing for a pretty horrible radio experience.

There was one gem as I approached Illinois State University. WGLT: News, Blues and All the Jazz had a show featuring Delta Frank. This very charming DJ with the sort of affected southern accent that makes him sound like a nice person, and genuinely American, instead of slow in the head. The show itself was amazing. Delta Frank played a range of blues across several decades, some deep cuts from lost albums including a live version of Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight", and several local artists with whom he seemed personally connected. He gave some detailed and interesting information about all the songs, as well as managing several calls from blues fans. He seemed to know everyone who called and had something nice and specific to say about several callers: "There's a call on line 2 from Marjory who makes the best peanut brittle I've eaten." Delta Frank made my drive through the larger part of central Illinois tolerable.

Unfortunately, most of the trip was on I-55, a massive four-lane, interstate highway taking up nearly two-hundred yards from left to right. After a short jaunt down I-72, which was like a smaller version of I-55. Generally, I hate driving on the expressways in the plain states (plain, as in expansive fields, and plain as in uninteresting). I-55 and I-72 are wide expanses of concrete that run through the flattest parts of the countryside and leveling any interesting hills or valleys. If given an option, I would rather take the smaller, two-lane, nationally numbered highways. Luckily, the last third of the drive was on just such a road: US 52.

See, there are two types of highways in America: the very efficient, wide interstate highways that avoid going through towns, and smaller national highways that cut through small town America. Bill Bryson wrote a book where he set out down these smaller highways, and eventually decided that he hates America. When I read The Lost Continent I was really frustrated because Bryson set out to see America, and became annoyed when it wasn't Britain. I felt he was being a little unfair to the small towns, some of which I had lived in, judging their limited options. He also tended to see the parts of town that are built on these smaller, two-lane national highways, which tend to be riddled with Wal-Marts and McDonalds. Once off these connecting roads, small towns have a lot to offer.

For one, the view from the smaller highways is generally more representative of the landscape. Interstate highways tend to mold to the land to their purposes: leveling hills, flattening out fields, cutting through mountains and so on. The smaller numbered highways tend to stick to the land, rising and falling, tumbling over the hills and spilling out along the rivers. As you cut across Illinois towards the Mississippi river, the flat, farm lands of Illinois give way to gentle hills of Eastern Missouri. The highway was really pretty, dotted with forests and small river towns.

Interestingly, there is town in northeastern Missouri called Mexico. It gave me no end of joy to continue seeing signs: Mexico 67 miles. US 54 East to Mexico. Mexico, MO, was nothing like the real Mexico, though.

We reached Jefferson, Missouri in the dark, moved Courtney in, and then I made my way to a Holiday Inn. A friend of mine, Jemma, referred to Holiday Inns as "Neverneverlands of Emptiness," places that compel the patrons toward navel-gazing tendencies. Agreeing, I like to compare Holiday Inns, any hotels really, to airports: places where people go to wait. This is why people tend to think inwardly: you are forced to wait, which leads you to think about where you are, where you've been and where you are going. Naturally, I thought a lot about my journey, where I was headed and where I have been in every sense of meaning that is attached to that phrase.

The next day, after getting Courtney settled in the daylight, Kiernan and I took off for Chicago. Yes, we drove 300+ miles in one day, just to turn around and do it again. This time the truck was empty, and I can say that I learned this: I like driving a truck that is filled rather than a truck that is empty. The shocks on these things are meant for a loaded van, so a much lighter van was much, much bouncier. It also was far more affected by the winds, which thankfully had died down from the previous night.

Kiernan, who purchased a satellite radio some years ago as well as a car with an AUX port, hates radio even more than I do. But, because it was Sunday, we managed to pick up the Bears V Packers game. Surprisingly, we managed to get the game on AM 780 WBBM in Jefferson, MO. This was a Chicago station, and because the night was clear, the sky was empty, the AM waves managed to make it the 300+ miles, allowing the two of us to listen to the last regular season game of our favorite football team. Once that game was done, we picked up a national broadcast of the St. Louis V Seattle game, and that took us to nearly home. Once that game ended, we scanned for about ten minutes before we caught a classic rock station outside of Joliet.

Most of this drive was made in the dark, and a good chunk of it was spent on a two-lane highway jammed behind a truck in a very unpassable stretch of road. As Kiernan said, "Great. I can look at darkness on either side of me or a truck's ass. This is great scenery." And it was dark. Chicago never really gets dark because of all the street lights, buildings and cars. The whole city glows orange. Central Illinois, like Aberystwyth, is shrouded in complete and total darkness. A stifling blackness that can feel claustrophobic.

Once on the interstate highway, we went through a wind farm. These fields of windmills are not unusual, and we had gone through the same field the day before in the sunlight. At night, though, the lights that are meant to warn approaching planes can become very disturbing. For miles, hundreds of red light blinked on and off in complete synchronization. It was both lulling and troubling, as if the windmills had come together to do this of their own according, warning the cars and planes that traveled near by.

It was a long ride, and it was not particularly pretty, but it was one I was happy to have made. Jefferson City was a nice place, and the ride, while at times boring, was not horrible. And really, when you are doing anything in life, that's about what you'd like to say about it: It wasn't horrible.

Protentions and Retentions

Phenomenologist Edmund Husserl thought that our lives were lived in moments of protentions and retentions. That is, in the present, the mind is either looking back to make sense of what has happened, or looking forward guessing what is going to come next. Or both. He built this from centuries of time theory, including St. Augustine, Plato and Aristotle. Derrida ran with this, suggesting that, with the advent of archives, and cheap archiving technology like camcorders and photography, the mind no longer looks backward, but instead conceptualizes the present as a future memory. In other words, we take pictures imagining how this moment will be remembered later. We are, in essence, living our lives in a series of future memories.

The one holiday that jars the mind from the present and forces these protentions, retentions and archival tendencies to the front of consciousness is New Year's Eve. Here, people quite literally turn the page from one chapter to the next. People use this holiday as a time to make changes, reflect on what has happened, and start to imagine what the future holds.

A lot has happened this year. For those familiar with my relationship to Erika, New Year's Eve was a particularly important milestone in our relationship. It was on that day that we both decided to give the relationship a try. A year later, and she broke off the engagement, and no longer speaks to me (which, as she told me, was for my benefit; an idea that I take a lot of issue with).

As the initial shock of the moment is wearing off, my mind has taken to making sense of the series of moments that lead to this, and frankly, I should have seen this coming. Erika was immediately on board with the plan that we laid out early in our relationship. In fact, within a few weeks of deciding to give our relationship a chance, she started thinking about how she could get over to Wales. This is not the first major life plan she has made, though. There were other ventures (independent sources of income, a house, etc.) that she started, and then later backed out of. My Mom told me that she even backed out of most of her responsibilities for my 30th Birthday Party, which was her idea. All the great ideas were either dropped last minute, or passed off onto my sister (who came through like a champ). I don't know why I thought my relationship with her would be different.

But. It is important, here, to remember that my life with her was not horrible. I genuinely loved her, very deeply, and I was ready to commit to her. We had a lot of fun either staying home or going out. She gelled with my family very well, and I with her's. There were a lot of tender moments, between us, and when she wanted to be, she could be very sweet. If I remember her as just the recent actions, it paints me in a bad light. After all, if she was this irresponsible and flaky, why did I ask her to marry me? Truth be told: things with her were really great. Or at least I thought they were. All the things I had to do to make the relationship work did not seem like work, or problems. I was happy to do them because I genuinely liked to make Erika happy.

And that, there, is what hurts the most: I would do anything to make her happy, and she wouldn't.

But #2. There has been a lot of looking back. What New Year's Eve also allows is for looking forward. Resolutions to be made and so forth. While I am not a big fan of saying what I will and will not do in the next year, I have thought about what the next year will hold. Honestly, it's a little dizzying. The changes in my life are made even more prominent by the fact that I in one location, and will be going to a different one. I am quite literally leaving all of this behind me. Some of that come tinging in sadness: I leave behind my family, and a lot of good friends. But more exciting, and terrifying, is that I don't really know what comes next for me. I could come home for the whole summer, stay at my Mom's house, traveling around to see my friends. Or I could stay in Aberystwyth, finding cheap lodging, flying home for Buddy's wedding in June and possibly Comic-Con.

Then after the summer...

There are a lot of exciting things that I could be doing for the next few years. Once I am done, I have even more options: I could take a few post-doc assignments in English speaking programs. One in Helsinki I saw earlier looks pretty sexy. I could look for temporary or permanent positions in English speaking countries: America, Canada, UK or Australia, as well as English departments in larger cities like Berlin, Paris and so forth. I could push the editorial angle, looking for work with some comic publishers (or any publishers, really). Really, there are a lot of pretty exciting things to look forward to.

And, hopefully, a new love interest, which is also exciting. Someone who was as much fun, if not more so, than Erika, but with the ability to follow through on her decisions. Really, the future looks bright, terrifyingly so, but bright nonetheless.

From the Mouth of Babes

On my way to my Uncle's brother's wake, I was crammed in the back of my sister's van with her two older kids. We were close to the funeral home, so I thought I would level with the kids quickly:
"Now remember, guys, people are going to be very sad here, so they are going to want lots of hugs," I said. "But only serious hugs; not joking hugs."
Emily thought about this for a minute.
"Is that because we are going to the wake?"
"Yeah. So Uncle Richard probably doesn't want you to push him or anything. Just give him a big hug."
She thought about this again.
"Are you sad?" she asked me.
I thought about this. It was a complicated question, and I was full of different types of sadness. I didn't want to lie to the kid, nor do I think that kids need oversimplification of complicated emotions. Kids have these same complicated feelings, and they need to know that adults do as well.
"Yes," I said. "A little bit."
Without thinking, Emily just lunged and wrapped her arms around me (as much of me as she can, being only 5). She nuzzled her head in and squeezed tight.

I won't lie: I welled up a bit. That was exactly what I needed. Now, I don't want to make it seem like my family is not a close family, but we certainly are not a huggy family, particularly my immediate family. Well, I guess to be completely honest about the situation, I love to hug my family because of how uncomfortable it makes them. My sister Brianne runs away from me, my brother Kiernan will jab at me to keep me at a distance.

It all started when my Dad started to get sick. For one reason or another, I asked, jokingly, if he wanted a hug before I left. He acted like I asked if he wanted me to punch him in the face with a fist wrapped in razor wire, so I tossed my arms around him. It was like hugging a coat tree. But, a tradition was born that eventually leaked onto the rest of my family. The more the resisted the hugs the more hugs they got.

So hugging me has become a bit of an in-joke between my family and I, which is how I gauged the severity of a tragic moment. When my Dad died, we hugged each other a lot. At one particularly difficult moment for me, my brother Kiernan and I, working as pallbearers scooped me up in his arms when I lost the ability to stand. When Erika called off our engagement, my sister Brianne sent me a message over Facebook: "I'm really sorry about all this. Next time I see you, I'll let you hug me. And I won't even wince."

Back to Emily: when we got to the funeral home, Emily took her job very seriously. She tossed her jacket to her Mom, and started scanning the crowd. She locked onto my Aunt Mary, deep in conversation with someone from Richard's family, and walked right over. She stood there, waiting for my Aunt to notice, then wrapped her arms around her. Once that hug was given, she found my Uncle Richard, also in conversation with someone from his family. She sat and waited for that conversation to finish, then, when he turned, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tightly.

If you've never been hugged by a child at a particularly sensitive moment in your life, I suggest doing so. I don't have any facts or research to support this theory, but I am fairly certain there must be some medicinal benefits. True to her promise, Emily made sure to give everyone that needed one a big hug, as did her brother, my nephew Nate. As we paid our respects at the casket, we expressed our sympathies to Richard's sister-in-law. Nate, who generally is shy around strangers, gave her a really big hug, as did Emily. For just that brief moment, even though Richard's sister-in-law didn't know either of them, her life was made momentarily brighter. And that, really, is all that anyone can ask for.

Death and Christmas

I went to pay my respects at my Uncle's Brother's wake (and tomorrow, the funeral). While I didn't really know the deceased, I know and respect his brother very much. If Don was half the man that Richard is, then the world is slightly less bright tonight.

At the wake, there was a brief service where the priest talked about death as a stage in life. Wakes are a contemplative time, and I generally get an ache in the part of my heart that my Dad occupied. But, with Christmas around the corner, and my engagement recently called off, I found myself in a dark way. The priest talked about our lives as stories, which as a literary critic I found this to be an interesting metaphor. Don's story was over, or at least the Earthly volume; this, in turn, give us time to think about where our stories are taking us.

In the movie Stranger than Fiction, Will Farrell's character, Harold Krick, finds himself to be the main character in a novel that someone is writing. He hears voices in his head the narrate the moments of his life. In order to understand these voices and make some sense of his life, he approaches a professor of literature, played by the awesome Dustin Hoffman, who explains the basic plots of all stories: if it ends in a wedding, it's a comedy; if it ends with a death, it's a tragedy. At one point, Harold is putting the moments of his life in two piles: moments of tragedy and moments of comedy. At one particularly low point, he turns to the female character he is pursuing (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and says, "This may sound like jibberish to you, but I think I'm in a tragedy."

Ironically, I was watching this movie, at that particularly section, when Erika called to break up with me. There is a kinship between Harold and I: we both feel that we are part of a story that we have no control over. Harold eventually realizes that he plays a part in a larger narrative, and that author, in killing him, gives his life (and his story) meaning. In the end, the narrator rewrote the story to a less meaningful version, giving Harold the control over his life that he wanted (and his chance with Maggie Gyllenhaal).

Hoffman and the author have a conversation at the end, discussing the ending of Harold's story. Hoffman is slightly disappointed that Harold lives, claiming the original was one of the most important pieces of fiction in the canon written to that point. The version where he doesn't die was understandable, but not all that great. So, the choice the narrator had was between an important and interesting ending, or a happy ending.

People spoke at the wake, retelling stories of Don's life, and I was really moved by how he was remembered. Again, I only knew his brother Richard, who has impacted my life in meaningful ways, so really my experiences with Don are limited to these vicarious retellings, filtered through my relationship with Richard. These stories were reductive, of course, glossing over the horrible times. But that's not really important. There were enough genuinely warm moments that the two eulogies were extremely touching, particularly from Don's daughter. She told a story about a humble, spiritual man who clearly loved his family, and lived his life as if it were a celebration of the happy moments of every day.

She ended her eulogy with a quote from e e cummings' "I Carry Your Heart With Me":

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

This poem is immense, and paints a picture of the selflessness that is necessary for a functioning relationship. And this is really the heart of the matter: I want someone to think of this poem when they think of me. I want to find someone with whom I can spend my life, and carry her heart in mine.

Sorry that this is so sad-sacky. Christmas is a particularly cuddly time of year, and my puppy Leo, while quite cuddly, is not quite adequate.

British Buildings and the Calendar

In America, where is the first floor? That's right, reader: the floor that is at ground level. After all, it is the first floor that you walk into, so one would expect that. To clarify for buildings that are built into hills, the first floor will also be called the ground floor, marked in elevators with a "G", but the other floors are then numbers as if "G" = 1. That makes logistical sense.

In England, as in Germany and other European countries, the first floor you walk into is the ground floor. The next floor up is 1, and so on. The difference is subtle, but can cause major issues. For example, our bathroom light has not been fixed for a while. This is really annoying considering I've called twice to get the first floor bathroom light changed out. Turns out, they have changed the light outside of the bathroom next to my room, which is on the first floor above the ground.

What the Europeans are doing is actually mathematically smarter. They start counting by zero. Had all cultures done this with all counting measurements, there would have been a lot less confusion. For example: the millennium. In the year 2000, everyone was all excited to be celebrating the change of the millennium. Major parties were being thrown, and the world waited with baited breath for the computers of the world to crash and send airplanes careening around like Frisbees. But really, everyone was year early. How is that? We started counting with year 1, so the first year of the calendar went from year 1 to year 2. Year two ended with the first day of calendar year 3, and so on. To do the Math, you have to add 2000 to the first number of the calendar (which is 1), so the second millennium passed in year 2001 [2000 years since 1]. (It should be noted that this example and most of my understanding about the importance of the number zero comes from Charles Seiffe's book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. A good read, and really interesting.)

I've taken to thinking that "floor" means, "area of the house above the ground," which makes sense. If you think about it, the floor meaning level of house, is probably how they talked about the levels that came after the ground floor. After all, the floor of early houses was actually the ground. So the artificial ground below your feet when on a different level would need to be designated as something different. Thus buildings were measured by how many floors were built above the ground.

Really, though, it's one more set of codes that I have to get good at switching as I travel back and forth between the States and the UK. On that note: I'll see you all soon. Get the kettle on.