Category: Uncategorized

“I need to slip out of the office before a semi-mandatory brownbag,” I tell my friend via IM. “bbiab.”

The brownbag starts at noon.  Not only do I not remotely care about the topic, I don’t want to spend my lunch break reading a tedious PowerPoint presentation.  I lock my workstation and head for the elevators.

My new coworker is setting up the projector for the presentation.  We lock eyes, but neither of us say anything.  He came into the office at ten yesterday, took a lunch, and left at 3:30.  I let our manager know, because he was out yesterday.  New guy got talked to, and now I suspect he isn’t speaking to me.  It’s possible he’s not talking much because his back has been killing him, but I don’t think that’s it.  This doesn’t bode well for our future working relationship.

I hit the street and head for Pike Place Market.  On the way, a friend’s girlfriend passes me on the street and doesn’t recognize me.  I’m not very good at small talk, and I decide that talking to her would be awkward, so I let her pass by unmolested.  I find the pasta bar and get the tortellini.  I try to understand some of the conversation taking place in Spanish next to me, but I don’t pick up much more than “Gracias” and “Yo quiero.”  I read from a collection of short essays I’ve been going through on my lunch break.

The current short story is one about social isolation.  I think, not for the first time, that I must be doing something wrong.  I go to the same sandwich shop once or twice a week, but I don’t know the names any of the people who work there.  I can’t even tell if they recognize me.  Except for the maybe one or two times a month that I have lunch with a friend, I eat alone. I never speak to anyone unless spoken to.

I find myself wolfing down my tortellini and try to slow down, to enjoy my food.  I still finish way too quickly.  I pay, then look at the time.  Only 12:15.  I don’t want to go back to work yet, so I wander the market.  I find a few new restaurants on the southern end that I hadn’t noticed before, and try to remember to come back to them on Friday.

It’s a bright fall day towards the end of tourist season.  It’s a nice amount of people.  Not so many that I get crushed or slowed by the crowd, but not so few that I get the uncomfortable feeling of being the only customer and noticed by every shopkeeper.

I complete my wander and sit down cross-legged on a raised concrete pad near the north end of the market.  It’s divided into stalls, and during peak tourist season, this would be where someone would set up to sell their wares for the day.  Tourist season is nearly over, so today half of them are empty.  I pick up my book and resume the story.  The narrator lives in Russia but barely speaks the language.  He’s disliked by his cohorts because of a misunderstanding.  He’s alone but tries to pretend that’s what he wants to be doing.

I sympathize.

I finish the story and check the time.  Almost a quarter to.  I guess that’s enough time killed.  I don’t want to start a new story, so I go back to the office.  On the way, I think again that there has to be a better way to interact with people that doesn’t make me feel worse than not interacting at all.  I give it some thought, but I decide I only know how to be myself, and I’m not likely to change.  It doesn’t feel good.

The brownbag is taking place on the fourth floor, right in front of the elevators, so I go up to the fifth in order to better slip in undetected.  The stairs creak much louder than I ever remember them doing.  A couple people turn to look as I round the bottom of the stairs and quietly walk back to my desk.  The meeting concludes, and my manager walks over.

“You missed it,” he says.  “You were number one for being thanked for the site migration.”

[In honor of Roger Ebert’s passing, I thought I’d try my hand at a movie review. For me, he and Gene Siskel were the original and only movie reviewers. I trusted his knowledge, insight, and expertise when it came to movies. I didn’t always agree, but I admired his ability to point out why he loved a cheesy popcorn flick filled with explosions, then on the next review explain how movie X was subtly referencing Greek myth. He was smart, funny, and will be missed.]

True Grit tells the story of a cold, calculating young girl named Mattie (Hailee Steinfeld) out to avenge the murder of her father. The story picks up after his death, and we’re told the story through a single-scene flashback. We’re shown her determination and intelligence after she literally gets the better of a horse trade. She enlists the help of the reluctant, alcoholic, violent-even-for-the-Old-West Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). Before they leave town, we’re introduced to the bounty hunting Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) who has been after the same man for several months.

In many movies, when the precocious-but-spirited heroine meets up with the gruff-but-lovable old timer, her strong will shown early in the film melts away, and she’s left as a cowering shadow as he does “the man’s work.” Think Marion in Robin Hood: Price of Thieves. It would have been extremely easy to do the same here, with Mattie in the company of two tough lawmen. To the movie’s credit, Mattie starts tough, stays tough, and ends tougher.

What’s unique about this movie is the way that it captures the States in a way that seems alien to us now: as a vast, unexplored, dangerous, but also strange place. We’re given the usual glorious vistas of extended plains, gorgeous sunsets, and snow-dappled groves–but there’s also a fifteen minute segment involving a hanged man that does nothing to advance the plot and serves only to illustrate that things don’t work in this Old West the way that they do in most movies. When Mattie and Rooster Cogburn stop for information at a trading post, he literally kicks two children off the building’s front porch. He does it casually, and seemingly without malice. It’s as though kicking children is simply something that’s normal and expected.

This sense that “something is a little off” is part of the charm of Coen Brothers films, and adds nuance to movies like The Big Lebowski and Fargo. However, in a period piece such as this it can be a distraction. Rather than being allowed to lose myself in the story, I was continually reminded, “Oh, right. I’m watching a Coen Brothers movie.” The dialogue and acting throughout the movie seems intentionally stilted and listless. It’s as if the actors grew up speaking a different language, learned an American accent and the words in the script, but don’t understand the meaning behind the words. The exception to this flat affect is Bridges’ Cogburn, whose voice is frequently so guttural and incomprehensible that I was forced to turn on the closed captioning thirty minutes into the film.

Those quibbles aside, this movie may be added to my list of favorites if it can stand up to a second viewing. The Coen Brothers did an amazing job creating this movie, so much so that I feel the need to share it with other people. There aren’t a lot of movies that can do that, and I look forward to their next one.

I’ve been feeling old and badly damaged for quite a while now.  I have plantar fasciitis in my left foot.  When I wake up in the morning, my first steps feel like someone took a hammer to the sole while I was sleeping.  Running, walking, and standing all make it worse.  My foot is, for all practical purposes, permanently and badly bruised.

My right knee is only slightly better.  Some days are worse than others, but I can never cross my legs, sit Indian-style, or use a footstool without feeling it burn and hyperextend.  My hip feels like there’s broken glass between the head of my femur and the socket of my pelvis.  My right shoulder feels to be partially dislocated again.

Needless to say, I haven’t been going to the gym or running much recently.

I don’t list all of these problems simply to complain, but because I finally watched The Dark Knight Rises today.  In it, Bruce Wayne starts as a decrepit, battered old man, hobbling around with a cane.  I’ve actually considered getting a cane several times, when the pain has been at its worst.  A close friend of mine has one.  We’d look good limping down the street together.  I’ve never done it mostly out of pride, but also because I think people would think I’m intentionally being dramatic.

Not too long after, Bruce, with the help of some technology, gets back on his feet.  And not just because he’s the goddamn Batman–it’s because he worked at it.  He stopped accepting that pain was normal, and that he wasn’t going to get better.  I saw myself in him, and realized that I, too, had accepted I wasn’t going to get better.  I’d given up on ever running a marathon, or getting my black belt, or learning parkour, because without being consciously aware of it I had quietly accepted my body was too old and frail to take it.

I walked out of that movie angry with myself  and my body.  I’m thirty-one years old.  That’s far too young to be damaged beyond repair.  Tomorrow, I’m calling my doctor, a sports doctor, and my podiatrist, and I’m going to make myself get better even if it requires surgery.

I’m done being broken.