Stay

She's softly breathing next to me.
A shining angel sent to me.
From where she came it's hard to say.
Tiny star she guides my way.

Leaving

I went to the dentist last week. Thought I had lost a filling. Turned out it was merely chipped. This wasn't "my" dentist, just a local one, since I thought I had an emergency. But as I sat down in the chair, an assistant started going through all the things she was going to do that day. I needed a whole work-up, she said. There were a bunch of x-rays to be taken, then a thorough examination, and finally a plan was to be drawn up for what would turn out needed to be done over the next few years. The next few years? I paused her. Suddenly, I had realized that after years of moving to this place, I had now stopped. That now it was time to start moving away from here. Some people tend to want to stay in one place. Not I. Apart from moving frequently—living here for four years has been my longest consecutive stint in one place since the eighties—I tend to be mentally either moving in or out even while staying at one place. I thought becoming a father would change that. It hasn't. So far, at least. And so it was in that chair that I realized that I have now begun preparing for leaving this place. In a year or so. Perhaps a year and a half. Mentally, I have started making plans for how to deal with that. Whether to take one car along. Two. Or sell them both. What appliances to leave. When to list the house. I am leaving, ever so slowly.

It also just seems to be in the air. Not only are our neighbors, the people who we have really connected with here, leaving piecemeal for another country, but other big attractions on the street are leaving as well. One branch at a time.

We became interested in the neighborhood before we became fond of the house. Short, quiet streets that are close to the bustle—such as it is—have always appealed to me. That is why I liked staying in a quiet apartment overlooking Las Ramblas, in the obscure little hotel around the corner from Times Square, at the resort on the calm side of Duval Street, on Maui instead of Oahu, near Montmartre instead of on Champs Elysees, on a side street from Oxford Street, comfortably close to Strøget etc. I need people. Crave life. And when that life ebbs, I lose interest. Become sad, even.

Like today.

I still remember the first time I saw that tree. It towered over everything. Not just the house which yard it occupied, but the house across the street as well. Actually, the whole street for that matter. It just stood there, graceful, quiet, strong. Like some benevolent giant, watching out for us puny beings busying about below its branches. My daughter took to it immediately, as well. It must have been one of the more striking sights for her early on, laying in her carriage, looking up at the sky, as I pushed it up and down the street.

I struck up a conversation with the head of the deconstruction crew. He said he was sorry to see it go. I believed him. He was probably in his early sixties, but couldn't remember this street without that tree towering over it.

Why do we so crave stability, somewhere in our lives? Why do we need to know that some things are not evanescent, that they will "always" be there? Maybe it was just the immoderate size of this being, and its apparent immovability that gave the illusion that it would never leave.

In the end, it doesn't matter. It, too, is leaving.

Fifth

12 Angry men [1957]

If you have read this blog on a regular basis, you will know that I abhor it when people pigeonhole other people on the basis of their education, nationality, their sex, age, race, sexual orientation, whatever. Labels don't clear anything up. They tie up those that you apply them to. And they give you false security when you start generalizing about that group. About how they will react. What they think. How capable they are. Whether you will agree with them. Or find them interesting. The apparently inate human urge to categorize our fellow man, to cheat our way towards getting to actually knowing that person by attaching a predefined set of attributes to him or her, just may be one of the most devisive afflictions that this race is born with. Still, its prevalence is not just based in the ease of mind that comes with being able to hang these neat labels on every human being that crosses our paths. The difficult truth is that some of these labels have just a touch of truth to them. Just a tad. Enough to make us feel good to use all of them, and to base on them our whole, already fragile value system regarding other people. And before you know it, some potentially sane person gets up, walks over to a perfect stranger, an African-American, and tries to pay that person a complement by saying "These are promising looking children you've got there. Odds are that one of them will become a professional athlete. Congratulations!". By the way, I am not just taking this as a theoretical example. This actually happened to a friend of mine. Last week. In a restaurant, in the next town over from here. But of all the half-rights, those grains of truths, the whole 'men are angry, women are gentle' is probably the most prevalent. The notion that the World's two ruling forces are testosterone and estrogen. That men's drive is rage and women's is love. Men want to conquer, women want to comfort. I could go on all night. These half-wrongs permeate all our culture, to the point that there does not seem to be a sphere of human discourse that is free of them. This film certainly is not. Hell, it actually tackles it, head on. Through the years, Henry Fonda keeps getting the big credit for his lead in this SIdney Lumet's first bout on the big screen. And sure, he is good. Quite good. But this is a film from another era. Another world. A world completely ruled by men. Men who in general were just as inept then as they are today at doing things like conveying their feelings, especially to those that are close to them. Including love. And it is Lee J. Cobb who steals this show. His portrayal of an enraged, bitter man, whose son has abandoned him after receiving heavy-handed upbringing, really got to me. I felt I knew this man. I understood him. Not because I know men like him. Or because I empathised with him. But it still struck a nerve, somehow. The moment he briefly talks about his son, early on in the movie, I could feel that was going to be what it all came down to. And it did. Masterfully. Brilliantly. If I were to generalize about one hald of mankind, I would say that there is a locomotive quality to men, as a gender. They are one-track minded, loud, blow a lot of steam, slow out of the gate, high-maintainence, unflinching if you cross them, and take forever to stop once they are on a roll. Toot-tooooot.