[lit-ideas] Mike's brother

  • From: Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 15:53:50 -0700

Not just that, when we age, many we know and love our age or even younger will precede us in death. I have a brother who was blond (at 78 he has lived long enough to become bald). He is living in Centerville; his doctor a few days ago said he had a thin aorta and ordered a CT scan. The scan said he didn't, but you don't go through tests like that without being affected. That same week he had a titanium bridge break -- he is physically breaking down. His sister and mine (brown hair) blew up her microwave recently. The fire department gave her cautionary instructions, and now she is afraid to use it -- she is mentally breaking down.

One of the reasons I'm moving to Sandpoint is to try and escape my life of pessimism. To help me in the meantime I'm acquiring an Irish Terrier puppy to be named Jessica. After picking up one biography after the other, one book of criticism after the other, giving up, putting them back, I've turned on Netflix or Amazon Prime and watched a lot of old movies and TV series. Yesterday I watched /Predator. /Good grief, how old were Jesse and Arnold when they made that movie, and Sonny Landham, what ever happened to him? How did /Predator /get to be an "old movie." I check on my laptop. It was made in 1987 -- not so old -- wait, that's 29 years ago. A person can get old in 29 years. Some people can get old in a lot less time than that. Kevin Peter Hall, the actor who played the Predator, died at age 35 in 1991.

A week or so ago I watched and was mightily impressed by the almost Shakespearean /Deadwood. /Even though it was made almost recently (2004-2006), one of its actors, Jeffrey Jones has falling from grace as a sex offender -- still avoiding jail though. The other actors are doing better. Ian McShane was superb in a Shakespearean sense as Al Swearengen. Timothy Olyphant more Gary Cooperean than Shakespearean is doing well. Garret Dillahunt plays two different bad guys (Shakespearean actors often played more than one part -- although in addition to playing the predator in /Predator, /Kevin Peter Hall played a helicopter pilot) excellent actor IMO, maybe his work on /Deadwood/ got him the role of Roman Nevikov in /Life.

/A wind is blowing the trees outside my study window. Beyond, the mountains are covered in clouds. Ben is behind me whimpering at sound of the thunder, but it won't be many more days before the area will turn hot (hot years, we learn from Anna Gonsalves //is when the predators come hunting trophies). I'll soon be closing my windows and turning my air conditioner up, even though Edison warned me this week that I use more power than other people who live in houses the size of mine. Three months out of the year San Jacinto is too hot to spend much time outside. In Sandpoint three months out of the year it is too cold. Cold traditionally is more relateable to dying and death than heat (heat more relateable to the afterlife). Will it seem so in Sandpoint?

Condolences!

Lawrence





On 5/17/2016 2:09 PM, Mike Geary wrote:

Speaking of Geary, the better Geary, died recently of heart disease and was Memorialized this past weekend in St. Louis where he had lived for the past 2 or 3 decades. Tom was his name. He was blond. None of his 5 siblings are blond. He alone Nature chose to draw attention to. Either that or our mother has some explaining to do. Tom was 18 months younger than me. He was better put together than me. On the city bus the giggly high school girls would try to sit as close to him as they could. Those who managed to get one of the opposing back seats would cross their legs in a daring show their appreciation of him and would whisper to one another and twitter and titter and giggle. They never did that for me. Tom was a Math man and a science junkie. He had little use for rhymes. I was his opposite. But he had read most of the books that I was supposed to have read as an English major. There was not a mean bone in his body. He was funny, witty and wise. I will miss him. If you wonder why I'm posting this here, it's because I know that if you had known him, you would have wanted to know of his passing.



Other related posts:

  • » [lit-ideas] Mike's brother - Lawrence Helm