Hereafter - Sydney Morning Herald - Spectrum (Sat 19 Feb 2011)

Hereafter - Sydney Morning Herald (w) - Spectrum (Sat 19 Feb 2011)
Really enjoyed this film (more so than Rabbit Hole). Happy to make my own mind up on this one. Don't really care what the critics or the majority of the viewers say. Will touch people in many different ways and will probably be a function of their own life experiences.

Rabbit Hole - Sydney Morning Herald - Spectrum (Sat 19 Feb 2011)

Rabbit Hole - Sydney Morning Herald (w) - Spectrum (Sat 19 Feb 2011)
Gained a couple of insights from watching this movie and then having a look around the web where I found a couple of good reviews written by Grief Counsellors:

• Unbearable Grief in Rabbit Hole (2010) by Joseph Burgo, and


• A Grief Therapist’s Film Perspective: The Rabbit Hole by Beth S. Patterson

Particularly liked what Beth S. Patterson writes in A Grief Therapist’s Film Perspective: The Rabbit Hole:

Change is part of the grief process too.

Grief changes us.

We are never the same after a major loss.

In fact, part of the process of grief is to find one’s “new normal.”

Conversely, as we change, our grief changes.

As Leah’s mother eloquently describes it, grief is like a brick in one’s pocket – we always feel it, but over time it feels less heavy. After some time, we can actually forget that it’s there sometimes, but memories come back, and we feel the brick again.

Had kind of worked this out for myself (i.e. in order to move forward, you need to adapt, otherwise you can get stuck) and was actually going to write about it to mark the 2nd anniversary of this little Blog, which passed quietly while I was in Auckland for the Takapuna Cup. In the end I did not get around to posting (happens a lot - only a fraction of what I would like to post makes it here - have started so many posts that never quite get finished).

Anyway, what I had thought I would write about for that unwritten 2nd Anniversay Post was how my life (and is some ways my identity) had changed since that first post on the Wed 25 Feb 2009 and how I thought the blog might give some indication to what I am passionate about, who I was , the transition to who I have become and where I am heading, at least in the short-term.

I have enjoyed the Blogging. It has given me a creative outlet and has kept my mind stimulated. It is fun to look over what I have written. Like a photograph, I can remember the feelings and the reasons why I might have written the post.

Finally, as Ken Burns said at the 2004 Commencement Yale Class Day Speech (as pdf):

Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality. Remember, too, there is nothing more incredible than being a witness to history.

Keep on Blogging.

Regards .. Geoff

Quote: Half a Life - NYT Book Review (12 Sep 2010)

Dani Shapiro writes in her NYT Book Review (12 Sep 2010) of the book, Half a Life by Darin Strauss:

What life delivers to us forms us all, but as surely as random .. events shape our lives, so too does our response to those events. Something happens, something tragic, immutable and unfair (whatever that means). So what are we going to do? Cave in? Become controlling, rageful? Shut down? Live lives of quiet desperation? At the center of this elegant, painful, stunningly honest memoir thrums a question fundamental to what it means to be human: What do we do with what we’ve been given?

An interesting observation and question. Maybe Petria King's quote might be one way to look for an answer.

Chaos - Shopfront Advertising - Singapore - Tue 29 Sep 2009 (picasa)
The Book was reviewed in last weekend's Spectrum. Will track it down and have a look. Found the review quite useful and informative.

Favourite Photo: Col de Portet d'Aspet/France - Sep 2009 - Fabio Casartelli Memorial

Geoff and Joanne at Fabio Casartelli's Memorial - "we stumbled upon it by complete accident" – Col de Portet d'Aspet - Wed 23 Sep 2009 [1] (picasa)
Just a photo of Joanne and I at a Memorial in the Pyrenees in South West France. Sometimes photos are just records and keepsakes of events and moments in our lives. This is just one of those photos. The photo has a nice little touch [1] with the Shadows on the Wing of the Memorial. Some background ..

Tonight's Stage of the the 2010 Edition of the Tour de France starts in Pamiers and finishes in Bagnères-de-Luchon. Along the way it will pass through St-Girons (near St-Lizier).

Last September, we travelled much of tonight's route, but in the reverse direction. Along the way we stumbled across a Memorial for Fabio Casartelli on the Col de Portet d'Aspet. He was an Italian Bike Rider who died in a crash near the Memorial in the 1995 Edition of the Tour de France. Fabio was a member of Lance Armstrong's Motorola Team.

There is a moving account of the impact Fabio's death had on Armstrong in his book, It's not about the Bike. I read the account to Jenny twice in Hospital last year. If you read the account here, you will see it has also had an impact on me through all that has happened and the path that allowed us to stumble across the Memorial (the book does not even mention where it is located - so it was a sheer fluke that we "stumbled across it" - I knew what it was as soon as I saw it - just from the description in the book). I hope to go back at some stage. Though for now, I will make sure I am awake tonight as the Tour passes the Memorial.

[1] I would like to think the two shadows on the “Wings” of the Memorial represent the spirit of Jenny and her life as a twin with Joanne. There we are, Joanne and I, counterpoised by the twin shadows of the Joanne and Jenny. Jenny overlooks us and is there with us, Always.

Stage 15 Route Map - 2010 Tour de France - Mon 19 Jul 2010

Grief is concentrated in the face [take2] - The Art of Grief by Jonathan Walker

Grief is concentrated in the face. It makes the flesh sodden and unresponsive, dull with blood, like when you are drunk and heat comes off the skin like vapour off water, as if your vitality is evaporating into the air. The muscles go dead around the mouth and eyes. It almost hurts when others smile and your own face remains inert, held down by the drag and weight of the blood. The memory of grief stays in the flesh. The body recalls it, feels its weight, moulds itself automatically to its shape as the loss is remembered, the mask becoming tighter as the memory becomes clearer; not the memory of the dead person, but the memory of grief itself.

Page 24 The Art of Grief by Jonathan Walker

Geoff - "an early start for the first day of the rest of my life - 'where do you start?'" - Alexandria - 7am Wed 01 Jul 2009 (picasa)
Took this photo of myself the first morning after Jenny had died. I slept OK, all things considered and was up early - I had no idea what the day would bring. All I knew there was a Funeral to organise and many people to be contacted. No stranger to all of this, so I headed up to my usual Coffee shop (Cafe Sofia) so that I could have a few quiet moments to myself before the onslaught of the day.

Not sure why I took the photo - maybe so that I could remember that moment of numbness, despair and initial grief. I did a similar thing when my younger brother Tim died (see here).

The words above by Jonathan Walker (he reviewed one of my photos that I took in Newtown - see here) seem to match up with what I now see of myself in the photo.

The following gives some context to his writings on Grief - The Art of Grief - and its relationship to his new Novel - Five Wounds. It is complicated, but Grief is a long drawn out and complicated process. I am still trying to work it all out myself.

Five Wounds: An Allegory by Jonathan Walker

Five Wounds is a parable as well as a fairy tale. Throughout, it refers to an invisible, suppressed source: ‘The Art of Grief’, an abandoned essay on the deaths of my parents. This essay is never acknowledged directly within the novel, but it will be made available in March or April 2010 as a free download on my website for those who wish to investigate.

[..]

‘The Art of Grief’ is a key, which unlocks hidden meanings in Five Wounds. However, the relationship between the two texts is more complex than that of a riddle to its solution or a joke to its punch line, because Five Wounds has an independent life of its own. Its characters act according to their own natures, and make their own choices. They are not mere ciphers, condemned to act out episodes of my biography in a disguised, pathological form. The characters may be fantastic, but they are real within their own world, even when they unknowingly refer to events beyond its borders.

In this case, then, one text does not solve the other. Rather, Five Wounds places stolen fragments of ‘The Art of Grief’ in a new setting, which transforms their meaning, as the Venetians studded the façade of the church of San Marco with pieces of marble looted from Constantinople. Here, however, the arrangement is reversed. It is not the loot that shines brightly, but the container, within which the quotations are safely hidden away, like bones in a reliquary.

UPDATE: To download a PDF version of 'The Art of Grief', go to this part of my site

[Geoff: A repost of a version I was working on that somehow got posted on the 10 Apr 2010 - subsequently deleted and this is the remaining version.]

The perfect moment of grief is when .. - The Art of Grief by Jonathan Walker

[..] The perfect moment of grief is when the need to speak is balanced by the desire to be silent, and when the shame of past sins is balanced by the need for dignity, to honour the dead as well as yourself. Within this moment, the only responsibility is to endure until it passes and it becomes possible to act again. This is why it seems perfect, because all that is required to be absolutely right and correct is to take the strain and wait for the checks and balances to break down somewhere. [..]

From Page 2 The Art of Grief by Jonathan Walker. More here.

Joanne and Geoff - Spreading some of Jenny's Ashes on the River near the Charles Bridge just down from the Kafka Museum - Prague - Mon 01 Sep 2009 (picasa)

Afterglow - INXS - Letterman

Afterglow - INXS - Letterman
Andrew Farriss from INXS writes about Afterglow ..

"Lyrically I was looking for something that deals quite generically with the sense of loss. But not in a depressing sense. It could be about a family member, someone close, [..] it could be about loss of any kind. I really wanted to convey a recognition of coming to terms with that loss in a positive way and remembering someone with immense affection. Initially the loss makes you sad, but then you feel that glow of warmth and I think this is something everyone can relate to."

Afterglow Lyrics

Here I am,
Lost in the light of the moon,
That comes through my window.

Bathed in blue,
The walls of my memory divides,
The thorns from the roses.
It's you and the roses.

[CHORUS]
Touch me and I will follow,
In your afterglow.
Heal me from all this sorrow,
As I let you go.
I will find my way
When I see your eyes,
Now I'm living,
In your afterglow.

Here I am,
Lost in the ashes of time,
But who wants tomorrow,
In between,
Longing to hold you again,
I'm caught in your shadow.
I'm losing control.

My mind drifts away,
We only have today.

[CHORUS]
Touch me and I will follow,


In your afterglow.
Heal me from all this sorrow,
As I let you go.
I will find my way,
I will sacrifice,
'Til the blinding day,
When I see your eyes.

Now I'm living,
In your afterglow [in your afterglow].
When the veils are gone,
As I let you go,
As I let you go.

[CHORUS]
Touch me and I will follow,
In your afterglow.
Heal me from all this sorrow,
As I let you go.
I will find my way
I will sacrifice,
Now I'm living,
In your afterglow.

Bathed in blue,
The walls of my memory divides,
The thorns from the roses.
It's you who is closest.