Watching STILL ALICE And A Chilly Morning

Last night Evie and I finally got around to watching STILL ALICE, a movie about an academic who gets early onset Alzheimer's.  Julianne Moore won an Academy Award for her performance and deserved it.  It's a movie everyone should see because it makes clear how Alzheimer's effects not only the individual in a tragic way but also the family.  And it's so sad to think that there are and have been millions and millions of individuals who have gone through the slow, disintegration of the self, of one's memories, consciously, knowingly, up to a point.  Moore makes palpable the agony of loss, the anger one must feel until there's little of the self left. My only caveat would be that movies like this always cast a well to do, loyal family, with all kinds of medical help available.  How awful it must be for the 'others', those who may not have a family, cannot see a high powered doctor, and must deal with this terrible disease on their own, perhaps in ignorance as to what is happening to them. Anyways, this is a movie everyone should see.  

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It's a spectacular morning, mist and sun rising, blue skies, a chilly 51º.  I should be out on the lake but the guys are having a 'hops breakfast', at our friend's farm where he grows, what else, hops.  This is becoming a yearly August event, something to look forward to as summer hits mid August.  We have not had breakfast together since early June so it will be fun to see everyone again.

Yesterday was also chilly, so we actually got some things done in the house.  In fact, Evie was inspired and worked inside most of the day.  The big project, reorganizing our attic, took two of us a good hour or two.  We were able to throw some things out and it's now passable, after a summer of grandchildren and vacations which always seem to wreck havoc on its contents.  We still have lots of 'stuff' we never use, like eight kalims from Turkey, other things that have memories associated with them.  We just don't have the walls, like we did in Turkey (13 rooms with ten foot ceilings) to hang them.  And we have wall to wall carpeting, so they don't go on the floors.

After we finished, we had quite a pile of stuff to give to Salvation Army, so I loaded  up the car with it, along with returnables, an empty propane container and went off to Jamestown, after lunch and got my stops done.  I also wanted to see what was being done at McCrea's point in Jamestown, the end of a new walk being done in Jamestown.  For the moment, it's closed to the public but there's lots of work being done.  We usually put our kayaks in the Chadakoin River at that spot if we want to paddle up to the mouth of the lake.

We both looked forward a kayak paddle around 5:30, as we did not get one one in in the morning. We paddled down to Wells Bay easily and  had to fight the wind a bit on the way home though the wind was hardly noticeable along the shoreline, just out in the middle of the lake.  Afterwards, we could hardly wait to sit down on the porch and have a glass of wine.  The late afternoon sky was picturesque, lots of puffy clouds, a crispy clearness to the shorelines.  Dinner was easy, leftover moussaka, corn, and a salad, and as I mentioned, we watched STILL ALICE.

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By the way, the film alludes to a poem, "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop that I love and have taught many times.  It's about 'losing someone', we assume the poet's lover. But it works well in the movie, too, as Moore is losing her self.  I have included it below:

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.