The Movies

JWise Life

EO movie poster

We went to the movies for the first time in a long time, so what drew us in? A Polish film titled EO that follows the life of a donkey. Not only does the film follow this creature, but it’s essentially shot from the point of view of the donkey as it wanders around a cruel world, dreaming and apparently looking for something. We never really know what the donkey is chasing, if anything at all, but it does seem to have a purpose. Along the way, the donkey is abused, traded, used, and loved, but ultimately it meets its end in darkness. The film, with the closing scene, becomes an indictment of the cruelty people inflict not only upon one another but on our animals, too. Through the eyes of the donkey, the people of the film are essentially as aimless as the animal we are focusing on. They flash in and out of having a purpose, only to turn around to harm something or someone. Even in one of the redeeming scenes where EO is being used to give handicapped children rides in the forest, someone out of view of the camera falls a tree, implying to me that at every turn, there is someone destroying something.

This is not a feel-good film; nothing is resolved, and as I said, it ends in darkness, except for the sound of the bolt that obviously takes EO’s life. The movie is a beautiful visual narrative driven by only a minimum of dialog between Polish and Italian. It leaves you thinking about our own senseless natures when most people likely believe that our animals are the senseless ones. I feel like there’s more to this film I need to unpack, and nearly wish I’d kept notes about the pacing, dream sequences from the donkey’s perspective, and the various acts of human depravity. There’s something more here than meets the eye, though I may also be overthinking things.

Originally, this post was about nothing more than the donkey movie, but as it turned out, we opted for a few more movies in rapid succession after not finding disappointment in EO. Next up was Women Talking, which had us listening to a conversation about the underlying unpredictable nature of violence in men and boys. We followed this with The Banshees of Inisherin, featuring two actors that both of us enjoy, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who portray the stupidity of war using our protagonists as stand-ins for opposing sides in a conflict. Our final movie in this sequence was Tár with Cate Blanchett. At first blush, it felt like watching paint dry, but a day later, we were talking about the poison of narcissism. In some way, Tár had something in common with EO in that we are primarily looking at the world through the eyes of something that is difficult to relate to: on one hand, a donkey and, on the other, a narcissist. And if I want to stretch, Banshees features a donkey that ends up playing a pivotal role that brings up thoughts of the donkey in EO.

I believe it has been years since the two of us have seen so many movies in quick succession.

Winter Pleasures

JWise Life

Caroline Wise wearing her ruana in Phoenix, Arizona

Here we are in January, the height of winter in Phoenix, Arizona. Clothes appropriate for the season have been unpacked and brought back into the rotation of daily attire. Early morning walks demand the full complement of heavy clothing for the near-freezing temperatures (gloves, beanies, fleece sweaters, scarves, wool base layer), and on the coldest days, even our shells are donned before we leave the house. This being the desert, we know that the day will warm to something quite comfortable, so a modified winter attire is required for the rest of the day. For Caroline, this winter has afforded her the opportunity to wear a ruana she just bought this past summer. A ruana is a poncho-style wrap and translates to “Land of Blankets.” This ruana is a special article for Caroline as it was expensive compared to what she’s accustomed to spending on textiles, but as it was made by Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco or CTTC, the same group of Peruvian women who made the purse she’s been carrying for years. Woven in very similar colors, she had an affinity for the ruana at first sight. The Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco was formed by Nilda Callañaupa, who was also on hand at the Santa Fe Folk Art Market when (with some encouragement from me) Caroline admitted that she’d love to own a ruana.

Like so many things, we wonder, am I buying this because I’ll actually use it, or am I suffering from buy-stuff fever? The ruana was actually brought out in December, but it wasn’t until Caroline had worn it about a dozen times before she voiced how happy she was that she let the impulse to buy it play through. The scarf she’s wearing is a hand-painted affair from Russia, and the pendant was a gift from her mom.

As for me and my winter attire? A Smart Wool medium-weight base layer shirt in black that I wear under the same shirts I wear during the rest of the year and long black jeans that replace the shorts I wear for the other 8 or 9 months.

Happy Silvester

JWise Life

Frankfurt, Germany on New Years

It’s 4:00 p.m. in Phoenix, Arizona, Happy New Year! In Germany, New Year’s Eve is known as Silvester (because December 31st is the feast day of St. Silvester, who was the pope credited with converting Emperor Constantine in the 4th century), and for Caroline and me, 4:00 p.m. is when we celebrate the new year. You see, Frankfurt, all of Germany for that matter, comes alive as revelers endure the cold out on the street until the bells start to ring for midnight and the crowds lose themselves in a riot of fireworks and noise. For the next 30 minutes, the fireworks will continue to sound out across the country. This tradition goes all the way back to pre-Christian times when there was a fear that Wotan and his demons could cause trouble during the dark days between December 25th and January 5th. This was called the “Wild Hunt,” and making lots of fire and noise was thought to keep the wild ones at bay. In years past, we’d call my mother-in-law Jutta just before midnight her time so she could open a window and share the sound of the city with us, along with a running commentary about the colors and height of the displays; this was our tradition for nearly a quarter century. While Caroline talked with her mom again this New Year’s Eve (same procedure as every year), there’s no getting her to move over to the window, phone in hand, anymore. No matter, we will forever celebrate Silvester at 4:00 p.m. and remember how often we’d enjoy the excitement of Caroline’s mom describing what she was seeing as we listened to the explosions, whistles, and church bells ringing. Happy Silvester, everyone!

Stages

JWise Life

John Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

Cartoons, Playing, Snow, Toys

Cartoons, Bicycles, Reading, Sitcoms

Edgar Allen Poe, Joe Namath, MASH, Kiss

Punk, Stephen King, Farrah Fawcett, Girlfriend, Car

William Burroughs, Industrial Music, Photography

Drugs, Nihilism, Rage

Computers, God, Desert

U.S. Army, Prostitution, Europe

German Philosophy, EBM, Art, Video, Bukowski

Marriage, Fatherhood, Defeat

Transgressive writers, NY Underground Film, Serial Killers, Guitar music

Romance, Chinese Culture, Sharing, Love

Techno, Terrence McKenna, Computer Graphics, Chaos

Heartbreak, Death Metal, Despair, Rebirth

Baudrillard, Minimalism, Socialism

Operating Systems, Technology, Networks, Information Distribution

Aliens, Quantum Physics, Time, Drum and Bass, Complexity

Travel, Cooking, Multi-Culturalism, World Music, Writing

Farming, Adventure Travel, Origins/Science

French Philosophy, Environment, Education, Anger

Beauty, Love, Aging, Stupidity, Decay

I first composed this list back in September with the idea that it was going to become a basis for something or other, and instead, it has lingered as a draft. It was time to do something with it or delete it, and so after reviewing this for the last time I’ve decided to just post it and allow it to represent what it will.

Love, Beauty, Travel, Writing, Reading, Discovery, Growing Older.

Travel Break

JWise Life

Caroline Wise x-ray of right foot in Phoenix, Arizona

Caroline opted in for a second bunion surgery this year, in part due to insurance reasons, but the main reason was comfort. Back in August, we took a month of travel off while she was off her feet for a few weeks, allowing her left foot to heal. Here we are in December, and now the right foot has been repaired, and we’ll be giving it the same consideration.

Voting Gave Me Covid

JWise Life

Caroline Wise voting in Phoenix, Arizona

I didn’t even get out of the car, didn’t touch a thing; all I know is that after we voted, we both came down with Covid. The obvious conclusion here is that voting causes COVID-19. It was early Friday, after our eye examinations, that we drove down to an Official Ballot Drop Box to deposit our mail-in ballots, enjoyed lunch at Otro, probably infecting everyone, and then went about our day innocent to the plague we were now carrying.

For Caroline, it started with a hint of something going wrong on Thursday (November 3rd), while for me, I thought I was having psychosomatic moments on Friday when I imagined I experienced a moment of quickly passing discomfort in my throat. By Saturday, I knew I had this cold as well. Caroline had been working from home Friday, although her Covid tests on Thursday and Friday were negative. Well, with me fully into the feelings of yuck on Sunday and Caroline having a seriously difficult time sleeping, we picked up some fresh test kits, and on Monday, November 7th, she tested positive. That could only mean that I was in the same boat.

Monday, November 7th: On Friday, I fetched ginger and lemon to make us ginger, lemon, and honey tea, which, while it might only be a placebo effect, seemed to make both of us feel better. By today, we’re on our 4th lemon, and while we have a bit of an annoying cough, sometimes seriously rough for Caroline, we still manage to eat well, go for walks, and get things done. Obviously, I’m hoping we are on the 5-day infection plan that tomorrow Caroline will be well on the way back to normal, and that by Wednesday, I see light at the end of the tunnel. My temperature is reading about 100, and my blood oxygen is 94; this moves around from normal temperature, while blood oxygen is often 97.

While Caroline tested negative, we went out as usual to the grocery store, a small breakfast joint, and me to Costco and Starbucks. Now, with the confirmation of COVID-19, we masked up on our outing to Walgreens for some Mucinex DM that we understand might help with Caroline’s cough. I’ll be taking it tonight as a pre-emptive measure just in case I start showing some of her bad symptoms. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, we are both experiencing some low-grade headache tension, but other than those things, all seems to be going along no worse than a cold. Here’s hoping our vaccinations and boosters deliver a relatively mild case of this virus.

Positive Covid tests

Tuesday update: I felt like meh all day, though somehow I found the energy and mind space to write all day updating old blog posts, nearly maniacally. I had a 40-minute nap, went shopping for a couple of things, and even got to my 10,000-step daily minimum for the first time in a couple of days.

Wednesday: Woke up at a more normal time, blood oxygen 99, temperature also 99. And then, around 7:30 this morning, my sense of smell took a hit. I tried smelling dried shrimp, which normally almost immediately triggers a gag reflex, and found that I can breathe it in all I want, the same goes for fish sauce. It’s 8:30 pm now; I could go to sleep, as a matter of fact, I likely will, minutes from now. I’m about to start my third box of Kleenex, and we’ve used more ginger and lemons in the past five days than we can believe. On the good news side of things, I’ve updated no less than 25 old blog posts that needed a refresh of photos and some more details regarding trips we took between 2004 and 2006. On the bad news side of things, I’ve only made it to 9,300 steps today, and the remaining 700 is just too much to ask.

Thursday: is that a hint of scents? Sporadic and randomly, I catch glimpses of smells with my tongue responding to spicy and sour. My nose is a faucet, while Caroline’s cough is mostly sidelined.

Friday: Meh. To our surprise, Caroline’s boss delivered a care package in the afternoon, complete with a big batch of homemade menudo (courtesy of a coworker and her mom), fruit, more soup and crackers, and cough drops.

Saturday (November 12): The dried shrimp smells of ammonia to both of us now. We both can smell cider vinegar, though not at full strength. I asked Caroline to put on some of her Joop perfume; I can pick that up, and the first bite of banana has hints of its flavor. We’ve stopped the constant run of the nose; temperatures are absolutely back to normal. Updating old posts and photos has continued at a blinding speed. Yesterday, I reworked all 170 photos that accompanied our 8-day January 2010 Yellowstone vacation as I apparently took some shortcuts prepping those out of the 4,202 that I shot over those days. Caroline is on a Skype call with her father, Hanns, and I’m about to get working on old blog posts marked as partials where I need to update photos, text, or both as part of making our index of trips complete.

Whoa, a burger from Five Guys punched right through my reawakening sense of taste while the potatoes cooking in oil was the first thing that made it through our masks after we walked thru the door. Is it possible that life is returning to normal?

Sunday: Seems that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Monday: Caroline tested negative twice between yesterday and this morning, and with that, we are going to try to throw ourselves back into normal life.

My final conclusion, I believe we started getting sick before October 28th, just prior to our trip to Duncan, Arizona. This is based upon data from our Fitbits and what I believe is one of the main reasons why Google bought the company. On that day, our resting heart rates both started going up from their norm in the mid-60s up to reaching 80 resting beats per minute when we were in the worst part of COVID-19. Once that peaked and our symptoms started to subside, our resting heart rates began their return to normal. I suspect that in the next 48 hours, I’ll be back around 64 beats per minute. The thing is, we didn’t know we were getting sick until November 3rd and 4th, while it appears our fitness tracker was showing us that our bodies were responding to infection, though we couldn’t have known precisely what until our Covid tests alit with a positive reading. I don’t like the idea that Google knows we’re getting sick way before we do.