Sunday Recap

Sunday morning I went for my weekly long run on the Katy Trail, starting at the Lewis & Clark Boathouse in Saint Charles and heading east. The skies were overcast and the temperature was mild for June. I felt much better than I had the previous few days. I ran for about 12 miles and felt fresh from beginning to end.

I had struggled with sleep for the better part of the last week. It’s an ongoing and maybe lifelong struggle. I finally slept decently Saturday night and was thankful for that. I’ve been trying a glass of kefir at night and it seems to be helping.

Sunday afternoon I watched The Flash, which I would describe as simple amusement. These superhero movies are difficult to justify a theater ticket price for, but I wanted to go to the cinema. Michael Keaton is very good in it. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and am a huge fan of the Tim Burton Batman movies. Having Keaton reprise his role as the dark knight was enough for me. Maybe that’s all a movie actually needs to be worth watching.

I’m digesting the new Avenged Sevenfold album, Life is but a Dream. So far my favorite song on the album is “Cosmic,” which seems to be about reincarnation and eternal love. A close second is probably “(O)rdinary.”

Five years ago I was in northeastern China and planning a beach trip to Dalian. Time is a subtle yet merciless adversary.

I finished the book Abdi’s World, which is an autobiography of one of my favorite athletes, Abdi Abdirahman. He’s the only marathon runner to qualify for five Olympics. There’s a key takeaway regarding his longevity: he’s capable of experiencing joy and fun.

I try to refrain from staring at my Garmin watch when I run for that reason. Fun should be the objective; it’s what will keep me going far after many of the young studs have hung up their shoes.

Some days we’re fast and other days we’re slow, but hopefully we’re smiling regardless.

The Fast and the Furious

So I watched Fast X last week. It is not a smart movie, nor is it one I had any business paying to see in theaters. I was entertained though.

There’s a scene where Vin Diesel’s character, Dom Toretto, knocks a giant rolling bomb into a river by launching his car into a construction vehicle with a ball wrecker. The construction vehicle’s wrecking ball ricochets and knocks the bomb off its intended path, falling into a river and exploding underwater. I laughed, but at least I wasn’t sleepy.

Literally every problem in the universe of this saga is solved by driving cars very fast. That’s a terrible philosophy for real life, but a great one for cinema.

In another scene the villain, played by Jason Momoa, says something to Dom along the lines of, “I’ve stolen everything from you!” before intending to blow him up with an explosive device. Dom replies, “You forgot to steal one thing: my car!” He then gets in a car and out-drives the explosion. Once again, I laughed out loud. But heck, I’d rather laugh at something than be bored by it.

Will I watch part 11? Probably. At least it isn’t one of those boredom inducers that plague Oscar season.

Speaking of fast and furious drivers, more people these days drive like maniacs, with borderline kamikaze-level reckless abandon. Stress is contagious and the recklessness of the modern driver seems symptomatic of a deeper problem. I’ve had a few encounters with genuine psychopaths behind wheels while on my morning jogs downtown. They don’t heed red lights, crosswalks, or pedestrians in general.

Beware the modern driver and look both ways. Save the dangerous encounters on the road for the Vin Diesel movies.

My Authoritah: The Horror!

The human psyche can seem as confounding as the universe itself, if not more so.

The horror genre is very much in vogue right now. Recent film offerings such as M3GAN, Barbarian, and Smile absolutely slayed (no pun intended) the box office. This is at a time when the movie business is supposed to be in a state of slow decay (perhaps on life support thanks to streaming services and social media).

Genre does tend to reflect society. I find it interesting that on the heels of a pandemic, horror is the choice of escapism. Then again, horror is fun (for some). When effectively produced, it activates one’s fight or flight stimulus. It is an adrenaline surge, an exploration of the unknown, and a reminder of the darkness that may lie beyond societal boundaries (and a more secret and more sinister darkness within the self).

I’ve seen all three movies mentioned above. Of the three, I found Barbarian to be the most wildly unpredictable and interesting. Smile was the scariest (it’s relentlessly intense). M3GAN is formulaic but fun.

There’s an upcoming sequel/new installment to the Evil Dead franchise as well: Evil Dead Rise. The previews hint at something macabre, but whether the movie has a sense of fun remains to be seen. I do wonder if it can capture the comic and at times campy bodily horror of the Bruce Campbell-starring originals. The previous Evil Dead revamp had tons of horror, but zero chuckles. I need the modern equivalent of an Evil Dead 2 highlight: Ted Raimi dancing around in a “zombie grandma” costume and spitting profanity. What the Evil Dead originals effectively realized is that horror and comedy are closely intertwined.

The current horror series taking viewers by storm is The Last of Us. My first thought upon viewing episode one was, Damnit, they beat me to the idea of a zombie plague being started by fungi!

However, the series is based on a video game, and the idea of a fungal epidemic has actually been floating around for years. I can’t claim it as my own.

Aside from the idea of a fungus turning people into zombies, it’s a fun zombie show. It’s entertaining enough to keep me watching. It also pales in comparison to the far-superior South Korean zombie series, All of Us are Dead.

I think the series is off to a solid enough start. Pedro Pascal is an immensely talented actor who was a highlight in the Nicolas Cage meta-film Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. It’s no surprise to me that he can carry a franchise.

I think back on horror being an addiction one final time. How is it that nightmares can be so unbearable, but horror films so intoxicating?

The Origins of Wind

I woke up just before dawn, stretched, and went for a brief jog that cut straight through downtown and then looped back to my apartment. I haven’t done much jogging the past few weeks; after a few half-marathons, I decided to spend November doing other exercises and activities. You can overdo anything, after all.

The weather forecast never indicated rain, though the skies were gaunt and the air had the metallic scent of an impending storm. Puddles blotched the streets from rainfall the night before.

A torrential downpour of rain slammed down on me shortly after I crossed the St Louis Arch. Gusts of wind gained intensity and lashed rain against my face. The wind, in my imagination, seemed capable of leveling each building and tree, and finally rendering downtown a pile of rubble.

Finally, I arrived back at my apartment, totally drenched.

I thought about when I was young and I always wondered if wind had an origin. In my mind, there was some faraway land, owned by wind’s creator, initiating these gusts and storms. Or did wind just appear out of thin air?

Obviously there is a scientific explanation for wind, but some things in life are best left a mystery. The unknown opens the imagination, whereas explanations kill it.

The rain stopped about as abruptly as it arrived. There was something other-worldly about it.

The escapist in me looks for these “other-worldly” signs. The day before, I crossed a rest station on the Riverfront Trail, and it reminded me of a train station. Suddenly I imagined the train station from Spirited Away that Chahiro took to visit the witch’s twin sister. It was the same train station occupied by various spirits, navigating a strange purgatorial world.

Would I take this haunted train, and would it take me on some fantastic adventure, away from the consumerism and hustle culture that seem to prevail in the city?

Spirited Away is an amazing movie. Who were these spirits, and where were they going? Brilliantly, the movie doesn’t tell us much. Like the origins of wind, it’s best left a mystery.

Weekly Plunder: Week 14 - Tornados

The weather has been apocalyptic lately.

I woke up Friday morning to a St. Louis that was blanketed by an opaque fog that rendered the city grey and misty.

Tornados and severe storms swarmed the city later that night. Wind ripped sheets of rain sideways in steady violent pulses.

That night I dreamed myself in a small Italian village based in a mountain pass, perhaps the Basilicata. Winding marble stairways sheened under the sun and wove upward through the village along the mountain pass’s edge. The village had layers of shops and restaurants, all connected by these marble stairwells.

I climbed up the main stairwell, hoping to reach the top, stopping occasionally to view people eating gelato or sipping wine. Why couldn’t I stop and join them?

Upward still I climbed, the village narrowing as elevation rose. But each time I thought I reached the top I’d look up to see another level of the village above me. There was no end in sight, and it seemed the climb upward would last forever. Why was I climbing? I had to have the best view, I told myself.

It seems a fitting metaphor for life. I’m glad I remember that dream.

What I’m Watching: Hellbound on Netflix. A pretty weird and thought provoking Korean show that explores religion, belief, and societal control.

What I’m Reading: From Paycheck to Purpose by Ken Coleman. As I transition away from a lifestyle driven by paychecks, I find it worthwhile to have some guidance from those who walked a similar path in the past.

What I’m Listening to: “Monochrome” by Between the Buried and Me. This is an interesting song without a genre and I suspect it will mean something different to everyone, so I won’t reveal what it means to me.

What I’m Doing: I start physical therapy next week. The ankle is getting there. I jumped for the first time in four months this week, and I successfully completed a one minute run. I’m happy that I ran again before 2021 closed its window forever.

What I’m thinking: I’m thinking about that dream and the “chase to the top”. Is the pursuit worthwhile when knowing full-well that the chase has no end? Or it it better to stop, take a seat, and have some gelato in that quaint little Italian village?

An Axe for the Dragon - Thoughts on Aging

As I rehab my ankle I find my thoughts more frequently drifting towards the subject of aging.

Regarding aging, I am approaching what many people regard as the “start of the downhill trajectory,” also known as the late 30s. Things are supposed to slow down in the latter half of the 30s, and I guess they do. Recovery takes longer, muscles get weaker, and hair gets grayer. Time is an undefeated opponent; that’s what science says.

It seems there are several options regarding how to approach aging:

• Accept the body’s inevitable decay and acquiesce to its deterioration. Do what most do: allow the body to transform into an old vegetable, a shell that breathes but doesn’t live, imprisoned within a retirement home.

• Fight aging relentlessly in a futile quest to “stay on top”. This is essentially a lifelong struggle to “remain close to the peak.” You aren’t fighting to defeat the inevitable slowdown, only to delay it. The “quest to fade less quickly.”

• Age with moderation, somewhere between the other two options. Remain active, but not intense. Take walks, but accept that the adventures of yesteryear must be replaced by garden walks.

Regarding these options, I vote to reject both moderation and surrender. Full speed ahead! Bring me the Grand Canyon rapids. If my 80-year-old body can’t handle them, let the turbulent waters swallow me as I fight to reach the end.

If, one day, scoffers say that the future 80-year-old man that I am is delusional for thinking himself still a warrior, I say I’ll pick up the metaphorical axe and let fate decide.

Metaphorically speaking, when I think of aging and death I think of the film Reign of Fire, specifically the Matthew McConaughey character, Van Zan.

In arguably the greatest death scene to ever grace a bad movie, Van Zan stands on top of a building, realizing his dragon adversary is going to kill him. He has lost his battle.

So what does Van Zan do? He suicidally jumps off the building with his battle axe, preferring to die fighting. The dragon devours the defiant and screaming Van Zan as he attempts one final swing of his axe at the beast!

If the dragon is death, I’ll gladly be Van Zan. And on my way into the dragon’s throat I’ll shout, “Come on, big boy!”

The Weekly Plunder: Week 2

Funny how our judgment of colors, particularly the judgment of their beauty, can change with the seasons. Orange and yellow are suddenly more alluring, whereas spring violets and sapphires are more jarring and out of place. It’s the season of pumpkin carving and corn harvesting. Leaves are more beautiful when they decay.

What I’m watching: Season 3 of What We Do in the Shadows. Hilarious!

What I’m reading: Full Throttle by Joe Hill. Dark Carousel is a personal favorite from the collection. It gave me Something Wicked This Way Comes vibes (the dark carnival with the haunted carousel that turns kids into the elderly as they spin around).

What I’m listening to: “Trains” by Porcupine Tree

What I’m doing: rehabilitating my ankle. Every attempt forward is followed by another setback. I’m a long way from healing, unfortunately. But with my inertia I’ve found more room to think.