1. It was as if Luna had been written into a movie.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
This evening I watched Robert Altman's 1973 version of The Long Goodbye, starring Elliot Gould.
The movie opens with Gould's character, Philip Marlowe, asleep, as it turns out, at 3 a.m.
Philip Marlowe's cat, unnamed, jumps on his chest and wakes him up.
The cat is hungry, insists of being fed, and succeeds in getting Marlowe up and out of bed. The entire opening scene of the movie centers on Philip Marlowe being out of cat food, making a 3 a.m. visit to a Hollywood all night convenience store, not finding the only brand of cat food the cat will eat, and trying to trick the cat into eating the brand he had to buy.
It was such an ingenious and whimsical opening to a private detective story -- vintage Robert Altman, I'd say -- and, as it turned out, an entertaining and shrewd way to establish Philip Marlowe's character -- his loyalty and genial good will. As Marlowe leaves his apartment to go to the store, this scene, along with cutaways to a second character, Marlowe's old friend, Terry Lennox (played by Jim Bouton!), also establishes the early 1970s world of Hollywood and suggests that Marlowe is a pretty square 1950s kind of guy navigating this L. A. world of narcissism, indulgence, corruption, and experimentation.
And it all begins the way so many of my days begin: with an insistent cat demanding food at three in the morning.
I loved it.
2. I live day to day with this chronic kidney disease. Because I feel good, I don't think about having this disease very much. I keep its existence in the back of my mind.
But, every three months, for the time being, I have an appointment with my nephrologist and this week I got a reminder call that my appointment is coming up on August 11th. It startled me a bit because I had it in my head that my next appointment was in September, but I was mistaken.
So, this morning, I went to the clinic uptown and had blood drawn and produced a urine sample.
Now the fact of this disease has lodged itself in the front of my mind. In the next day or two, most likely, my lab results will be available online and, inevitably, a low level of anxiety sets in as I await the results.
I had a pleasant visit to the clinic and followed it up by going to The Bean and ordering a divinely delicious everything bagel, toasted, with lox, cream cheese, onions, and capers.
I brought the bagel home and each bite temporarily supplanted some of my anxiety with physical pleasure.
3. Today, I continued to read Jim Lichatowich's book Salmon, People, and Place. I enjoy how personal this book is. Lichatowich has had decades of experience in the Pacific Northwest studying ecological systems in forests and rivers, paying most of his attention to salmon. Because he understands the lives of salmon ecologically, he has spent these many decades in conflict with those who view salmon as a commodity and manage salmon as an industrial, commercial resource.
This has been the emphasis of my reading over the last few weeks. The worlds of beavers, whales, and salmon -- and all of nature, for that matter -- all live in ecological relationship with their surroundings and with other species. What these animals do by nature doesn't serve the human appetite for consumption or for products and so humans intervene and try to wrest control of these animals' life processes.
When it comes to salmon, this means managing salmon populations through hatcheries, raising salmon in a controlled environment.
Lichatowich examines in detail the impact this human intervention has on wild salmon and how human management of salmon is meant to compensate for the destruction of salmon habitat as humans dam rivers and log forests.
I enjoy how Lichatowich connects his insights into this industrialization of fisheries with history, philosophical ruminations, indigenous peoples' ancient stories and legends about salmon, and his own experience on the ground, absorbing forests and rivers with his senses, as well as his analytical mind. He also writes about his experiences talking in meetings and during phone calls with other biologists who are more dedicated to control and management than to being guided by ecological relationships. The money, power, political clout, and much of the popular support is behind the industrial approach, so ecological scientists like Lichatowich are always working against the current of our country's mainstream.
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