1. It's Sunday, Dec. 4th. I suddenly started honking big coughs, five or six at a time, on the evening of Nov. 26th. I started needing long periods of sleep and, over time, sneezing accompanied the coughing. On Sunday, Dec. 4th, the coughing problem has subsided, almost gone away. But I'm clearing congestion out of my nasal passages every 20-30 minutes. I'm not nearly as tired, although even as I sit in the Vizio room, I nod off from time to time. Resting and hydrating seem to help. I'm being patient. I think my recovery is moving in the right direction.
2. I sent out emails today to different friends telling them I wouldn't be in Eugene Wednesday for Linda's retirement party. I also wanted Kathleen to know I wouldn't be staying at her house while she's back east. I didn't want to cancel my trip. Sure, I'll be going to Portland and Eugene another time. I hope as early as possible in 2023, but I'm very disappointed to be missing Linda's retirement party. Any number of people I worked with and enjoyed over many, many years at LCC will be celebrating Linda's retirement and, much like the awesome back yard party we had at the Dane's in 2018 for Michael and Lynn's retirement, it would have been a source of immeasurable joy to be a part of another reunion of people I worked with at LCC.
I realize I can meet up with Linda on our own and we can celebrate her retirement at a later date.
But the event of her retirement party, the collective outpouring of our gratitude and admiration for Linda, our joining together to wish her the very best as she embarks on her years of retirement, the opportunity to be with so many people from LCC I remember dearly, this experience on Dec 7 cannot be replicated and I'm aggrieved I'll be missing it.
3. After feeling wistful writing these emails, I decided to watch the movie, Waking Ned Devine (1998).
For the life of me, I don't know why I didn't see this movie when it came out nor do I know why I never rented it until this evening. I remember hearing movie lovers at McMenamin's High Street Pub, no doubt on Wednesdays nights when I regularly dropped in for a pint or two after teaching my evening Shakespeare class, talking about the movie. They loved it.
But I didn't see it until tonight.
It's a nearly perfectly realized expression of comic release. In the nearly enchanted world of a tiny Irish village, the citizens are almost magically released from the usual conventions of law, honesty, and rules when one of their own, Ned Devine, wins the Irish National Lottery and dies of shock upon discovering he's holding the winning ticket.
A professor I studied under at the Univ of Oregon, Clark Griffith, used to refer to deceit in fiction as "diddling". He was particularly insightful about Mark Twain's diddling stories.
I thought of Clark Griffith while watching this movie as, in the community driven spirit of comedy, the villagers collectively agree to diddle the Lottery inspector so they can collect the lottery winnings of a dead man.
As in any conventional comedy, the story also features a blocking figure, a villager unwilling to play along and if this enriching diddle is going to succeed, her efforts to thwart them must be defeated.
Conventionally, tragedies end in death and comedies conclude with marriage and mirthful celebration - a feast maybe, with plenty of drink, or a community dances together, or people join together in song or making music.
I won't give away how this comedy ends, but the spirit and rhythm of this story's progression all hinges on the always present corpse of Ned Devine.
It's a comedy sprung to life by Ned Devine's sudden death.
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