1. After I mailed a package to Debbie, I dropped in at Beach Bum Bakery to see what Rebecca had available. She offered me a buttered slice of French bread she's just taken out of the oven and it was divine, especially the contrast between the hard, crunchy crust and the soft, delicious bread inside. I bought a loaf of this bread as well as one of her incomparably delicious chocolate chip cookies.
Once home, I cut slices off the French bread loaf and made myself two Swiss cheese and beef sandwiches with yellow mustard. Later on, I decided to die and go to heaven and ate the chocolate chip cookie -- not all at once -- no, I broke it in half and pretended like I was eating two cookies at two separate times.
2. When I left Beach Bum Bakery, as I rocketed down McKinley Ave., I noticed that Cas's pickup was parked in front of The Lounge. I squealed to a stop, parked, and as I sauntered across the street, Bob was coming out of The Lounge and he interrupted a very important errand he was running, invited me into The Lounge's inner sanctum, offered me a Bud Zero, and we yakked about fantasy baseball, especially his League 2 team's amazing come from behind victory over my squad the day before, casinos, and Debbie's purchase of her new car.
It was really fun to yak away for a while and I look forward to when the MLBaseball playoffs begin and the possibility of watching some afternoon games in The Lounge.
3. I returned this evening to watching Telford's Change. I tried to resist thinking about my first experience watching this series on Sunday evenings in 1979 while travel with my first wife in the U.K. But, I couldn't.
My mind went back to October of 1981. She and I walked down to the Prince Puckler's ice cream shop that used to be near the corner of Franklin Blvd and Villard St. and for the first time my wife told me she didn't think she wanted to be married any longer.
This conversation over bittersweet nugget ice cream kicked off about two months of discussion and by December we separated.
In the course of those two months, I asked my wife when she started thinking about ending our marriage.
She told me she began thinking about it in 1979 while we were traveling those three months in the U.K. and Denmark. I would add, it was also when we were watching Telford's Change.
At the heart of Telford's Change is the tension that divides the two main characters, Sylvia Telford and her husband, Mark.
As I watched tonight, I marveled at the how pointedly and eloquently Brian Clark's script brings marital tension to life, how superbly interactions between Sylvia and Mark often begin with both characters doing their best to keep things civil, but how some turn in their conversation pulls them back into the conflicts that exist between them, and once again they air out how each of them sees things and nothing gets resolved.
In this ten episode series, I empathize most with Sylvia, but I recognize Mark's blind spots as my own.
Forty-six years later, the old anger, disillusionment, confusion, and suffering I experienced for years in the process of our divorce and its, for me, long aftermath, are gone. I've come to my own understanding of the dissolution of that marriage, but only after coming to grips with what made me so difficult to live with.
Two aspects of the power of art came to mind as I watched Episodes 4 and 5 tonight.
Art often gives voice and coherence to ways we have felt but couldn't express or to unarticulated thoughts we've had swim around in our minds. Sometimes art can embolden us to take hold of and act on thoughts and feelings we have had but were afraid of.
Art also can help us understand experiences not our own. Art makes it more and more difficult to say, "I've never experienced that and so I don't understand it." For example, I've never been a woman who felt trapped in a marriage. But, as I watch Telford's Change, as I listen to Sylvia and as her feelings get inside me, I develop empathy and understanding. Much of what I've come to understand about people whose experiences are vastly different than my own has come from reading, seeing movies and plays, and spending time with paintings and other art gallery pieces.
I'll never know what impact Telford's Change had on my first wife back in 1979, whether Sylvia's articulation of her discontent gave voice and coherence to my first wife's discontent.
I don't know.
I'll never know.
But, I can imagine it did.
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