It was autumnal when I landed in Chicago Saturday afternoon. Temperature around 50ºF/10ºC. Solid overcast gray sky. Raw wind. Turning leaves. Leaves on the ground. Low sun with slanted angles. And it has pretty much remained that way.
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A few months ago I bought THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PIE SOCIETY from BookBub. I was a bit skeptical because this is clearly a ‘feel good’ book and they are often sappy, but I read and enjoyed it very much. To simplify, the story is of a young British woman writer who in 1946 becomes involved with people on the Island of Guernsey, British but near the coast of France, and the story of their lives under German occupation during WWII.
I noticed on Netflix that the book has been made into a movie, which Carol and I watched yesterday. While the book is richer and more complex than the movie, the movie remains true to the essential details and spirit.
I recommend both book and film. I would read the book first. Both did make Carol and me feel good, and I expect they will you too.
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Something a friend wrote recently caused me to think about attitudes toward dying.
I have written that I don’t believe that on some levels any of us really believes in our death, even though on others we know our death is inevitable. We are all the centers of our own universes, and may be the sole inhabitants, and we cannot conceive of a universe without our presence in it.
I have also written that life is really only forty years long. That almost everything of use and merit our species has done has been accomplished by people roughly twenty to sixty. There are a few exceptions and you can stretch sixty to sixty-five without changing the truth of the statement.
At soon to be seventy-seven I am obviously trying to be one of those exceptions. I express no opinion as to whether I have succeeded.
As far back as STORM PASSAGE, I noted two diametrically opposed attitudes toward death.
Dylan Thomas writing about the death of his father: ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light.’
And Socrates: ‘Why should I fear death, for when I am death is not, and when death is I am not.’
Perhaps both are appropriate for different stages off life.
Those who die young before having had a life may rightly rage.
Those who die old have no cause for rage and would better try to emulate Socrates.
For myself I face oblivion with equanimity, though I am apprehensive about the probable pain in the process.
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I thank David for sending me the photo taken by his wife when they visited GANNET last summer, perhaps titled: Old Boy of Summer.
