Best of Intentions, Chapter 6

Ben is slowly, clumsily, hesitatingly walking through a dense, wooded area, like a forest or a jungle, finding it difficult to maintain his balance.  He's searching for someone or something.  His eyes dart rapidly all over while examining the terrain.  He's dressed as a hunter, but he has no gun.  He shouts "Frank...Frank...Frank," but there is no response. 

Ben wakes up startled.  It's his recurring dream again.  

Ben, Bob and Billy are drinking beer after work at Sereno's Bar.  

"Mexico City?  It ain't safe for an American," said Billy.

"You can't believe everything you hear," responded Ben.  "There're a lot of nice people there.  Besides, this project I'm working on with a Mexican professor is important to me."

"Yeah, and you can look up that Latin doll you met in New York," chuckled Bob.

"I'll never see her again.  I don't even know how to find her."

"So find another.  They're all just as sexy."

Miguel and his colleague and friend, Eduardo, meet in their well-decorated law office.

Eduardo asks, "How is your sister?"

"Very happy.  Lately, she's been writing some American she met on our last trip to New York.  Now she wants to invite him here for Christmas."

"You're joking.  You can't let her do that.  It can only lead to trouble.  These Americans!  I don't know why she won't see me again?  It would be good if you could make her understand what's best for her."

"I don't interfere with her life.  She's her own woman.  What she wants, I support.  I can do nothing to help you.  I agree this American is a mistake, but she'll learn, perhaps the hard way."

On December 23, 1939, Rita and Miguel wait nervously for their guests to arrive at the passenger terminal at Balbuena Military Airport, near Mexico City.  Finally, Betty Sobel, Miguel's American girlfriend, comes through the gate.  She's young, gorgeous, overdressed and wears too much perfume and makeup.  Upon seeing Miguel, she rushes up and kisses him passionately.

"Easy, baby.  We've plenty of time," Miguel admonishes.  "Rita, I'd like you to meet Miss Betty Sobel.  Betty, this is my sister, Senora Rita Chavez Ramirez."

"Welcome to Mexico City, Betty.  It is a pleasure to meet you.  Did you see my friend, Ben Johnson, on the flight?"

"Who?"

Just then Ben appears at the gate on his way to spending a Merry Christmas with Rita in Mexico City. 

   

Fear of Death

Woody Allen once said, “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”  I think both my parents enjoyed such an avoidance.  They were both victims of dementia, so when they died, they didn’t realize they were dying.  In a sense, they weren’t there when it happened.

The actress, Valerie Harper, said “We’re all terminal.”  From the moment we're conceived, we're doomed.  We as human beings are no different than any other life form.  All plants and animals die.  Would we prefer being rocks that just sit there for a million years?  I think not.

In the 1967 Western movie, Hombre, Paul Newman's character, John Russell, says, "We all die.  Only a question of when."

In the 1992 Western movie Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s character, Will Munny, says, “Hell of a thing, killing a man.  You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever going to have.”  Life is all we really have.  It defines us.  You don’t want to lose it.

In the 1962 film, Birdman of Alcatraz, Burt Lancaster's character, Robert Stroud, says, "Life is too precious a gift to waste it."  So, let's not.  

I remember as a child realizing for the first time that one day I would die.  It sent a chill up my spine.  Then I realized most probably that would only happen at some very far off unimaginable time.  I could relax.  Old people died.  I wasn’t an old person.  I was very young.  Then a friend from high school was killed in an industrial accident the summer after graduation.  Young people die, too.

For some period during my early life I maintained an irrational belief that special people, like me, could avoid the inevitable.  However, on June 11, 1979, I became convinced that everyone dies.  That was the day John Wayne succumbed to cancer. 

Some fear the pain of dying.  Some fear the great unknown of what will happen to us after we die.  To me, this is one of the reasons for religion, to provide us with answers for this great unknown.  However, what I fear is the end of a life that I am enjoying so much.  I want to keep going, for as long as possible.  I fear missing the day after I die, and the day after that.

I have always enjoyed the study of history.  It is fascinating to learn about what had been going on before I was born.  Take Abraham Lincoln.  Born in his family’s log cabin in Kentucky and died in a stranger’s house in Washington, D.C. fifty-six years later after taking a bullet to the brain from an assassin’s gun.  His life was over.  Eighty years later, I am born.  I study Lincoln's life. 

Now history includes the study of things that have transpired during my lifetime.  I remember where I was when John F. Kennedy died.  But, where was I when Lincoln died?  No, I didn’t exist.  That is a strange concept, not existing.  How could I, who has inhabited my body for over seventy-one years and have had thousands of experiences during that time, not exist at some point prior to my birth.  Not only at some point, but for millions of years before according to some. 

I believe that I was created accidentally, as we all are.  One day, most likely in November of 1944, my parents, those same people who died long ago, were engaged in a mutual (I hope) act of passion.  And then, it was like I won the mother of all lotteries.  I was conceived, one sperm beat out millions of others for the chance to invade a single egg and create my life.  I am so happy to have been created, but where was I the day before and the day before that?  The answer is nowhere.  And where will I be the day after my death?  The same place, nowhere.

Reading about history and really about books and movies of any kind has taught me that they all have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  That’s kind of like life.  It has a beginning, a middle, and end.  But does life have a final, final end?  Can we leave anything behind after our body dies to continue our life in some respect?  I love reading the books of Charles Dickens, whom I think is the greatest writer of the English language.  Who can forget, “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  When I read his books, it’s as if he is talking directly to me, even though he died one hundred forty-six years ago.  Perhaps future generations will read what I have written in this blog.

Another way that life goes on is through progênie.  I have, to date, two children and two grandchildren.  I hope they will carry my memory forward to future generations with personal anecdotes, vídeos, and photos.  I knew my mother’s parents, who emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States of America around 1904.  Subsequently, my mother’s mother’s father, a man named Gamsey Elkin, who was born around 1860, came, too.  I didn’t know him very well.  His English was not good and he suffered memory loss.  Who were his parents?  I don't know.  It’s as if they have disappeared.  It’s as if they never existed.  Nobody alive today remembers them.  I hope that doesn’t happen to me.

Perhaps of more importance than our memory is that our progênie pass forward our genes to future generations of descendants.  In that way, a part of you continues after your body dies.  Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln has no descendants still living today.  However, his memory will live forever in the history of our nation.  I would prefer that both my memory and my genes get past forward in perpetuity.  

The bottom line is to forget about death and live our life each day, each moment, as if death doesn’t exist.  That is basically how we live our lives.  That is the only sane way we can live our lives.  We don’t know when death will come.  We only know that it will.  There are no guarantees of future tomorrows.  So live today.  Carpe Diem!  Seize the Day!  Aproveite o Dia!              

 

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

My wife, Cristina, and I were lying on my parent's bed in their  house on West Seneca Street in Oswego.  I heard the front door bell ring.  I wanted to ignore it hoping whomever it was would go away.  It kept ringing.  I did not respond.  Eventually, I noticed someone standing in the foyer just inside the front door.  It was a man wearing glasses.  At first, I was stunned.  Then, he started walking towards us.  I was in shock.  I couldn't budge.  As he got closer, I saw he had a gun which he was pointing at me.  I was very frightened.  I started shouting, "Who are you?  Who are you?"

Then Cristina woke me up.  She said I was shouting in my sleep.  It was just a dream.  It reminded me of another dream I had years ago when I was living in North Carolina.  I was lying alone on my bed at night trying to fall asleep when I noticed a dark, forbidding figure approaching me very slowly.  I was frozen with fear, not able to move or shout for help.  Finally, I woke up from this awful dream, almost as a defense mechanism.  Who needs these types of dreams?

I dream a lot, or I should say I remember a lot of my dreams.  And I believe that most of them are negative.  For years, I dreamed of being in school and having some kind of a problem: I can't find the exam site, I arrive late for the exam, I didn't study for the exam, I won't be able to graduate, etc. 

Then there are the Frank Ruggio (see blog post 12/29/2014 - A Weekend in New York) dreams.  He was my best friend from seventh grade through high school.  After graduation, I turned my back on Frank while finding new friends in a new life far from Oswego.  When I returned for our 25th high school reunion in 1988, I wanted so much to talk to him and rekindle our friendship.  Too late.  Frank died of cancer six months before.  I was full of regrets.  I have had many dreams since then when I talk to Frank only to wake up to the realization that he is really dead.  Bummer!  (I've also had dreams talking to my deceased parents and brother, Ted.)

Besides the Frank Ruggio dreams, I have had an inordinate number of dreams where I am in Oswego, my home town, a place I left almost fifty years ago and have unfortunately been back relatively few times since, outside of my dreams.

Not all my dreams are negative, only most of them.  In a recent one, I told a friend that a movie I wrote won an Academy Award, as if I were Dalton Trumbo with Spartacus (see last week's post).

Near the end of the 1941 film, The Maltese Falcon, the actor, Ward Bond, asks, "What is that?" referring to a statuette of a bird.  Humphrey Bogart responds, "The stuff that dreams are made of."  Really? 

Near the end of the 1971 film, Big Jake, the actor, Richard Boone, asks the same question referring to a trunk full of a ransom for the grandson of a rich man who had been kidnapped.  I couldn't believe that John Wayne's reply was an exact copy of Bogart's.  Is nothing sacred?

I never have dreams where I receive a valuable work of art or millions of dollars.  There seems to be a divide between my experiences with bad dreams and a cultural belief that people dream of something wonderful.  For example, "My dream is to have a million dollars."  Perhaps the word "wish," as in "I wish I had a million dollars" would be preferable to the word "dream."  That would make more sense.  It's the stuff that wishes are made of. 

But, why do I have such terrible dreams while I am sleeping?   Sigmund Freud "believed dreams are a window into our subconscious.  He believed they reveal a person's unconscious desires, thoughts, motivations.  Freud thought dreams were a way for people to satisfy urges and desires that were unacceptable to society." 

However, there are a lot of various theories about dreams that are still being researched.  One such is that our mind is simply trying to entertain us while we sleep.  I wish mine would stop trying.     

 

 

I'm Spartacus

This coming Friday, December 9, 2016, will be the 100th birthday of Kirk Douglas, the last of the old time movie stars I grew up watching.  I think the first of his films I remember seeing at the Oswego Theater was the 1954 Disney film, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with James Mason.  Three years later, it was Gunfight at the O.K. Corral with Burt Lancaster.  Then in 1960, Kirk made the epic film, Spartacus, with Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov (won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), and Tony Curtis.

Kirk's given name was Issur Danielovitch.  He was born into an immigrant (from present day Belarus) Jewish family in Amsterdam, New York, a couple of hours by car from Oswego.  Kirk had six older sisters, some of whom my Aunt Frances told me she befriended when she worked there as a teacher.

 

After graduating from St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, Kirk moved to New York City to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.  While he was aiming to be a stage actor, his actress-friend, Lauren Bacall, recommended Kirk to Hal Wallis, a movie director, who cast Douglas in his first film, The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers (1946), with Barbara Stanwyck, which I saw on TV. 

Among other of Kirk's hit movies I saw on the little screen were Out of the Past (1947), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Champion (1949 - nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor, but lost to Broderick Crawford in All The King's Men), Young Man with a Horn (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Detective Story (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952 - nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor, but lost to Gary Cooper in High Noon), Lust for Life (1956 - Nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor, but lost to Yul Brynner in The King and I), Paths of Glory (1957), Lonely are the Brave (1962), and The War Wagon (1967).  I also remember seeing him in Seven Days in May (1964) at a movie theater in Philadelphia.

Spartacus was made by Kirk's company, Bryna Productions, named after his mother.  Besides the above-mentioned Academy Award, it won three others: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color, Best Cinematography, Color, and Best Costume Design, Color. 

Spartacus is the story of a slave forced to train to be a gladiator (Spartacus played by Kirk) who led a revolt against the Roman Empire in the 1st Century BC.  The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, a writer who had been blacklisted by Hollywood ten years before because he refused to testify before the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating a possible communist infiltration of Hollywood.  Douglas broke the blacklist by putting Trumbo's actual name (instead of pseudonym) in the movie's credits.

 

In 1991, Spartacus was re-released into movie theaters and I took my daughter, Rachel, to see it.  There is a very dramatic scene after the revolt is defeated and those captured are offered to have their lives spared (they will be returned to slavery) if they identify their leader, Spartacus.  Just as he is about to identify himself, all of those around him stand up and each of them say, "I'm Spartacus."  Sitting a row behind us in the theater was the actor, Matt Dillon (The Flamingo Kid, 1984) who also called out, like the actors in the movie, "I'm Spartacus."

Some years later, but before his stroke in 1996, Kirk made a tour of the USA doing a one-man show, talking about his life and career.  I attended one of his performances at The Town Hall in New York City.  I remember Kirk doing a scene from the Broadway play he previously did, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."  I regret not taking advantage of the opportunity to talk to him after the show at his book signing (The Ragman's Son which I read).  Let's all wish Kirk a very happy 100th birthday.