Temple of the Sea God

Here is the little temple that sits at the entrance to Pak Kok village. Pak Tai is the Taoist sea god, and one of his power symbols is the turtle. Appropriate, no? There are many little temples to him like this on the island, likely because of all the fishing that is done here. Enjoy!

The view from my front porch

Here are some of the sounds and sights I wish she and I could be sharing here on Lamma. Marcie loved early morning wildlife sounds. Turn your volume up to hear these.

The doves

Marcie and I always had a large assortment of birds that came to expect seeds or nuts or other favors from us. We gladly obliged. The birds not only enthralled Seamus, but also brought us no end of joy.

Our favorites were the mourning doves. Gentle and sweet, their calls haunt the dawn and dusk at times in San Diego. You can hear it here. They whistle when they fly off very prettily.



I had no idea before I posted this that the males were the ones who deliver the sad signature song. I believe they truly do mourn.

Toughest Post Ever

I finally finished a passable digitization of our wedding tape. It has been nothing but tears working on it. I hope you enjoy it, tears or not.

I'll try to post something substantial on our wedding trip some other time. For now, just know Marcie, who wanted nothing to do with a big wedding, got her wish. No "bridezilla" moments and no outrageous spending or gift collecting. All she wanted were love, privacy, and two in defiant testimony of sentiments they held for each other.

I was sick the whole time with flu, my voice cracked at the ceremony, and I was so very deeply in love I thought I would drown. I had no idea that i would be one of the lucky few who never quite surface. I do now, and I am forlorn even more for it.

I will post another version to the tune of "Hard Sun" sometime after I buy a copy of the soundtrack to "Into the Wild." It's the perfect length to match the video.

Sometimes I don't think I can keep on going. It will be six months on Saturday. I feel as if it was just yesterday that I held her in my arms, or even last night.

Getting closer...

So, I have been trying different settings to transfer a special video off of VHS. My latest tries have me getting pretty close to postworthy quality. I'll let you all know when I get it, and you can see it here. It may be a day or two more...

Meet Cavinia

Here is a little short film I made of Cavinia on a recent visit to her neighborhood. The film is a bit grainy, but should look okay. I have added sound, a little song into I looped, but I need to get a better sampling program that is vista compatible...

At one point I lost my footing and scared Cavinia, but she's a trusting and sweet kitty and soon was letting me make up for it.





Enjoy!

So much to post, but first... a request

We had a good time at O Izakaya lounge in Japantown. Our waiter was quite fun to watch and to film. There is one adjective which seems overused. Thesaurus, anyone? This is actually posted more for Jane and Christi than general use... They're cute as buttons, no?

Jane just cannot deal with the filming of it after a while... you'll hear her at the end. Stick around for the credits...

Tonight's Movie

So, first off, “Starting Out In The Evening” was long and it was layered. Certainly, the core story, concerning an author (Leonard Schiller, played by Frank Langella) whose long creative snooze is almost interrupted by ambitious and somewhat manipulative graduate student Heather (Laura Ambrose) is interesting. But it's not that interesting.

Not helping is all of the window dressing going on. Creative death abounds. Schiller's daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor) is a former dancer who now teaches pilates and yoga, which she characterizes as, "what happens to dancers when they die."

Ariel's smashing her head up against a wall of stereotyped 40th birthday female angst and her "Oh, my god, my clock was ticking and I think it stopped" shenanigans provide the movie with more a hoped-for audience demographic than a plot element. Lame attempts to cast Langella's Schiller as disappointed non-grandparent aside, Ariel's newly rediscovered love for, then liberation from, then love for an emotionally distant man-child only serves to set up a punchy line or two between her and her father. Even the cross-racial window dressing is just that.

Ambrose's Heather does everything she can to wring something of quality for her thesis out of Schiller, whose lethargy and doubt in engaging her seem both fortuitous and wise, if boring and lifeless. But when he finally caves in and opens up a little, it comes off as something dirty, and Ambrose's Heather seals that deal for us on all counts. No distance off-camera is off enough in this case, and that is what we get.

When the writer becomes bored with his characters, as both the on-screen and the off-screen and, likely, the screenwriter did, there is a tendency to toss them into tragedy or crisis. Sitting there waiting for it as ham-fisted telegraphing paraded across the screen was excruciating. Foreshadowing my ass. There was a veritable total eclipse every quarter hour with partials on the half.

The end of the movie lingers over small details, which will appeal to the perfectionist whose obsession with endings and closure overrides all sense of boredom. Unfortunately, the "Is it happy?" finish that redirects the movie utterly serves less a delicate touch than a mercy killing that also drags on too long before the screen blackens.

But at least Ambrose was a redhead.

My rating (1-5): No.
Marcie's Probable Rating: "Sorry, honey. That was so bad."

This review does not reflect my gratitude to my coworker for sending me the pass from the Film Commission. Listening to the crowd around me was a hoot, too. Thanks, Elizabeth.

Movies With Marcie

One of the activities Marcie and I made it a rule to do together was see previews. The San Diego Film Commission often sent Marcie tickets to movies (via email) which were in pre-release screening. Sometimes feedback was needed; sometimes it was just an audience reaction observation opportunity for the studios.

When Marcie passed, I lost that source of free tickets with her email account. However, my coworker Elizabeth sends out copies of the same tickets to me, which is nice. So far, I have not been able to see any of them, but tonight I will try to make it to see “Starting Out In The Evening.”

It appears to be one that Marcie would have enjoyed tonight's selection. From the press release and ticket blast:

All that remains for Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella) is his work. His one enduring goal in life is to finish the novel he has been laboring on for almost a decade. With his four earlier books out of print, he has learned to starve himself of the desire for the success he was once so close to, though beneath this practice lives a pull for his work to be rediscovered.

Leonard’s main contact with the outside world is his daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor), a dancer-turned-Pilates instructor, with whom he has settled into an amiable relationship, though he must hide his disappointment that at thirty-nine she is at loose ends, still looking for love and a father for a longed-for child.

We’ll see if, sans guarantee, I am able to pull a seat. It’s at the Horton Plaza 14, for which I am grateful, since there is little parking for some of the others downtown. Marcie and I also had some mischievous moments in that theater… usually because we found ourselves more interesting in the dark than the drivel we often found there. At any rate, without that distraction, I shall endeavor to provide some useful feedback, as she did, later on.

At the least, the synopsis makes the movie sound like a relevant cautionary tale for me… we’ll see. More info later.

F.

Marcie's Little Qipao (Adult Situations)

In trying to stay upbeat for a few posts, it has occurred to me that I could share some of the fun... within reason. So, as I have alluded to before, Marcie and I had quite the sexual relationship. Come back tomorrow if you don't want ot hear about it. I won't get (too) graphic.

One of the things Marcie did for me that stood out was put up with my various passing fancies. I had a passing fancy for jumping her in while she was in her work clothes, so she put up with that for a year. I went through the stockings and garter phase, she loved that (or pretended to), did the merry widow lingerie thing, etc. etc.

One of those passing fancies that stood out was the cheongsam (or qipao). Marcie introduced me to this sexy Chinese dress with her all-night Gong Li movie events, remarking on how they fit the actress, testing to see if I thought Gong Li was pretty (I did, but she's not my type).

I was soon thinking Marcie would fit one even better, and started pestering her. I had all but given up after a few solid months mentioning it in the afterglow, at dinner, when we woke up and were cuddling in bed against the impending responsibilities of work. Basically, whenever it struck me I had not mentioned it.

Well, Marcie surprised me with her little qipao after a trip to Chinatown in San Francisco. She not only wore it for me, but she went through elaborate hair preparations, leaving her red locks in a chopstick-bun. She could have been quite the arm-candy at a social.

Alas, we never got to put it to use in a social setting. She wore it a few times for me and made the mistake of wearing it after we had been separated by a trip I took to school (5 weeks). The resultant ravishing was too much, and the zipper gave out (meaning became separated from the silk).

But her green-blue eyes really went well with it. Not having her to model it takes a lot away from the dress, but it's still a pretty reminder. I can't wait to ask Jane about that shopping trip when I visit later this month or early next year.

Watching the Fountain with Marcie

I never thought I would settle down when I met Marcie. I was never one for multiple partners or anything so sordid as that, but I had always been serially monogamous.

I had one great love before Marcie, my first love, and that woman's transformation into a practical and calculating person with little but wants and wounds from what she was had taught me hard lessons. But I was not embittered, simply wary and less willing to put my heart on the line to any dangerous degree.

When I met Marcie, my plan was and had been to simply love who I could as I could for as long as I could. That changed soon enough. I do not think I had been with her a year before I was so besotted that I asked her to marry me, and meant it. She turned me down and said I should slow down.

As yesterday's poem reveals, she had a change of heart. I was unsure of the whole situation, but was glad she had come around. Six years later, that is.

The point of this is that I felt soon after I fell in love with Marcie that I had loved her for a very long time. This was something remarked on by Marcie as well. "I feel like we have been together for a lifetime, honey," she said. "I feel like I have known you since I was a little girl."

This phenomenon many of us have faced and some of us are privileged to experience it every day. The feeling is not limited to romance. Rescuers, Poets, and even Elvis have experienced the feeling. It must have some merit. I am susceptible to an willing to indulge that perhaps I have known Marcie for lifetimes.

Enter into this sentiment-cum-phenomenon the movie The Fountain. Taking place in three eras, it tells the tale of a man seeking to meet eternity with his love and to become one with both.

Marcie rented this from Netflix after having seen it in the theaters. It was a prelude to very difficult talks she wanted to have with me that I had avoided. I watched it with her. She cried and I joined her a little, but tried more to soothe her.

When the chemotherapy drugs and sleeping pills had finally sent her to sleep on my chest, both of us laying on the couch, I absorbed the meaning, the message Marcie was sending and the hope she wanted me to have in my despair. I held her there for a long time, but she awoke and I saw her to bed, holding her in the hot late summer night.

I have added the film to the list of items in my Amazon Store (Left column). Watch it with a loved on, especially if you have that special feeling, as we always did, of having known and loved them forever.

A visitor!

I just finished lunch (a trip to Vons for supplies), and want to extend my special thanks to Soek-Fang Sim, the young woman who rents behind us with her husband. Soek Fang came over and spent time with Marcie.

The two of them watched Layer Cake together, mostly because it features Daniel Craig, the man from the "edgier" James Bond iteration of Casino Royale. I left the two of them to drool over the guy in peace and got the shopping done.

Marcie is a little slow with the appetite. There's nothing to worry about yet, but I want her to eat more. I'll keep you all posted. Back to the work with me for now...