Coming Home

Smartie comes home tomorrow!!!!!! I'm so excited. I have to get up extra early tomorrow in order to get there on time (so we can avoid the Thanksgiving Eve rush hour that probably starts at noon) but I don't know how I'll manage to get to sleep early. So I'll just be sleep-deprived, what else is new?

In other news, Robert Altman died last night. I was very sad when I heard; in fact, I cried. I had no idea I cared so much, but he was such a wonderful director and he probably still had at least one more good one in him...even though he was 81, it was too soon. Sort of reminds me of something I read a couple of days ago, about a 97-year-old man whose friends and family all said that he'd died too soon--can you imagine? How wonderful he must have been, how "alive", if you know what I mean. I can only hope to have friends say that about me if I live that long (not that I want to).

Anyway, Altman's films were so much a part of the landscape for the last 30-some-odd years, some better than others, of course. M*A*S*H, of course, being the most important, at least to me. So many others I've never seen. But a dear friend, who passed away a few years ago, loved, loved, loved McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The Player is another favorite of mine. So much work, so many wonderful films, even the bad ones at least had some good moments, I think.

After reading Stacy Horn's "Waiting for My Cats to Die" recently, I thought that in some ways, she and I are a bit alike, but then other ways, we're definitely not. Like, I'm nowhere near as obsessed about death as she is. I'm not obsessed about death at all, really, despite what I wrote above. I sort of figure it comes to us all, there's absolutely nothing we can do about it and the important thing is to live life as best we can. I'm sure there's plenty of philosophers who have written reams about just this, but I've never read or heard about them, so I can only speak for myself--our only, only, only "job" in this life is to live it. And that is the point of it. That is the meaning, too. I don't understand the idea of trying to find a meaning for one's life, because to me, my life is its meaning and it is in the living of it that I create whatever it means. And the "answer" will be revealed to me in the last second of life (assuming I'm aware/awake/not senile), when I look back and see the totality of my life...and then that's it.

Oddly, I think that's kind of cool.