An Unexpected Movie

I took my 8 year old son to see The Hobbit tonight for his birthday. Truth in advertising should have required some kind of warning like "very loosely based on the novel by JRR Tolkien". I was willing to suspend judgement and let it go where it would for the sake of artistic license, but the "art" was incredibly sparse, replaced instead by an unbelievable amount of unnecessary and over the top filler that made it look like a clone of The Lord of the Rings movies and distorted the original story almost beyond recognition. I say this because the kind of movie making Peter Jackson does well, IMO, is a closer fit to LOTR than The Hobbit. Those who have read both The Hobbit and LOTR books are aware that the tone of each is very different and within this difference of tone is a consistent story that is true to its respective tone.

In this context it seems to me that The Hobbit movie has been (Peter Jackson) LOTR-ized to the point I recognized very little of the original book in it. There are whole elements in the movie that do not even exist in the book and distort the characters, disconnecting them from themselves and their place in Tolkien's overall story. I found myself liking many of them simply because I associate them with their vastly superior brethren in the book. This was most true for me in regards to Gandalf who I feel is sacrosanct in Tolkien's books and I was saddened to see him acting very unGandalf-ish at times. His interactions with the Goblin King were particularly troubling to me. The only scene that I felt was done extremely well (ie, in the full spirit of the book) was the song of the dwarves in Bilbo's hobbit hole. The riddle game with Gollum was probably the second best, but was changed somewhat from the book in a way that I felt was unnecessary.

Another criticism I have is that many elements from the book were sensationalized to the point of being utterly ridiculous. One of many examples is when the protagonists are treed by the wargs after escaping from the Goblin Kingdom. They are not just trapped in trees, but they are trapped in trees that are precariously growing on a precipice, and as if that were not enough each tree ends up falling into the next such that they leap from one to the next until all are on the one tree that happens to be at the very tip of the precipice, but it is not enough that it is on the tip of a (overhanging!) precipice but it must fall too, except it stops just where the ground would be if it weren't at the edge of a cliff so that they are all dangling out in space. It reminded me of the Scooby Doo cartoons my son loves to watch. Unfortunately there were many more scenes like this one that stretched the suspension of disbelief well beyond any reasonable breaking point.

So, if you loved what Peter Jackson did with LOTR you may very well enjoy this one as well. There are many of the same cinemagraphic techniques used to keep the heart racing and make you feel like you're on a roller coaster ride, but if you want the profound story telling of Tolkien's beloved book I'm afraid you will likely be disappointed.

A Christmas Miracle

Peace in a Box® (detail), a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

A peculiar memory found me today and I wanted to write it down before it left again. In college I had a Serbian American friend who I first met at the local Orthodox Mission. I had only just become Orthodox and was enjoying making friends with students from Greece, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East among other places. This Serbian American girl was shy, soft spoken, and of very few words. It was at least a few months before I figured out she spoke perfect English and had actually lived in American since she was a young child. She did not appear to be particularly pious and did not commune at our parish when she visited off and on the first several months. This perspective had more to do with my own misguided piety and knee jerk judgmentalism than the state of this sweet girl's soul.

As I got to know her better we became friends and I met some of her family members. Her parents spoke with a heavy accent and had grown up in Communist Yugoslavia before immigrating to the United States. My friend told me that growing up they would go to church on Pascha and on St. Sava's Day, that most famous and popular of Serbian saints, but not much else besides. My experience was so very different in that my father was a Protestant minister and we attended church up to three times a week every week for as far back as I could remember. She was very gracious in our conversations about faith which was in stark contrast to my own more obnoxious approach fueled by a convert's zeal. Over the course of time she began participating more fully in her Orthodox faith, probably in spite of my influence if I am to be painfully honest.

It was within this context that she shared with me a story her father told her when she was home over Christmas Break. He was aware of her burgeoning interest though he was not a very religiously minded person himself having grown up in a country where such things were actively discouraged. What he shared surprised her because it was not like anything he'd ever talked about before. The story was about something remarkable that had happened in their village in Serbia when he was a young man.

During the course of a cold and dreary winter day someone in that village noticed something peculiar about the frost that had formed on a window near the center of town. Upon closer inspection they were shocked to find the image of the Theotokos and Christ Child (as depicted in icons) distinctly formed in the ice crystals. Word spread quickly and a large crowd grew around the window. My friend's father pushed his way to the front to get a look for himself. It was something inexplicable but undeniable. It didn't take long for the local authorities to catch wind about what was happening but they did not know what to do about it at first, not wanting to get the villagers too upset. After just a few days too many people were coming to see and venerate this miraculous image and so they were forced to act. Soldiers came and broke the window.

My friend was taken aback by how matter-of-factly he told the story, a story he had never shared with her before. It was like the miracle had a second run in their home in the retelling, a shared moment between father and daughter.

Tai Chi for Sixty Plus

shadow of a man, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

The poster caught my attention as I prepared to enter the elevator after a workout at the fitness center: "Tai Chi: moving for better balance". It included a blurb from the CDC which asserted that it was an "evidence-based fall prevention program that helps participants aged sixty and older to improve functional balance and physical performance." My interest was piqued because I'd been thinking of taking a Tai Chi class in the community for quite some time but never seemed to have the time or money to make it happen. As a member of the fitness center I could take this biweekly three month course for free during my lunch hour.

I wondered about the "sixty and older" part though. I'm a forty three year old father of two and husband of one in relatively good health if you don't count an intermittently bum knee that I got when deployed to Iraq six years ago. My enthusiasm for Tai Chi actually came from my time in Iraq. While living on a base outside of Tikrit I participated in some Tai Chi classes at night in the inner courtyard of a building located about a mile from our clinic. It was a winding path mostly traveled in near pitch blackness with stars shining hard and cold overhead. I learned the path at night and probably could not have found it in the daytime.

I only learned the first ten of the sixty plus moves but it was enough in repetition to find a source of solace and stress relief in the flowing motions. Our rustic clinic building had its own internal courtyard that was open to the sky, a common feature in the Middle East. A wide ladder-like structure made out of metal tubing slanted up one side of it and allowed access to the roof. When possible I'd clamber up it and onto the roof as the sun was setting and go through my movements facing the breathtaking spectacle of a desert horizon exploding with color. I don't know that I've ever experienced anything quite like that before or since, like getting a taste of some exquisite and exotic dish with flavors never before imagined.

So, by the time I'd gotten back to my office from the fitness center I decided to go back and see if the "sixty and older" thing was a deal breaker. I talked with one of the managers who was quite sure I could participate and she put me on the list and took my number if that was to change. I felt well on my way to inner peace even with the start date still 2 weeks away, a kind of placebo effect.

On the way back to my office I had a Walter Mitty moment imagining a scenario where a purse snatcher was running towards me from behind, purse in hand, leaving a little old lady crying and purseless on the ground. Before I could turn to see what all the hubbub was about he would slam into me. As I fell forward my training would kick in with the swan-dives-for-bread-crumb move*. Quickly regaining my feet I would swiftly transition into the sweeping-bug-under-the-rug move* ending with the purse snatcher falling flat out on his back and staring up at me stunned. Standing over him and with a bit of swagger I'd say, "Just be glad I'm not over sixty, 'cause then I'd have a cane."


*These are not the names of any actual Tai Chi moves that I know of but a product of my fevered imagination.

The Little Man

__________________________

He is staring at the wall mounted TV when I enter the hospital room and it is not clear to me that he knows I'm there.

"Hello, Mr. Smith.  I'm Dr. Haney."

His head slowly swivels in my direction and nods.  "Hi."

"How are you feeling today?"

A pause, "OK."

"What brings you to the hospital, Mr. Smith?"

A long pause, "A stroke?"

A question from a question.

I see many people with cognitive deficits in my line of work.  It could be dementia or delirium, psychosis or stroke, intoxication or withdrawal.  Mr. Smith is typical, that is to say he is elderly with multiple medical problems and on multiple medications.  He doesn't fully hear, see, or understand what is going on around him, yet there he is, talking to me in his own limited way.

Looking at him and allowing my mind to wander a bit (he doesn't seem to notice or care) I imagine there's a little man inside his head.  He sits in a little chair somewhere just back from the eyes and maybe in line with the ears.  It is dark all around him but to the front some light gets in through the eye holes.  Sounds come to him from a distance, muted, like in a heavy fog at night.  If too much sensory information reaches the little man he becomes overwhelmed and confused.  He is tiny after all.

The scene repeats itself, but now I am able to share the little man's perceptions as he sits there patiently in the dark.

A shadow passes the eye holes but is ignored.  Then a sound comes slow and low like speech in a slow-mo reel.  The little man leans forward to see what is making the noise.  Out of the corner of the eye hole something is blocking the light from the window.  The head rotates and he can see someone standing there.  "Hi."

Now that he sees it is a person next to him he leans towards that ear.  "How are you feeling today?" the shadow person asks.  His answer is automatic, socially conditioned, short, but it still takes some time to be expressed, "OK." 

Another question makes its way through the cognitive ether and he's prepared to give it his full attention this time.  "What brings you to the hospital, Mr. Smith?"  When it finally gets to him sitting in his little chair it requires some sifting through recent memories.  They're jumbled and not well organized, like things accumulated pell mell over the years and stored in the attic.  The lights of an ambulance flash in the darkness around him as a result of his search and he answers unsure of what he's found, "A stroke?"

I bring myself back into my own present reality and am relieved to find I am inhabiting my body fully and to its extremes.  The muddle and delay are gone, my senses are sharp and the grasp of my situation is immediate once again.  I realize my mind and body may very well be burdened with these limitations in the future, but instead of becoming somber or morose about it I remember my grandma's voice from childhood saying, "How's my little man?"

______________________________

Published as “The Little Man: Through the Cognitive Ether” Psychiatric Times, March 2013.

Love is Timeless

love is timeless
but also placeless
from a time outside of time
and a place outside of place
the energy from which
our world sprung
a spinning dynamo
of three persons
sharing one substance
a never ending hug
an eternal embrace

***