Truest Movie Ever Made

Quentin Tarantino? I don't think so. Michael Moore? Puh-leeze. Oliver Stone? Yeah, right. Pretenders to the claim all of them, and in the case of the latter two, propagandists. Nope, truest movie ever made -- Best in Show. I know this because yesterday we went to the Sammamish AKC dog show outdoors at Marymoor Park in Redmond on a very cool morning. And it was all there, the fifties outfits on the people showing the dogs, the little trots around the ring, the hand signs from the judges, the posing of the dogs on platforms for judges's evaluations, the doggie grooming tables, the rivalries disguised with cordial chit-chat, and many, many gorgeous dogs. We saw several beautiful Westies and learned from walking up and down past rows of wire cages that show dogs are just like every other dog -- they bark, yowl, jump on you in greeting, sniff each others rears, tangle leashes around your legs as they walk where they want to go rather than where you want to take them. So how is it that they behave themselves in the ring or as they are posed for official winning photographs. Two words: choke collars. My sister was kicking herself for not being able to get her new basset entered. All in all, a very fun, but little cold morning for Coumadin Guy.

Lights (High and Otherwise) of a Long Trip, 3

July 7

Now suddenly, on Mykonos, I feel again like I’m just holding it together rather than progressing. Or maybe it is just waking up from nap grogginess. Surprisingly cool here on this island, cool enough last night to put on the long-sleeve “Berkeley” T. Call it the return of Coumadin Guy. I’m liking the cruise, although not Royal Caribbean the last couple of days. Mykonos is the way one imagines Greek islands, whitewashed houses and shops lined up gentle hills. Both here and on Corfu two days ago I had the feeling that this was where Leonard Cohen lived for a time writing Beautiful Losers. Skipped today’s tour and walked into town, a deceptively long walk. I bought D. some earrings. The two days of tours before this, though, were excellent. First, Corfu where we bussed around the island, climbing up close to a couple thousand feet and winding along very narrow roads and then yesterday Athens, docked at the port of Piraeus, where we saw the location of the first Olympics and the Acropolis. So I have liked everything but Split, but haven’t taken a single good photo. No waiting at the Acropolis and not much heat either, although the iced fruit drinks we had before we headed back to the buses certainly tasted good. Were we younger, spending a chunk of time either at Corfu or Mykonos would be a fine thing to do. The narrow streets of Mykonos are very easy to get lost in and for a few minutes I was, but then found my way back to the sight of water. Both here and in Corfu I was struck by how much you don’t see the water, despite being on an island. Our daily ship news said that Mykonos is one of the smallest Greek Islands, with a full-time population of only five thousand, but total visitors of over900K. That must be on an annual basis for it’s hard to imagine how the area visible from the ship could ever hold that many people at the same time. There is an airport about four kilometers from the village center (passed the sign for it walking into town) and the incongruous sound of planes taking off periodically interrupts the peace, as is happening right now.


July 10

On the balcony of our hotel in Venice, where the ship docked this morning and where we made our way without to much ado. It is very hot here, just as it was last Saturday when we got on the cruise. Hydra was the island in Greece where Cohen wrote Beautiful Losers. I’ve given up trying to speak any Italian, although studying it might not be a bad idea, for I’d like to come back to Florence and – I can see already – here. I’ve also found some of the locations where Don’t Look Now was shot. It’s a crowded patchwork of roof tiles from the balcony here, and voices of the various neighbors. Yesterday we cruised all day, which is not at all a bad thing to do on the last day of a cruise. I finally went to a show because I wanted to compare the magician that performed the last night with SC. It was laughable – he did his sleight of hand on a darkened stage to the ridiculous accompanying sound of disco music. Even I might be able to pass for a magician under such circumstances. The last day’s excursion was to ancient Olympia and it was a lot of fun. We knelt on the still-existing marble starting blocks and had our pictures taken there. Then D. walked the length of the track, about 400 yards, while I sat on a hill in the shade. That was a day when I was feeling very unrecovered again. Today has been OK. It’s kind of amazing how weak I continue to be, can scarcely do 10 pushups. I think I will put an end to all the new follow-ups when I get back to NYC, and I would love to get off the anti-seizure medication. We came to the hotel in one of the vaporettos, practically all along the length of the Grand Canal. On my second try, for 2.50 Euro, I finally got a decent map of the city, so will be able to get around in explorations. With enough walking we might discover a Sam-type here in Venice for dogs seem to be a popular household addition. D. and I agreed a couple days ago that we were ready to get back to NYC. But I worry that when we get back there I will feel as if I sleepwalked through the vacation. We are right off Piazza San Marco and the pealing of the bells is frequent and long.

July 13

Somewhere over the Atlantic, arcing down from the Canadian maritime provinces and into New York. The flight attendants are handing out the second meal of the trip, some kind of snack. It’s a little bumpy. Dana Dee and I got up a bit before seven, one AM in NYC, and went for a last walk around St. Mark’s Square – we’ve now made landfall – and she fed the pigeons. Then we took an excellent fast water taxi ride out to the airport, where we found that mechanical problems had delayed the incoming flight out of New York and it would be more than three hours late. So we cooled our heels at the airport for just about seven hours. Scheduled to land at 6:13PM, only some 18 hours after we began the day. We are definitely ready to be home and see our kids, our apartment and our dog – though not necessarily in that order, at least as far as the apartment and the dog are concerned. The last two days in Venice were highlighted by a gondola ride, totally touristy, totally expensive and worth every euro, and a trip to the lace-making island of Burano where all the houses are pained in bright colors, a la La Boca in Buenos Aires

Lights (High and Otherwise) of a Long Trip, 2

June 30

I have a bit more sympathy for the protagonists of Ian McEwen’s Black Dogs now that I have confronted my own black dog in the hills of Tuscany. But he was small and more startled of me, in my wonderful outfit (sorry, DBT) of khaki shorts and “medical legwear” (every time I put them on, though, my legs do feel better) than I was of him. I love doing nothing; it is what I am best at. Yesterday I traveled in the van, first to Pisa and then to Lucca, a walled town since who knows when that has never been bombed, almost certainly because it was never strategically necessary to do so. Pisa – it’s a towar; it’s leaning and apparently has been since its first construction in – if I remember – the 13th century. If the Times had been around then there would have been some investigative journalism into the letting of the contracts for its construction. Some early day Tony Soprano may have been involved. There is also a cathedral, a museum or two, and a couple of other buildings on the location. Lucca was much more entertaining. We got a map to keep us oriented in the narrow and switchbacking streets. Bicycles are kings in those streets for they are too crowded to allow cars to drive with any speed and the extent of the walls, the area enclosed by them, is greater than can be easily navigated on foot. The walk, in fact, kind of exhausted me. I constantly overlook how weak I am and how tired I get. We had a decent lunch in a little restaurant on the square near where Puccini was born in 1858. One building has a plaque announcing it as his birthplace, but if there is a museum, as also announced, it must have been closed. The ride back to the villa could scarcely have taken an hour, but it seemed like forever. Still, I enjoyed the day and, as I feel about most of Italy so far, I would happily go back to Lucca. This morning after the gang left, I went for a walk and found myself channeling TML-era G.F. – and perhaps still G. F. – thinking of wildflower photos and framing them in my mind.

July 1

Right leg appears to have gone down!

July 4

Down a little, I think, but not a lot and certainly not as much as I thought a couple days ago. Aboard The Splendour of the Seas and going south in the Adriatic, heading to Corfu after a first stop today at Split. The tour there was bad so I split – in a manner of speaking – and walked back to the ship. We are now two weeks away from New York and with just over a week to go. It was chaotic once we got to Venice, trying to follow directions on how to get to the ship, but get here we did. So far I like Holland American better than Royal Caribbean. HA was a little more subtle about trying to put some distance between you and your money. The Adriatic is as flat as a tabletop so far. Not a Trace of seasickness. I’m feeling like maybe I don’t need to see new places anymore. The familiar feels good. Despite being in an impaired condition, I can’t stop trying to be a problem-solver. There was a pretty funny moment when our train pulled into Venice yesterday only about five minutes late – after a trip that certainly included speeds well over 100 mph – and our group wrestled all the luggage out of the car and got past the people who wanted to transport our bags, but not us, to the ship for 5 Euro a bag. They were probably legit, but I was in the decisive “no” group, so we took our luggage and wheeled it out to the front of the station, along the Grand Canal, where the group en masse stood in the 90 degree sunshine and tried to figure out what to do next. It wasn’t graceful, but at least I got them in the shade.

Lights (High and Otherwise) of a Long Trip

June 22

This was the first full day at E. and T.'s. They have given over their brand new apartment to us while they go sleep at M. and M.'s place. We drove through some of the West Bank on the way to Jerusalem today. And the wire fences reminded me of apartheid in South Africa. And then, sitting later on the balcony, it reminded me of what was done to the Jews themselves in the ghettos and in the concentration camps. We wandered the corridors of the souks in the old city where three great religions’s icons can be found next to – or at least in the next stalls to – Montreal Canadiens T-shirts with Hebrew lettering. I continue to feel better, although jet lag last night had me wondering if that was so. I have learned some things I didn’t know – the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew, the precise locations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Not feeling at all religious these days, the old city of Jerusalem, the Western Wall, the Church of the Sepulchure, the Dome of the Rock gave me no sense of the presence of God. Instead, it left me bemused at the centuries of fervor, and mostly feeling slightly depressed, hugely jet lagged, and very happy that I had not chosen to be a Middle East specialist in the FS. Tonight, walking down to the Mediterranean, Tel Aviv felt like Miami and Havana.

June 28

At the villa outside Florence. Doing nothing this afternoon but lying around or sitting around and listening to the birds chirp. In the rest of the time in Tel Aviv, we went to Caesaria, a city built by King Herod to please the Romans, and to make a deep water port. This he did very well and the city flourished for some time. Then the old story – attacked, destroyed, rebuilt, another period of prosperity, and then finally overthrown by the Muslims and then abandoned for 700 years until Baron de Rothchild purchased it, I think, and set about – with help of Balkan refugees – to excavate and restore the ruins. So it was never quite clear to me from which period the ruins we saw dated or whether – in fact – we were seeing in parts a partial re-creation. In any event, there was a good movie, and an interesting little museum where you could pick a figure from Caesaria’s history, press a few buttons of questions and a hologram of the person, complete with movements, would answer the questions in a normal speaking voice. I picked Herod, who gets a very bad rap in the stories of Christ and John the Baptist, of course, and probably undeservedly. But history in Israel gets written by the winners there and so his portrayal was an impressive one. Our last full day we returned to Jerusalem to have lunch at a very good restaurant near the souk after visiting the Jewish museum, which was under reconstruction. You could visit the outdoor areas, which included a miniturized reconstruction of Jerusalem as it was in – I think – 66 AD (or CE), just before another destruction. It of course included the Western Wall, but also reminded us a lot of the museum in Queens with low-flying birds eye view of every building in New York at the time of the 1964 Worlds Fair. Jerusalem then was already riven by different camps within the Jews, Christians, and Romans. This drove an all-male group to abandon the city and go live along the shores of the Dead Sea (were they called the Edenites?) and it is from there that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and begun to be deciphered.

On to Florence, a connection through Frankfurt that went flawlessly. Here I am very happy to be back, can envision us spending more time here, contemplating taking up studying Italian because I feel like I should do a much better job than I do of understanding and communicating in it. Nice to be back at “our” old hotel and definitely nice to eat gelato again. Tuscany, near Florence, is being transformed but a farmer plowed his fields right below the villa this morning and the construction crane that symbolizes the transformation is well-hidden by a perfectly placed tree when you are sitting outside for dinner at the Podere Torricella. Couple final thoughts on Tel Aviv – I was surprised once I learned the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew that among my generation W. and L. families only E. seems to speak it at all well. And again, not being of the religious persuasion at this time in my life, maybe all those miracles, Messiahs, and prophets are nothing more than the collective effects of sunstroke induced by the searing heat and powerful sunlight of summer.