Traveling to Myself 2

A repeat to remind my self of this poem.

Traveling to Myself

Last night I watched a movie I had seen before but only sort-of remembered -
Night Train to Lisbon with Jeremy Irons.
I watched it because I did not recall the story but I felt that there was something in it I wanted to "catch' again.

And - there was.

The story is a mix of mystery, romance, and discovery set in Lisbon - in a non-specific modern time. The characters too are rather universal and yet non-discript- soft identities that do not take away from the story itself. The Irons character , a middle-age professor, saved a girl from jumping off a bridge in Bern, she runs away and he impetuously hops on a train to follow her to Lisbon to find her and discover her story. You guess soon into the movie that who he eventually finds, along with an interesting story, will be himself.

The key to the search for the girl is a haunting memoir by a young doctor - the other driving character. The heart of the story rests in the book.

All of this was familiar to me as I re-visited the movie - but then in the ending - - AH, HA - I found what I was looking for - a piece of verse:

I spent some time this morning capturing it - I don't want to lose it again because the poem speaks to why I am tied to memoir and to capturing my past. Its the reason for my own personal searches  - and at 80 years old I have a lot of ground to cover as I find bits of myself and quilt them together.

From the movie: Night Train to Lisbon

This is the passage one of the characters writes into his journal which will become his book.

  

We leave something of ourselves behind in a place we have been

We stay there even though we go away

There are things in ourselves we find again only by going back there

We travel to ourselves when we go back to a place where we have covered a stretch of our life 

No matter how brief it may have been.

Ah, yes.

On the Home Front

Glad to catch up with you and - thanks for your report.

Are you sure you mean it when you ask what I am doing ?

All right  - you asked.

Talking with my dear childhood friend Betsy every week is an important connection for me - - 

we keep up with the state of the world today, 

drop back to the past we share 

and then just go on blabbing about anything that comes up.

Are you, like me, very grateful for Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone - even though - who dreamed we would be carrying it in our pockets?  Maybe Dick Tracey - he was a prophet on that score.

Sorry to say I am taking a pass on the FRINGE this year after eight consecutive seasons. It was a tough decision for me. I LOVE introducing a story at the Fringe -  

My original plan was to introduce a new WWI show at the Fringe - but now I will be introducing it in November in Charlotte,NC where it started. Its a family story about my grand uncle and his mother.  The WWI doughboy buried in France is from Charlotte and November 2 will be the 100th anniversary of his death during the War. 

His mother, a Gold Star Mother, visited his grave in 1930. 

Sponsored by the Olde Mecklenburg Genealogical Society I will tell that story. Probably November 9. I feel as though I am bringing him home.

In a way I will bring him home. I am placing a Centopath Stone in Elmwood Cemetery on the family plot with his parents and other family members.

Tom Wolfe says you can't go home again - - -- what has been made clear to me - is that you can go back where you were once "at home" but its not exactly the same . I am very grateful to Obie Osborne, a Central High School classmate and Marilyn Hall Jones, a cousin who is a member of the OMGS for helping to make this happen.

Saturday I had a great time at a workshop on writing monologues and dialogue. It was good stuff for writers and also just plain fun. It was a cold rainy day.  We were meeting in a 19th century small and livable, once-a-church, house in College Park across from the University of Maryland campus.  I was the oldest in the 20 mixed age group of men and women -  strangers to me -  gathered around a huge table talking and laughing all day. We had 2  excellent leaders, author Mary Amato and playwright John Feffer. I am ready to go again. Being wrapped in laughter felt medicinal.

For Valentine's my daughter Karen and I are going to a play - "HAND-BAGGED".  It is running an additional month at the Round HouseTheater in Bethesda which says a lot!

The cast is small - two characters performed by four women - 2 as Queen Elizabeth - young and older - and 2 as Margaret Thatcher - young and older. They talk from the four perspectives.  Sounds intriguing doesn't it? I will be paying attention to the dialogue and monologues.

Well, that's it for me today.

Love to all of you!!!