The New Us

I must apologize - like the Pipe Pic page, this has been a long time since being updated. The last several days have seen me working non-stop and round-the-clock to finish the most complex Halloween pipe I've done thus far, Grendel's Mother, seen here. I just haven't had the time for blogging, and equally crucially, haven't had a lot to post about since I haven't left the house & workshop for days, excepting a brief walk around the village. One of the best books on writing that I've ever read is Stephen King's simply-titled "On Writing", in which his main advice can be boiled down to "Write what you know". The problem is that if you want to have a life worth writing about (without boring people senseless), it entails having a lot of tolerance for risk, some sense of adventure (or stupidity as the case may be), and the time and ability to get the hell out of the house and actually go do things.

Today's pic is a little nod to my parents, who are coming over for their first visit this Christmas. We shot this down in Guerande last December at the Christmas tree market in front of the entry to the walled medieval town center. That previous sentence is just the sort of thing that I never would have dreamed I might one day write so casually, back when I was living a very predictable life in North Carolina. Emily and I are both wondering what our parents will make of this place when they visit, and for that matter what they may make of us. We have certainly been through some very traumatic and life-changing experiences since we last saw them, and I sometimes look back on the "me" of three years ago as if I am looking at a completely different person. The problem is that we have changed together, so Emily and I aren't aware of what is or isn't different, apart from such stuff as reflexively saying, "Oui" as often as, "Yes" now. One thing I can say is that our experiences in moving here, and all that's happened since, have made me appreciate every day that passes a hundred times more than I ever did before, and that's good. Whereas in times past we would have complained that there was nothing good to watch on our 500 channel satellite TV, here we spent three years hoarding every movie or tape anyone sent us - good or bad, it didn't matter, as long as it was in English. We made peanut butter jars last months, even seasons, and eating a bag of microwave popcorn became a special occasion of huge import. The entire house would light up when we'd receive a little box of Oreos or other goodies from home by mail. Living through the hottest summer in European history without air-conditioning taught me to revel in the sheer wonder of having a little bedroom AC unit now, and I doubt I will ever complain about being cold after spending the four coldest days on record here without any heat. They make strange memories, these things - while our lives today are nearly the same as they were back in the US (internet, satellite, etc), I'll always remember what it was like to huddle tight together on the couch, with every blanket and heavy coat we owned piled atop us and two warm cats sitting on top of that, watching an old videotape of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes as our breath misted in the 20 degree air of our house.

Halloween movie of the day - the 1957 Hammer film "Curse of Frankenstein". The first of the Hammer horror films, this terrific old classic paired Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing for one of the most entertaining versions of the Shelley novel. Unlike the novel and the Universal films, the Hammer Frankenstein flicks weren't sad - no tragic heroes here. Peter Cushing's overtly villainous Doctor Frankenstein has all the smooth charm of Jack the Ripper and the scruples of a shark on the hunt, and unlike Colin Clive he never seemed to learn his lesson either, going on to more and more nefarious stuff in sequel after sequel (some of which surpassed the original - what a concept!). Only one pipe sighting, which is unusual for a film of this era - a blind man smoking a clay and holding it by the bowl (filmmakers must believe that everyone had fingers of steel in those days).