this lossy codec

This is going to be a little hard.

Last night I attended a wake for Lake, a friend of Daniél’s, who had passed away recently after a long struggle with cancer. I knew her only slightly but learned much more about her over the course of the stories & ceremony. It was a deeply moving event and there seemed to be a real catharsis over the course of the night that allowed for a true and graceful acceptance of the natural process of death.

Later, at home, Dani & I spoke about death & dying and compared our own experiences of losing people close to us (we both had tragic losses in our teenage years). It seemed apparent that, toward the end of her life, there was an acceptance and resignation that death was inevitable that allowed Lake and her loved ones to prepare consciously for her passing. It seemed apparent to me that this could be the most therapeutic way for loved ones to prepare – to know and begin to slowly become prepared for their inevitable disappearance. For death, otherwise, confronts the human ego with a fact that it forever seems to be trying to avoid – that this life is temporary and just as the miracle of birth is one aspect of life, so to is death just as mysterious and omnipresent.

I wish I could end this post here, with a seemingly significant statement that we can hold in our mind without having to be faced with these facts any more intimately. Unfortunately, it is not so. This morning I got a call from David telling me that my friend and colleague, Cole Gittinger (aka ‘boom guy x’) was killed in a tragic car accident last night. As you would expect I am in shock and as I’m sure many of his friends are, totally devastated but his sudden passing.

I had spent a lot of time with Cole over the past several weeks, both on set and off. After work I’d frequently join him in his hotel room (which he’d decked out with Turkish rugs he had recently begun collecting). He was full of life and a ‘free spirit’ if ever there was one. With the money he made booming he traveled the world and was planning a trip to (and across, via horse) Mongolia after this picture. He shared his knowledge and experience working in the industry with me openly and I learned a lot (mostly off the set). When, after work, I would be complaining about something David had hassled me about, Cole would tell me stories about David falling into a river while booming or falling off an apple box during a shot. Jokingly, in reference to his lifestyle, he had said he probably had less than 5 years left. Strange how things like that come up.

While we were down shooting in Carizozo, he had taken David and I to Lincoln, the site of the Lincoln County War. Apparently, Cole had done some studying of Billy the Kid and knew quite a bit about the war. He’d even begun to think of moving to Lincoln, if just for a summer.

How strange it seems now, the wake, the conversation with Daniél last night and now this tragic loss.

This is actually from before the previous post but here it is anyway. The day after Orson arrived I fulfilled an overdue promise of taking him to Cliff’s Amusement Park in Albuquerque. Boy did I not know what I was doing. In hindsight I can safely say that this may be my last “amusement” park experience. Orson had fun though. In fact, I think we both enjoyed ourselves for a bit. This picture may be a glyph of my day (and my stomach) turning around. Perhaps it was something about trying to focus on the camera display while (apparently) spinning at a rate faster than the shutter speed. Just the thought of it make me weak in the knees. By the end of the day I could hardly drag Orson off the roller coaster while I could hardly keep my lunch down on the log ride and tilt-a-wirl. Ooo boy. Ugh.

Feel good today. The massively severe headache of yesterday (5.6.8) and minor one of a few days ago (5.4.8) have left me with such an appreciation of those moments when I am without pain that I can now refer to what were formerly regarded as ‘normal’ days as ‘ecstasy’ days. Such experiences certainly help appreciate life. (I might add that currently I am of the belief that the 10mg dosage of mellatonin before bed seems to be staving off the fits. Helps me sleep at night as well.)

In other news, last week I lost my telescoping space pen that I got for my birthday last summer. I carried it with me everywhere and it fit nicely in my pant pocket. Leave it to cargo pants to vent precious cargo into the atmosphere. While not totally certain where I lost it I had an inkling it was at the Satellite coffee on Louisiana (in Albuquerque). I called them to inquire if they had found one – they had not. I decided to make the trip down as I needed to use the internet anyway..(of course it crashed repeatedly when I got there, but that is another story).

When I arrived I ordered and sat down in one of the chairs I had used and began discretely digging through the seat cushion. Nada. A fairly well dressed businessman was sitting on the couch where I had also sat, so I waited for him to leave. When he did leave I noticed something silverish sticking out of the seat cushion. Could it be? Well, no, but kind of. Turns out it was his pen, which had apparently fallen out of his pocket. I sat there holding his pen, writing this entry and struggling with the internet for a couple hours. He never returned and so, I kept it.

I’m sure you will relate to my bewilderment of this strange coincidence. Looking back I have a couple hypothesizes;

1. The couch eats pens.

2. The focus of my attention on the couch and pen somehow drew the pen out of his pocket (a la magic or hypnotism).

3. The space pen, having disappeared created a vacuum which sucked his pen into it.

4. (And for the skeptics) It is a coincidence.

There are, perhaps more possibilities. Feel free to offer up suggestions.

The pen I found is perhaps the exact opposite of my precious telescoping space pen. While my pen was thinner than my pinky this pen is thicker than my thumb. While my pen was a discrete silver, this pen has a flamboyant amber / orange base with a cap covered in little airplanes. The name on the clip says “Breitling.” A little googling leads to more curiosities. I Found only one ebay entry and no other price listings anywhere. Odd. The ebay entry lists it as ‘Super rare’. Well, you know ebay but still, the fact that they are asking $244.69 must mean that someone would pay that much. A little further digging reveals that Breitling is in fact a watch manufacturer and only gave these pens out as a promotion to ‘Top Gun customers’ (whatever that means).

Anyway, here it is:

So. Now I have something I do not really want and do not have something I do really want. Such is the mystery of life…

While all of this is going on (and the web is crashing) I notice someone I know but haven’t seen since Daniél and I lived in Albuquerque a couple years ago. It’s Dr. Blue! He’s part of the Abq burning man contingency. We went over to his house one evening for a little soire and ended up blowing on some Peruvian whistling vessels. Cool guy with an incredible sound system. The whistling vessels, THAT is an interesting story…

I had been reading a book called “Animated Earth” about the guy who fist discovered that these little pots, which anthropologists just thought were for carrying water (they are the size of a fist) were actually psycho-acoustic whistles. Anyway, when I first met Dr. Blue I told him that I was into all sorts of interesting sound stuff. He said, “oh, then you’d be interested in these little Peruvian whistles.” Unreal. I was in the middle of the book about them. Too much. Anyway…

As I’m leaving the coffee shop I say hi to Dr. Blue and remind him I was their for the 2 hour whistle off. Turns out that with him is Aum Rak, the Mayan shaman who we also met at his house that day and who Daniél interviewed for her dissertation. They had all just returned from a trip to Guatemala. It was really a synchronistic reunion. They invited Daniél and I to some upcoming events at their space, The 3 Sided Whole. So, we’ll see what comes of that.

The rest of the day in Abq was fairly uneventful. I had some nice thrift scores, including this tiki:

Later on, when Dani got home I realized today was her last day at Whole Foods. Woo-hoo!. Unfortunately, any celebrating was subtle as she is not feeling very well right now and I am too afraid of headaches to indulge in much frivolity. Still, interesting day.