Notes from Maine - 2022/11/20
Finn (Mastiff, knee surgery) is doing well. We have eleven more weeks until he’s cleared. I imagine that’s how long it will take for his hair to grow back fully. One leg completely shaved up to the middle of the back might catch on in dog circles. Finn kinda looks like he’s going to drop a mumbly goth/synth album this winter.
Albert (German Shepherd) is having some acid reflux (maybe). Same thing happened in December of last year. There was no real diagnosis. “Just give him some acid reducer and see if that helps. Maybe we’ll do an endoscopy if it persists,” the vet said, but last year it went away on its own in a week or two. Out in the barn, the horses had a successful checkup and vaccinations last week. They have a dental appointment at the end of the month. Animal healthcare is baffling and it never-ending. There’s so much guesswork involved.
Last night, Mom and I watched The Big Chill. I never bothered to see it before, although I already knew a lot about it. There were no real surprises. The acting seemed good. It was a lot of nostalgic hand-wringing for people in their thirties. I don’t remember having so much regret in my thirties. Life was (is) still on the upswing. Those characters looked back at their college years as idealistic and full of uncompromising hope to make the world a better place. In their thirties, they perceived themselves as sellouts and frauds.
I don’t really identify with any of those themes. In college, I was pragmatic about the need to set myself up to make enough money to live the way I wanted to live. The system was already too rigged by the people portrayed in that movie—there was no sense in trying to fight against it. I’m just kidding, by the way. In my twenties, I didn’t have the sense that there was anything to fight against. Maybe it’s because I moved to Maine and I was sheltered from a lot of injustice. Maybe my generation just collectively decided that the world would move on with or without us. Pushing might hinder as much as it helps. Those pendulum swings are pretty vicious when they come around.
I woke up at 5 this morning, thinking about my college roommate. He and I were randomly assigned the same dorm room, but then we got an apartment and later a house. We met each other’s families. After graduation, I only saw him a handful of times.
In the movie, William Hurt says, “Wrong, a long time ago we knew each other for a short period of time; you don't know anything about me. It was easy back then. No one had a cushier berth than we did. It's not surprising our friendship could survive that. It's only out there in the real world that it gets tough.”
That character had a point. I miss that friendship, but it might be the circumstances that I miss as much as the person. We had few responsibilities other than doing okay in school, and I barely took that seriously. So when I miss that old friend, perhaps I’m just nostalgic for a time in my life when everything was new and every avenue was open. We were learning what was true in the wider world instead of the insulated bubbles that we grew up in. It feels like honesty was in short supply back then. Maybe that was just me. I was trying on different aspects of my personality, trying to decide what was legitimate and what was the result of my desire to fit in.
I think that’s what the characters in The Big Chill were grappling with. Their youthful idealism didn’t get poisoned by society. It was a fabrication. Now we would call it virtue signaling, perhaps. By the way, this isn’t an original thought, but it’s baffling to me that people would fight so hard against the idea of virtue signaling. Saying the ”right” thing (the thing that protects people who deserve protection), can’t possibly be bad. Granted, it’s not as important as doing the right thing, but saying the right thing is at least on the same path. It’s far better that saying the “wrong” thing just to prove that you’re an independent truth teller. I’ve lived a sheltered life, but even I’ve been on the receiving end of hate and bigotry and it’s alienating. I would rather be around people who virtue signal than those don’t.
Anyway, what was my point? Right—The Big Chill. To the characters in the movie, any participation in capitalism was damning. In my experience, capitalism can be a useful force for driving improvement. The requirement for constant, unrelenting growth is damaging, and it’s certainly a bad idea to have corporations in charge of making their own rules. Some resources (air, water) should not be free for the taking. They belong to all of us, and it’s not fair to bury the expenses of consuming them. I’m rambling. All I’m trying to say is that I don’t really identify with a movie that’s thirty years old. No surprises there.
Everything here is good, and that’s all I could hope for. I just have to keep Finn quiet for a few more months and then maybe he will re-learn to use that leg. The surgeon said it’s common for dogs to swap over and rely on the reconstructed knee the same way they used to rely on the “good” one. He said that next year I should consider getting Finn’s other knee done. I can’t imagine.
Mom is leaving tomorrow, returning home. Yesterday she went to visit Earl and Maybelle’s daughter. The little filly is named Gisele now. She’s beautiful and her birthday is in a couple of weeks. Hard to believe that it has almost been a whole year since her wonderful arrival. She was such a tiny baby, and she was the sweetest part of every day that she was here. The horses are puffing up with their winter coats now. At her new home, Gisele wears a blanket. She’s pampered.
