Atmospheric Memory
It's been a pretty tough week at work. My boss has left my department for another, and she's basically been replaced by two people--both of whom don't really know anything about video games. Plus I've just been feeling emotionally exhausted by all of the family turmoil of the year. Wendy says we really need a vacation--our last one was a four-day weekend about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, there's so many other commitments on our time that we won't really be able to take a non-family-visit vacation until early 2003.
We did spend a lot of evening time this week in the city. On Tuesday night, we went to see a retrospective of Evan Mather's work, which was pretty good. On Thursday night, we went to Olympic Hills Elementary for the premiere of Wendy's Animated Authors project. That was really nice. Wendy spent two months working with each class in the school to write and animate a fable. Some of the stories were really cute, with titles like "The Stealing Aliens" and "The Evil, Stupid Joker". The kids and the teachers were all very happy to see Wendy and they thanked her for all of her great work. I like that I was really able to see her specific sensibilities in the animation (she did some animating of the project between groups of students in the class). Last night we went to ResFest, which was actually very good. We went to the Altered States program and saw one very funny, well-produced short called It's A Shame About Ray about a guy who is forced to review his life after he prematurely dies, and another called Copy Shop, a dialog-free German film about a guy who runs a copy shop who is himself being duplicated by one haunted machine.
But the main thing I want to remember is yesterday morning. I am fortunate to get to walk through part of the city on my way to and from work. Yesterday I had what I would call an "atmospheric memory". It was overcast but rather warm, and that combination, plus the fact that it was morning and spring, reminded me of the June gloom we used to get when I was growing up in the San Fernando valley. Because that always happened at the end of a school year, I've often felt a sort of bittersweet exhilaration during those conditions. As I walked, I listened to an NPR story about how volunteers had planted one million bulbs right after the September 11th attack, and the city was now awash in yellow flowers. I felt happy and thankful to be alive. I could recall specific scenes from my youth and feel no anger or bitterness that they were long gone--they felt just as much a part of me as when they happened. Then I thought of my dad and I started to cry a bit, but he felt a part of me too.
We did spend a lot of evening time this week in the city. On Tuesday night, we went to see a retrospective of Evan Mather's work, which was pretty good. On Thursday night, we went to Olympic Hills Elementary for the premiere of Wendy's Animated Authors project. That was really nice. Wendy spent two months working with each class in the school to write and animate a fable. Some of the stories were really cute, with titles like "The Stealing Aliens" and "The Evil, Stupid Joker". The kids and the teachers were all very happy to see Wendy and they thanked her for all of her great work. I like that I was really able to see her specific sensibilities in the animation (she did some animating of the project between groups of students in the class). Last night we went to ResFest, which was actually very good. We went to the Altered States program and saw one very funny, well-produced short called It's A Shame About Ray about a guy who is forced to review his life after he prematurely dies, and another called Copy Shop, a dialog-free German film about a guy who runs a copy shop who is himself being duplicated by one haunted machine.
But the main thing I want to remember is yesterday morning. I am fortunate to get to walk through part of the city on my way to and from work. Yesterday I had what I would call an "atmospheric memory". It was overcast but rather warm, and that combination, plus the fact that it was morning and spring, reminded me of the June gloom we used to get when I was growing up in the San Fernando valley. Because that always happened at the end of a school year, I've often felt a sort of bittersweet exhilaration during those conditions. As I walked, I listened to an NPR story about how volunteers had planted one million bulbs right after the September 11th attack, and the city was now awash in yellow flowers. I felt happy and thankful to be alive. I could recall specific scenes from my youth and feel no anger or bitterness that they were long gone--they felt just as much a part of me as when they happened. Then I thought of my dad and I started to cry a bit, but he felt a part of me too.
Labels: dad, San Fernando Valley, Wendy
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