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In the movie, Verna USO Girl, Verna (Sissy Spacek) plays a clumsy tone-deaf song and dance girl because no one else is available. Verna neither sings on key nor dances to a beat, but she's utterly convinced that her destiny is stardom. She is sure that when she dies thousands will attend her funeral. Their memory of her will make her immortal.
Verna does not become a star, but she does make a hit with Walter, a young GI (William Hurt) who falls in love with her. Although she returns his affection, she decides that she cannot disrupt her "career" to marry him, pushing herself to perform in battle zones where everyone else is too scared to move.
Finally a land mine halts her. She is killed.
Because she is the first USO girl to "die in action," the military decides that her story will boost morale.
So guess what happens?
Thousands attend her funeral.
Dignitaries attend and walk behind the casket.
Bands march and play.
Oh, by the way, we are uncertain if anyone knows her name.
Is this a story about romance and / or missed opportunities? In part.
Is this a story about being consumed and blinded by misguided ambition? In part.
Is this a story about love held close to the chest, and love lost? In part.
It's also a story about courage and heart and chutzpah.
And yet. . .does there need to be one moral to every story?
Here's the deal: I do know what it means to push myself to "perform." Who knows why, except that in the end I become a persona, and uncomfortable in my own skin.
Bottom line: I know what it means to not be present.
Sometimes when I "work," it does feel right. But sometimes, there is a disconnect. This from Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson, "He didn't feel like a son who'd just witnessed his mother's burial, but like an actor's understudy, the one they use in rehearsals to see how the costumes look under the lights."
I don't know why Verna's story stays with me. But here are a few snapshots from this week that reinforce the point.
--I spent a day with the good members of a Seattle area garden club. A woman approached me to say, "I don't know if you noticed that I was nodding off during your lecture. Don't take it personally. I just had my radiation treatment."
"When?" I asked.
"This morning," she told me.
I am surprised, at her admission and at the fact that I had seen her doze, and had made judgments about her before I knew any of the facts. And before I can talk she continues, "It gives me a new perspective on the kind of things that really matter."
As we're talking, a glass of sparkling cider is spilled, on the tablecloth, and onto parts of her dress. "Like what just happened," she tells me matter of factly, "that's not important."
I wonder. Does it take an illness for us to pay attention?
--I read this exchange on a garden website.
Q. I'm considering converting my lawn to a wildflower meadow. Can you suggest any wildflowers and provide some pointer on how to grow and maintain wildflowers?
A. You might want to check with your local zoning regulations to make sure you are permitted to convert your lawn to a meadow before you go to the labor and expense.
Yes, by all means, before you consider creating a pageant of indiscriminate beauty, please check the regulations. Who knew that beauty required a committee vote. (Truth be told, sadly, such regulations can set up shop in our own heart.)
--I re-watched the movie Taking Woodstock, the true story of Elliot Tiber and Yasgurs field. Among those who descend on this plot of land and a date with history, is Vilma, a transvestite veteran (who says she is a friend of a friend, is gay and probably not out to his family), hired as "security." When Elliot asked Vilma if his dad knows what she is, she simply says, "I know what I am. That does make it easier for everyone else."
--Charles Dickens commented once about being in a gathering of divines in a very ecclesiastical setting, and the meeting extended itself a long, long time, droning away on unimportant subjects treated without feeling. Mr. Dickens interrupted the proceedings by saying, "I have a suggestion. Why don't' we move to a table, and sit around the table an hold hands, and see if we can make contact with the living."
I am in Piedmont, California. I have worked today, at the Piedmont Community Church, and am now on my friend's deck. We look out over San Francisco and a dusk sky with striations of apricot and smoky blue.
For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with the feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.
Pablo Casals (at age 93)
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