Hangin' Around Indoors

Sunday, November 23, 2008
London

I awoke to the sight of snowflakes falling softly upon the sleeping city. Holborn remains undisturbed until well into mid-morning on weekends. As I stayed in bed with steaming cups of coffee and my PC, hammering away at pending email and writing, I realized that it was the perfect day to stay indoors and catch up with chores. For the next couple of hours, I cleaned my kitchen and bathroom, tidied the papers overflowing around my night stand, filed so many bits and pieces on my Anglo-Indian research and felt exceedingly pleased with my accomplishments in the domestic department.

As the day crept on, I finished creating the pages for my Greece trip on my website, then sat down and spent a couple of hours transcribing an interview with Dorothy Dady that I had completed several weeks ago. Somehow, the thought of not having to venture out into slush and freezing rain was very comforting to me. It would also do my feet and my legs good, I thought, to treat them to complete rest after the busy day I had trekking all over Cambridge yesterday. Of course, I did my exercises as I am trying to be extremely religious about those.

At lunch time, I sat down to a very proper British dish--fish pie--which was just what the doctor ordered on this wintry day. I also did a batch of laundry which left my place smelling nice and fresh as my washer-dryer is in my kitchen. Overall, I felt as pleased at Punch as I surveyed my sparkling flat and I realized that I do not miss Felcy at all as I can quite easily undertake my own cleaning, thank you very much.

In the evening, because I was mentally exhausted from transcribing the interview, I sat to watch The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a film, that won Julian Schnabel the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival last year. From the first frame to the last, I was deeply absorbed and, by the end of it, deeply moved as well. Schnabel has taken the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (known as Jean-Do), Director of Elle magazine in Paris, who had a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and afflicted with "locked-in syndrome". This is a condition in which the patient is fully conscious and sees and hears everything but cannot speak, move or swallow. Through the patient working of a speech and physiotherapist, Jean-Do learns now to communicate by the use of his eye which he is able to blink. He uses this device to actually write a book, which he 'dictates' by way of his blinks to his stenographer. The book was published and in it he acknowledged the role played by all the women in his life who helped him, with love and care and concern during his therapy. He died ten days later.

The triumph of the movie lies not just in the extraordinary resilience and initiative of this writer who did not allow his physical condition to limit his mental capabilities but in Schnabel's masterful film making--he uses a novel method in which the viewer becomes Jean-Do facing the various people who populate his life on a daily basis. In-between, we are afforded glimpses into his life prior to his stroke, his relationship with Celeste, the mother of his children (though not his wife as they never married), with his father and with his love, Inez. Also sensitively documented is his relationship with the personnel at the hospital who nursed him through the excruciating months of his stay with them in Berck-sur-Mer near Calais. The film is made in French (with English subtitles) and uses several of the real people who helped Jean-Do during his own life, in minor roles. I was so keen to see this film when it came to our Community Theater in Fairfield, Connecticut, but somehow had missed it. Seeing it through Love-Films meant that it did not have the same impact as seeing it in the cinema, but I was enraptured throughout.

The snow stopped just as soon as it started but it left the day feeling sombre and silent. I was glad I was able to curl up and enjoy it from within the comfort of my flat which, incredibly, despite the bitter chill outside, does not need any heating at all. Of course, I was very warm all summer long, but now I am grateful for the insulation that will probably keep me feeling as warm as toast all through the winter.