Reflections on 2004 pt.1+

A year ago this time I was just finishing the Zoo Lights season at the zoo and looking at a desert of work to cross until the zoo picked up again in the spring.  I was already getting food stamps, issued in the form of a convenient and relatively anonomous debit card.  I was getting like $140 a month, which was more than enough for me.  I have simple tastes and mostly eat to fill that empiness- sort of graze through the day.  So I was eating well, and living here in housing secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be asked to leave and that the program they’d put me on meant I was paying $0 rent. 

So food and shelter were assured.  I could and have lived on just that, so no problem.  but not working was going to take a toll on my self-esteem.  I knew this- it’d been years since I was able to work and I found it addicting and so satisfying to needs I hadn’t identified that the prospect of going back to having too much time on my hands was intimidating.

*The incident with my friends A &J had begun by this time and I was a confused and misbehaving cat.  That whole thing was a mess that came to a head on New Years Eve, but by this time the outlines of that night were already sketched and lined out.

I’m working on seeing that sort of thing before the picture is complete, to see that sketching and maybe erase it and start over…

My friend Ally Cat had given me a DVD player and I was scrounging to get it to hook up to my old TV.  I had found what I needed and had watched the movie that she’d included- some Colin Farrel flick that he was pretty good in, I thought. 

This night a year ago (I’ve got reciepts) I watched “Apocalype Now Redux”, the director’s cut of a movie that had been a significant marker in my life.  I had seen it while suspended for that beer run I wrote about a whiles back when it came out in the movie theaters and it had made such an impression on me that I had to take my brother to see it too.  And he had to see it again, so I did too-

I saw the movie after I got out of the Navy and it made TOTAL sense to me.  I thought that it captured the military mindset in war time very well and watched it with new eyes.  I rented it and watched it for the scene where Captain Willard is given his mission by a General and a Colonel played by Harrison Ford, in one of his first big screen appearances. I wrote some paper for a class in college on that sceen which of course got an A (something that pleased me immensely after the brain injury thing, cuz now the “of course” element was in doubt).

“Apocalype Now Redux” came out here in the theaters just before 9/11 and after that it seemed like a totally inappropriate thing to go see, so I missed it in the theaters.  It was only available in the stores later as a DVD so I was out of luck until Ally Cat gave me one for Christmas.  I went to Hollywood Video nearby and got the movie and watched it with a critical eye and liked it more with the added scenes.

And played with my new toy.  Close ups and freeze frames and such.  You know- for the really neat stuff, like some of the scenes left out of the original realease- the one with the Playboy Bunnies, for example…

Well, that was tonight a year ago.  Next time I write I wanna look back at this year and how well it turned out for me.  2004 has been my best year in a long time-maybe ever.

Hmmm, something to think about.

*

*note:  the entry describing the unfortunate events of New Years Eve 2003 was one of the entries lost in that hacker attack. 

shall I repost it?