crisis

Proms and Honeymoons

A movie reel

Nemo (Jared Leto) and Elise (Sarah Polley) have just been married. They are on the way to their honeymoon. Traffic backs up and they are stopped in front of a gasoline tank car. The have a wonderful life planned until the tanker detonates.

The explosion kills Elise and leaves Nemo with burn scars on his face. Later, he stands in front of some photos of Elise. As he pulls away, you see a silver urn as a shrine for her in his study. It was a very powerful moment that ties together different parts of the story.

This variant of Nemo is an example of one of the worst honeymoons one could imagine.

Years ago, I was driving home from Lafayette, Indiana to Fort Wayne on Indiana 25. I passed a boy on a moped also driving northeast. For some reason, I was watching him in my rear window.

Before I got too far, the boy turned left into the path of the car following me. The 13 year old boy, William, flew through the air and landed in the berm. I stopped and ran back to where the accident was. The boy was surrounded by a huge pool of blood. I didn’t want to believe he was dead. When the neighbors came out, one covered him with a sheet.

The police warned me to be careful because after seeing an accident like that, I would be more at risk of having my own accident. I could see their point: I could be distracted by the horror of it. I told the police was looking back because I thought it was a dangerous situation.

I didn’t realize it at first, but the driver and passenger of the car were to teenagers on their way to their prom. Such an awful prelude for what should have been a happy occasion.

The local newspaper published a photo taken after the accident. It had the two teenagers in the foreground and the father of the boy at the side of the frame. The photograph won an award.

Nemo and Elise’s honeymoon is one the versions of Nemo Nobody’s potential life. Mr. Nobody (2011) has different lives and most are full of pain. The lives that he reports are torn by crisis or disaster. A journalist (Daniel Mays) is puzzled by so many contradictory lives. His interview ends with the tape runs out.

Some of the events of life are horrible. Nemo’s honeymoon was cut short. The couple on their way to the prom were just planning to have a pleasant day. They all were faced with events turning in an unexpected direction.

Sometimes the tape is torn. When there’s no way to splice it back together, somehow the recording continues on. Sometimes it’s stronger and sometimes it’s weaker. Sometimes I have tears in my eyes and sometimes the tears in my tape are difficult. Even when I weep, I can realize there is still a ways to go.

Passengers (2016)

Two wine glasses making a toast
In Passengers, Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) has an impossible problem. He’s on a 120-year trip to colonize the planet Homestead II. He’s supposed to be in suspended animation for the trip but wakes up 90 years too early. Not good. He can’t be suspended again. Even less good.

He searches for help but finds none. He spends over a year solo on the Avalon. He tries to keep himself occupied, but eventually reaches his limit. He falls in love with a suspended woman and wakes her up, condemning her to never start the life she had planned.

After traveling for 30 years, the Avalon is moving at half the speed of light. It has a shield in front of it, but it isn’t impenetrable. Unbeknownst to Preston, the ship was critically damaged before he wakes up. It’s up to Preston and his victim, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), to fix it.

The Avalon is really beautiful. Graceful, delicate and vast. It is a good backdrop to this lonely love story.

After hitting bottom

Thought bubbleThere are two ways to look at hitting rock bottom.

One is that you can’t lose any more. “You’re bottom is where you stop digging.” You’ve lost your family, home, career, money, self-respect. What more can you lose?

The other is to treasure anything that you get after the point of crisis. You’ve lost your home, but you’re grateful there’s a shelter that you can stay at. Your family is gone, but you’ve met someone who is willing to pray with you.

The former is a natural attitude toward a bottom. Is the latter grateful attitude more likely to lead to recovery?

Know the “enemy”

It’s interesting to go to international English language newspapers.

With the Internet being borderless, you can learn things from different perspectives. Especially in war and conflict.

I’ve learned some of the enticements ISIS gives to get Taliban fighters to join it in Afghanistan. One is to “join the winning team.” Another is “the West hates Muslims.”

That Syrian media portrays Bashar al-Assad as hugely popular and well-loved.

When Russia was making bombing attacks in Syria, the Russian use of the Iranian airbase was controversial in the Iranian parliament. Iran has a constitutional provision that prohibits it from allowing foreign armies to deploy on Iranian soil.

Brazil is undergoing a political crisis far beyond the impeachment of the president. Due to corruption charges against many of its politicians.

The Palestinians are following proceedings in the International Criminal Court about crimes committed during the Gaza conflict by both sides. Israel rejects the court’s authority.

The local paper glossed over the players in a recent terrorist attack from Gaza. In Israel, a non-Hamas group claimed responsibility, but the paper said “Israel holds Hamas responsible….” so that the U.S. paper didn’t have to explain the messy details of the Gaza conflict where there are multiple actors.

The contrast between the Chinese culture and the U.S. culture was an interesting subtext of the Shanghai Daily. It seemed to me that even though China has over a billion people, the articles have a “small-town” feel to me. The local, small-town paper, The Star in DeKalb County Indiana has plenty of stories of conflict and disunity in the U.S.