Fragmentation of my existence continues. I feel that some of us are more fortunate than others. We are staggering around through life and we get our foot stuck in a crack in the trail. This happens because we are either nice people or we are inducted into some sort of servitude temporarily. Others made an unpredictable course change equivalent to suddenly jerking the steering wheel rail-ward on a long bridge. No matter what they did, when everything settles, somehow the pieces of who they are, are found to be more assembled than ever before.
It was certainly this way for Julie Powel, the author of Julie and Julia. BTW. I have never seen a movie that was so NOT the book ever before like this, meaning, if you saw the movie, you have no clue. Read the book. Julie clearly hated her life. She worked in the wake of one of the biggest tragedies there ever was. Even worse she worked for the bureaucratic remediation of said tragedy. Her personal life was empty or at least she perceived it was. She envied her friends that had lives that it seemed she actually would not have wanted if you said, “ok Julie, you win, you can have this life.” Where is she now? Her life actually does not suck. Just as importantly, she brought great honor in defining another great woman who, herself was also feeling this incredible fragmentation of the sum of her being. It is a shame the movie got dumbed down to the level a 7 year old could understand. On a whole, you can only feed Americans entertainment from a Pez dispenser.
Sorry, I am doing that thing I do. Julia Child was one of those fragmented people who had some really great qualities that needed the glue of purpose, and well, we know she sure found it.
Getting to the point now. Last fall in September, we camped at this exact site at Winhall Brook Campground. I proclaimed then that I would wrangle those fragments of mine in a coherent and collected and hopefully talented person. The question is, knowing that I did not succeed, what DO I have to show for a winter of cold, cooking, loss and introspect?
More on this later. The coffee is done perking!