Winter Solstice, 2025

Winter Solstice, 2025. Shortest day of the year up here in the northern hemisphere. Where I am now, in Kolkata, cooler a bit, choking air, but the wobble makes not much difference about when it gets dark. Around 6 or so. Here a dull white sky sometimes allows a yellow disk to penetrate it; the AQI seems to be far worse than a year ago, and a check confirms:

In turn I am hacking, my nose runs, and the people here say “you’ll get used to it.” I don’t think I will; I’ll just shave a few more months off my life.

Three months ago I was in NYC, seeing some friends, some surely for a last time, as I’d done in Chicago, Boston and elsewhere. I don’t intend to return to the USA again, so for some a swan song so-long. In late September flew from NYC to Dublin, train/bus up to Derry where I was greeted by Marcella and Uma, who clearly recalled me, and ran to slobber me with kisses. She knows a good sucker when she’s trained him: he’ll throw balls for me!! He’ll tug my toys with me and toss them!! Play play play!!!!!

So went to Marcella’s lovely place, which she got back in the interim after some repairs sent her to another place earlier. She’s settled into her new job with Repair Cafe, where she’s in a kind of administrative/developmental post. I stayed a month, and we all had a good time – went a few places, took long, slow (because of me) walks in the nearby park, and I got some editing done on Weyauwega film and some other things. It rains a lot this time of year so lots was indoors, good for writing or editing and things. Took it easy for the most part, partly because my banged up 82 year old body was feeling the wages of my travels – walking slow, legs not getting enough circulation (despite the drug I’m taking for it – Cilostazol), and partly because after a near-6 months of pretty constant travel, needed a little break. Because coming up was another month of more.

Left Derry and flew to London where I had a quick 3 days stay, now in another place, with Roland Denning in Camden, as my usual refuge was now occupied by grandchildren ! Stayed in Camden, and managed to squeeze in seeing a few friends, while I tried to sort out my India visa which was becoming, again, a hassle. Then took Eurostar to Paris after having to change – meant to go to Brussels and see people there, but then one of them instead was in Paris, so…. So I saw Mark Rappaport and then, as happened, friend Jane from NYC was there and we shared hotel a few days and had some fun, and I had a breakfast with Vivianne who then invited Jane for a dinner. All so fast.

And then flew on to Split, in Croatia where Tanja Vrvilo had organized a spread out partial retrospective of my films – 12 features and a handful of short works, showing in Split, Zagreb and Rijeka, and tossed in was a week in Tirana, staying in Enver Hoxha’s villa in the center of town – it has been turned into an artist residency thing. So for three weeks I shuttled to one place and the next, showed films, saw new places, and made new friends, saw some older ones. Was a good time, made a little much appreciated coin and had travels covered. And finally resorted to iVisa to get my Indian one, as I’d done last time around as the government on-line service just does not work. I got a 5 year visa this time as the hassle and cost is just…

So flew back to London for a quick 3 day stay, managing to see Hilary and Stuart, and meet with Dahci Ma, a Korean friend from 15 years ago. A bit hectic, but fun. And then flew on to Kolkata, where I arrived 2 weeks ago.

The air here is horrendous, and finds me red-eyed, sniffling and hacking. No fun. On the other hand on getting back I gave myself a day of rest and then went with Aopala to visit. They were all very happy to see me back, telling that my nickname is “White Grandfather!” I told them given my age perhaps it should be great-grandfather, since they start so young. They all wanted their photos taken (more) and were so enthusiastic and welcoming that I asked Aopala if maybe we should go ahead and ask bluntly about being in a film. She was hesitant and then agreed and asked. I was hoping to get 3 to 5, but instantly we had ten. A woman volunteered to sing a Bengali song. The young girl I’d wanted and had been so shy said yes. And others. So I am ready to dig in and try to figure out what can be done, and how. In the next 4 months or so – I hope to go to the mountains in April-May when it will be hot hot hot here. Aopala and Abhirup, her boyfriend, have agreed to come along.

As things are forming up hope to get some kind of film – fiction narrative mixed with portrait of the place? And for sure an on-line photobook of D-Block and its people. Something to keep my hands busy and out of trouble!! Seem to have raised a handful of Facebook friends to donate some old digital cameras to give to the kids there, to let them go shoot their own world and if turns out good and interesting, another part of book on D-Block.

Through all this I’ve been riding the being-old roller-coaster. My lower back/legs shrieking at times, almost to the point of saying, “sorry Jon, you don’t get to get out of bed today.” It says, but never gets its way. Got a prescription for steroids and seems to be helping a lot. However my walking is limited, calves tighten up now in 1/3rd of a mile. Will consider angioplasty after I have doctor examine and ponder. I do, though, manage the morning’s stretchersizes, 30 squats and 50 pushups. Ain’t dead yet.

Out in the wider world, the USA sprints to a chaotic collapse, with the Trump Gangsta.Guv going nuts and like to be gone in a quick year. Replace by what, who knows. Collapses are always messes. He was the predictable conclusion to “The American Century,” imperial hubris compounded with ultimate corruption. Same thing happening around the world as global warming warms up, volatile weather, warmer air carrying more moisture. Boil a pan of water and watch how it happens.

My coming months will be here, hopefully busy with D-Block and a few other self-appointed things I hope to get done while here.

That’s my seasonal news. If inclined please drop me a note about your life.

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Winter Solstice, 2024: Kolkata

_{Shireen, yrs trly, Aopala, Abhirup, Riddhi}

Solstice rolls around again, this time for me in Kolkata, as it was 2 years ago. It gets dark here by 5, but is light in the morning near 6. I’ve been here now about 6 weeks.

Back on Sept 22, autumn equinox, I was in New York, taking new friend, filmmaker Prabhash Chandra, around New York. He went off on a little show ‘n tell tour to Boston and nearby, and later as far away as Ohio and LA. I stayed with my friend Jane Schreibman in NYC, seeing friends, working on subtitles for last year’s Casa do Silencio, and myriad other things. October 6 went up to Boston for a classroom thing at Emerson University, and then had to go back to NYC to introduce my friend Robina Rose’s film Nightshift, which I shot for her (and much more) back in 1980. It was screening at New York Film Festival in a program of restored films. Robina, I was told, was not in good health and could not go for it. Then had to bounce back up to Boston, staying at my cousin Holly’s wonderful house there – seeing some friends, and finally a changed-date screening at Mass Arts on 16th. Flew to London on 17th on night-flight, and spent just a few days with my friends Hilary and Stuart, and had a nice dinner with writer friend Joanna Pocock, and another person there, in theater, Edoardo Barreto, who’d wanted to meet me, and turned out he knew Hil & Stu.

Then moved on to Derry, in Northern Ireland, to visit with Marcella, staying with her a bit over a week. We had a lovely time together – love is strange. 49 and 81. I went back to London, Nov 1, waiting for India visa, which turned into a little errant mess that proved a bit costly – needlessly had to change departure date to India getting knicked for that, and then Air India, charged me for a check-in bag that I’d paid for – hassling now for a refund from them. More importantly I wanted to see Robina, who I’d found out had been hospitalized though no one knew where she was. I tracked it down, and went to visit her. She was in bad shape, and I spent an hour with her. She was very happy I’d materialized. She’d been hospitalized a month earlier, taken by ambulance from her home where she’d been found unconscious. On leaving I assumed it was the last time. We have been very close friends since 1978, when we met at the Edinburgh Film Festival. She is having a belated kind of recognition, with her 3 films being digitally restored. The projection in New York showed Nightshift was a beautiful film. I hadn’t seen it since 1980. After I left London I got word she’d been diagnosed with liver cancer, and was in hospice. I await the final word.

the roses had dried and shriveled up some years ago
decades
in their way they had a beauty
if not the one of brilliant colors
crimson jaune or even blue
not gertrude’s
a rose is a rose is a rose

instead a blanched shell of itself
petals paper crisp and fragile
caught amidst the mess of desiccated other things
postcards and papers
browned folds of table cloth
the dimming light of winter through the curtained window

caught in the utter stillness of the catacomb of her mind
where memories had frozen,
cobwebbed
and sat her down in the ambered days
she called her life

The day before leaving for India I went to go to a favored art supply store, Cornelissons, near the British Museum, and somewhere along the way lost/had stolen my iPhone. Most inconvenient timing as one almost has to have a smart phone now when traveling. It is I think the 3rd one I have lost in the last 3 years.

I got to India expecting to go to the mountains with my friend Riddhi, and others, to be there while they shot a new film. For various reasons that was cancelled, so instead I’ve been here in Kolkata, seeing friends from my last visit, and beginning to do a project I had in mind since being here before. There is an area a 15 minute walk from where I stay here, D-Block, a neighborhood that is poor but had a certain something that attracted me to it 2 years ago and which I thought on return to make a documentary about, and, if all worked out well, recruit a handful of people to act in a fiction built around their lives. I’d wandered there many times before, and going back, this time with Aopala, some recognized me from before. With her Bangla, we quickly managed to befriend people there, and they know I am out to make a film, and are being very open and helpful. I think at minimum I’ll get some kind of portrait of the place, and hopefully also the fiction. I am shooting with my iPhone 12 (replacement bought here). I have another project I’d started before and will for sure try to do this time – portraits of coolies in the bazars to the north side of Kolkata.

Since arriving the air here has mostly been awful, and certainly triggered my nasal Niagara. Went to a dentist, Riddhi’s family one, and had needed root canal. $80 !! And just had a little medical check up which showed very high BP (seemingly normal for me), though a few days ago I did 130 continuous pushups in my daily stretch and exercises. Got prescribed more BP pills and will have blood tests done.

I definitely feel on the accelerating slope of age – walks shorter, with calves not cramping, but getting stiff – lack of blood supply the cause. On Kolkata’s quite irregular streets the usual “balance problems” of our decrepitude are ever more noticeable, as I stumble along, lurching left and right, near tripping. When with me, Aopala reaches out to help me now and then. I may delude myself about it often, but I am old – to be seen in my gait, in the seeming drunken wander of my walk; my bent over visage. Old.

As if to compensate for this reality, I seem to burble with poems… about getting and being old, and about our companion, death.

that pirouette you just saw
no, i’m not a dancer
just old
a little balance thing
it happens now and then
more often each day

so far i don’t fall down
just an awkward little spin
catch myself

one day i won’t

In the last months had word of death of one friend, Kristi Hager, painter who lived in Missoula, and who was in two of my films, Bell Diamond and Sure Fire. Awaiting any day now the shoe-drop notice of a few others waiting in the wings. My peers are winnowing out.

dying took as long as your life,
first breath to last
that was it
no more, no less

everything in between was just a distraction

However, though the end of the tunnel has no light, we carry on presuming. In the coming months I’m scheduled, in early February, to go show some things at the major film school here in Pune, and then visit friends in Delhi and perhaps spend a week in the mountains north of Delhi. Otherwise here in Kolkata. And plans afoot for later: screenings in LA in June at the American Cinematheque, and other things.

Wishing you a lovely winter. If inclined send me a note.

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