Manon Day

The day begins, as they so often do, with a massive dose of physical medicine.  At 8:30 AM, my solar plexus already drained, Lorna walks me out to the recumbent exercycle and begins the process of snapping my bike shoes onto the pedal clips.  For some reason this takes her longer than usual, and I watch her sweating and straining in the morning heat with a certain amount of pleasure.  Every moment spent preparing me for the exercycle is another moment I don't have to exercise.  How on earth do I do this?  How does a quadriplegic pedal a virtual 5 miles, according to the machine's digital screen, before he has had an adequate cup of tea?  

This adds to the sacrifice, the reduction of tea input.  I simply don't dare drink a major diuretic before beginning an hour's work out.  Lorna is squatting on her haunches, peasant-style, while she has a go at the bike shoe clip.  She shoves the thing this way and that and finally snaps into place.  Now there's nothing to do but listen to the podcast of Friday's comedy on Radio 4.  I reached some critical point in Britain on this last trip, learning just enough to appreciate more than half of the topical jokes...and now I want to fill in the blanks.  The comedy is pleasantly irreverent.  What it lacks is rhythm.  One needs music for that.  The Volga Boatmen would do nicely.  After a while, I switch to Cole Porter.  Not quite right either, but I may actually get through the ordeal with this.

Once I'm done, the chasm of the day opens and I fall into it.  But only for 15 minutes.  Perry arrives bursting with chat about this and that.  Mostly that.  He is a Stanford trainer, physical therapy assistant and all around accomplished dude.  It's just that he was born with an abundance of extravert genes.  I tune in and out of his banter.  Until I have to pee.  And then the session is over.  There is plenty to do in Menlo Park today.  The annual arts festival has the main street closed, with constituents wandering about with garlic fries, listening to rock bands and eyeballing watercolors of Carmel.  It's all happening three streets away.  But I am not happening.  I am waiting for friends to arrive and, at 3 PM, see what happens to Manon of the Spring.

Meanwhile, I have four hours of life ahead of me, time unaccounted for, unplanned and, no, it cannot all be spent reading.  Sitting and staring will take up the bulk.  Whenever I slow down, it settles in, the reality of my state of depression.  Something is knotted inside me, gripping and constricting my heart.  I seem to get into neither extreme of emotion, the desperately despairing or the ecstatic.  Things coast, gray and somewhere in between.  

Grieving people are accident prone, a social worker told me.  I keep this in mind when en route to the office with a recently boiling cup of tea, the contents slosh onto the Marlou Memorial Carpet.  Instantly, I flare into anger at myself.  Wisely, I abort the process and roll to the dining table.  Yes, there is every reason to hurry, get to work, if it can be called that, and get on with the day.  But my anger is so easily self directed, my feelings so volatile, that like a kid in timeout I need to...well, cool out.  I can't do this, and I can't do that, and as a psychologist reminded me, I can't, or couldn't, save Marlou.  So there are a few timeout minutes drinking tea at the table...then on to the office.  When will this all end?  When my friends arrive for the matinee.

We only know what has happened to Jean de Florette, Manon's cinematic father.  Manon tries her hand at revenge early in the film, with a bold attempt at arson -- but the rain saves her from crime.  Something inside me flinches.  The rain is awfully friendly to the plot of both 'Jean' and 'Manon.'  Too friendly, and it's a matter of tone.  In something openly fabulist rain-as-plot-device would not matter.  The problem comes with realistic cinema.  And I make note of this tiny quibble for my own improved storytelling.  Back to Manon.

She seems to have a moral capacity that her Provençal tormentors do not.  This restrains her revenge to the blocking of a regional spring.  And from this much good springs, and, yes, the pun is intended.  Okay, so 'Manon' runs afoul of Hollywood, with a blond bombshell starlet in the lead...and too much implausibility and bad storytelling.  Never mind.  The moral problems it tries to present still grip me.  Can human beings meter out revenge in such perfect dollops?  Assuming the answer is no, how can they get close?  Manon keeps her humanity.  Perhaps she is too young to have lost it, perhaps not.  But what I like about both films is that all characters have a quality of humanity.  Look at what we learn about César.  He once loved a woman with great dedication, it seems.  What's missing for me is how the fortuitous loss of this love has soured him, made him so callous...or does this quality spring from something else?  Ugolin is both pathetic and poignant in his love for Manon.  Every character tugs at the heart just a bit.  For me, the flaws lie in the storytelling.  The plot-device arrival of an old woman who reveals César's history in narrative seated on a village bench...just seems too pat.  Not to mention static.

Still, the interesting question: to what extent is the village truly culpable?  Theirs is the guilt of silence.  That's all.  And, we are reminded, that's enough.  All this is a great lesson, or reminder, for me.