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Yesterday: the heat.

There were two plans and both involved going to the movies and one was reliant on another factor and included the director doing a Q&A and the other was just two ladies getting together for a subversive comedy. First plan devolved and then the second shortly after. I went home to the cats.

The cats were happy to see me and I was unhappy to see their fur coming off their bodies in swaths. The heat! The air was thick not only with humidity but also cat hair.

I made myself comfortable and heated up my leftover Thai food and got up again to crack open that last Crispin cider in the fridge because did I mention it was hot? The humidity was making my hair reach out to there.

The second season of Orange is the New Black continues to prove that there are still many, many stories out there left to be told (let's stop re-hashing the same stuff, right?) and a lot of those untold stories are that of women and people of color. I admired the brilliant unfolding of the fourth episode with Lorna's backstory. It's just full of the kind of storylines and people I don't see in the media much. More of this! More, please, more.

My attempt to stay cool in the apartment were dwindling as my cider evaporated but lucky for me Adam was nearby and he too enjoys cider. I walked into the bar and he already had two ciders waiting. Somebody asked if we were hydrating by drinking pints of water. Oh no, dear friend. This is cider.

After I flopped onto my bed and slept barely in that warmth. The cat wanted to snuggle like most nights but I had to push him away; what are you crazy? I said.

Tonight, my own personal brand of torture: doing laundry.

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Planned impromptu travel plans with the husband last night. It becomes a much more difficult task when you're thirty and have a job and a pet and friends who are nine months pregnant and plans already in your calendar for the time you're looking to escape town. But escape I will and I'm looking forward to the journey and the adventure to come in three days time. His photos have been drenched in a lush greenery and I imagine that while he will have to do some work I will use the solitary time to focus on some writing with that green decorating the edges of my focus, fueling the creativity. At least, I hope.

On The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Death.

The following contains SPOILERS regarding 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2. If you're a fan of the comics, you pretty much know what I'm about to discuss.

A few weeks ago I found myself with a lack of plans since most friends were busy and my husband was out of town. This particular Tuesday afternoon I decided to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2 when I left the office. I settled on the superhero movie because I’d seen most everything else interesting in theaters, and because I figured the Very Important Thing from the comics had to happen in this sequel.

In one of the most defining moments in the original comic book series, readers witnessed the death of Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker’s high school love. It’s a crucial and dramatic scene made even more tragic because it’s unclear in the comic whether Green Goblin has already killed Gwen when she’s thrown off the George Washington Bridge or if Spider-Man’s web grabbing her mid-free fall whiplashes her so severely her neck breaks. This one moment is so much a part of Spider-Man legend that to this day people still debate what really happened and it even inspires amazing surreal-narrative novels. About a fictional event! In this latest series of films Gwen Stacy is played by the endlessly charming actor Emma Stone. She’s funny, intelligent, and gloriously blond as Gwen; her rapport with Andrew Garfield (her real life boyfriend) feels like the real glue of the story and the films would feel empty without this element.

So, I went to the movie to see Gwen Stacy die. Not that I wanted her to.

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I settled into my seat at the theater with my nutritious concession-stand dinner of chicken tenders. I ripped open ketchup packets while observing the crowd as they filtered in. I enjoy the experience of going to a movie by myself; of course it’s rare that I’m truly by myself. Observing others’ reactions to the same material has always fascinated me.

That night the theater was relatively empty—another reason I love to go right after work on a weeknight. There was a family in the row directly in front of me; a man and woman with two small children. The children, a girl and a boy, were seated between their parents. A twenty-something man in a tie arrived just as the trailers started and by the looks of it, he had also came straight from work, though a large popcorn and soda would serve as his dinner. He was two rows ahead of me.

The movie started, and just like in the first film, I was most captivated by the scenes that centered on Peter Parker, not as Spider-Man, but as a teenager talking to his Aunt May or going back and forth on his need to break up with Gwen to make sure she is safe (foreshadowing!). The action was fine if quite unthrilling. The movie almost felt like two separate movies mashed up into one, and I probably yawned as Jamie Foxx’s Electro tried frying Times Square or when Dane DeHaan’s Harry Osborne tried saving himself from his father’s own ugly fate¹ or… I’m not even sure what Paul Giamatti’s bad guy role served. With a two hour and 22 minute runtime, I was noticing every piece of film that could be excised from the tonally uneven mess. I was taken out of the movie simply for wondering, “Why does this scene exist?” The thing was bloated from the beginning; nothing would have changed had they deleted the first 15 minutes (which they should have). I could go on, but If you want to know my feelings regarding the movie as a whole, my opinion most closely mirrors Film Crit Hulk Smash, who has 237 burning questions for it.

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Perhaps that bloat was for a reason. Maybe the director and others in control of the final product also didn’t want to get to the saddest part. There was a minute there where I thought, hey, maybe she won’t die! Alas. Gwen, plucky as ever, decides to help her boyfriend at the last because she cares about the people of New York I suppose, and because she’s smart and knows about electric power-grid machinery. But she is not a superhero, and that’s where she’s less smart and it’s a bit aggravating.²

Gwen meets her demise in somewhat similar fashion to the comics—the Green Goblin drops her down a shaft as Spider-Man comes to rescue her while simultaneously sparring with the enemy. The main difference is that she is alive and screaming Peter’s name as she falls, waiting for that gentle snap of being caught in his web, which was demonstrated so innocently in the first film. As Spider-Man fends off the Goblin, he’s also trying to make sure his web reaches her, but there’s a cascade of metal objects falling as well, and getting in the way of her assured safety. Finally, Spider-Man neutralizes the Green Goblin and dives into the shaft to focus on Gwen—his web reaches her torso in slow-mo, hoisting her, just as her head snaps back and comes into contact with the ground. She appears immediately unconscious. When Peter reaches her and holds her, and that tell-tale blood appears, then it is sure: she’s dead.



You know what’s tough? Seeing Emma Stone die. That guy in the tie two rows ahead of me sobbed. I managed to hear him through my own shallow breath, my tears streaming freely. Gwen Stacy was the untarnished good person in these films, partly due to a lack of any true character depth, but mostly because of Stone’s gargantuan likability factor. Stone portrayed her so lovingly, so ultimate-best-friend-like (and girlfriend-like), that her death really had that emotional gut punch on screen. It felt like the soul of the film had departed.

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As I tried hard to stifle any sort of vocalization of my tears, afraid that those nearby might hear me cry, I heard the tiny voice of the little girl in front of me ask her mother, “Why isn’t Gwen waking up?”

And then I cried all over again.

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After the movie it was that little girl I couldn’t let go. Because she must have been six or seven years old and she didn’t know what death meant yet.

I tried thinking of when I first understood death. I think I probably had my first inkling when I was a kid watching movies like Jaws. I have a vague memory of sitting on the rug playing with my dolls in my aunt and uncle’s living room in Rhode Island while my aunt and dad watched tv. It must’ve been the late ‘80s. I was not paying attention to the television until I heard the first notes of that famous John Williams score, and then my eyes grew wide as I saw the great white shark and its victims. I was intrigued by the gore and how painful it looked—I recognized that red stuff was the same ooze that would materialize when I scuffed my knees playing with my brother, its mere appearance made me cry—but I didn’t grasp death. Forever is a hard concept for a kid to get, too.

I don’t remember asking my parents about death. I’ll have to ask them if they remember having to explain it to me. I wonder if it was after a horror movie, or any movie. Unless it happens in real life first, I have to think a fictional death in a movie or a book is the kick-off for the conversation. I wonder if we even had the conversation. Or did I come to understand death on my own after collecting all the evidence via media and then understanding more fully when it happened to my aunt or my grandmother or that girl in college? Does understanding death happen all at once? Or incrementally until you’re on the same page with everyone else?

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Some people spend their lifetimes trying to comprehend death, and if there is more that it entails beyond the ceasing of life. Death happens, but there are so many unknowns around it. All I’ve learned is that you really begin to understand other people when death looms. When your friend has to go in for extra tests because of a lump. When the younger brother of your best friend passes in his sleep and you see the different ways all of her friends react. When you get the call about the death of a relative two days after it happened. You then understand how death means different things to different people. Everybody understands the cold reality of expiration, but it’s those still living we really have to worry about.

Years from now, that little girl may or may not remember witnessing Gwen Stacy’s death on the big screen, but maybe that was the spark that set off a curiosity about the concept of death and the film’s correlation to reality. Perhaps like Jaws and the blood, she’ll begin to see how movies can reflect the hardest parts of life even if it’s not real. I left the theater thinking about the girl and what that on-screen death would mean to her and what it had meant to me to hear her, but I wasn’t really thinking about Gwen anymore.

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¹ I was also gawking at how much DeHaan looks like a young Leonardo DiCaprio, perhaps just as capable an actor too—point is I was not paying attention much to Green Goblin.

²  To quote the aforementioned Hulk review: "DO YOU REALIZE THAT THIS MOVIE IS SAYING THAT GWEN DIES BECAUSE SHE DID NOT LISTEN TO HER BOYFRIEND? AND HAD TO BASICALLY INSIST ON MARCHING OFF TO HER OWN DEATH SO IT'S NOT PETER'S FAULT?”

Scenes from winter.

The four of us entered the warm cafe last Saturday morning; our cheeks red with cold. We were all smiling and exclaiming in greeting despite the frigid air we just escaped. Our eyes focused on the birthday girl woman and slid down to her growing belly, trying to tell the difference from when the each of us saw her last (me, one week). She's the first of us, and we are learning. We noticed new, flattering glasses on one of us and discussed the raw wound of a new heartbreak and there were heated (but loving) disagreements on a novel we'd read. The birthday woman described some information about pregnancy none of us understand yet; she knows to disseminate the knowledge as we are all eagerly listening for that maybe, someday.

And I write like this now because we are 'we.' We are sisters, and we are all different, but most of the time, like that Saturday morning, we all move in unison and speak in that language that only we understand. We laugh at the jokes that are impossible to understand if overheard. We know to rely on each other when we need to, and we know happiness isn't a status but each other.

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"Your skin isn't dry?"

I wasn't sure what the manicurist was so confused about, which is why she probably continued: "For months, every single girl has dry skin because of winter. Why are your hands so soft?"

Apparently my new winter routine, which I enacted after noticing my scaly skin in Panama, has been somewhat successful. The Beauty Department posted a Dry Brushing 101 tutorial, and I was intrigued by the dry brushing concept and benefits, and the whole moisturizing with body oil before a shower (and after). So, to Amazon I went - buying a body brush and body oil. Surprisingly, body brushing doesn't hurt, but rather feels invigorating, especially in the morning. And the oil feels great, something I wasn't sure my texturally-hyper-aware and non-sticky sensibilities would like. My skin feels wonderful and I'll be sticking to this routine through to warmer weather.

That's the one winter beauty tip that I can pass along.

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Jesse arrived in Minneapolis last week on a day in which the high was 0 degrees. New York's had a few 'feels like 0' days, though. We've been sharing a lot of chapped kisses these days, but it's been nice to have him close on the cold nights. We don't usually watch a lot of television together, but we've snuggled close for True Detective and the BRILLIANT Broad City and now we're amidst The Returned (which is a French show that is not associated with that new U.S. show Resurrection, lest you heard wrong). I hope we'll be able to venture out more often (not that we've been exactly hibernating - can you truly hibernate in New York and stay sane?), but at least in a couple of weeks we'll be sunning ourselves at a wedding in warmer climates. I can't wait.

Thinking about Panama.

I've been remiss, yet again. I flew south and forgot my routine when back in the cold. I spent nine glorious days nearer to the equator, nearer to my far-flung family, nearer to a sun that could scorch your core if you weren't careful.

That's one thing Panamanians understand: the strength of that blinding yellow sphere. There's nobody lounging uncovered on a towel on the beach; the sand is empty and the people are either in the water with t-shirts or in the cabanas under the shade of trees. Nobody wins a fight against the sun in that belly of the world, even if you're wielding SPF 90. The sun's much too uncomfortable down there, too. I wanted to sit in a chair, feel the heat on my legs as I drifted into Didion's Salvador--I like to match my vacation reading to the locale--but two minutes, maybe less, and I was moving that chair under a tree again. The sun in Panama burns in the way a stove might sear your dinner or those first few layers of skin; it's the devilish half to its northern personality.

My grandfather (Abuelo) turned 86 while we were there in January. He christened me Popsicle when I was younger, because I always wanted a cool, sugary treat from the corner store when visiting in the summers. He'd escort me and my brother (Abuelo nicknamed him Peluso for his untamable hair), and buy us 'boli' ice pops for five cents each. Popsicle is one of the few English words he knows, and he still holds my cheeks and says it in greeting.

Abuelo's wrinkles were always part of his face in my memory, and his eyes squint out from them when he's smiling, just as mine already do (minus the wrinkles -- but I'm sure I'll get there one day). Last year his health ebbed at times, in a borderline scary fashion, and I worried about him so far away, but my mother at least flew in to help. He's better now and in January he still called me Popsicle and I sat with him on the couch, holding his hand and remaining silent for the most part but still smiling. He's never been a man of many words.

My mother and father were there too in January and we spent a few days on a beach that not many souls know about and I read many books and played cards with cousins and helped gather firewood for the evening bonfires. It's desolate in grand fashion; it's expansive and gorgeous and we're the only people taking up a small bit of it's seemingly infinite space. On the first night there my father told me to come see the stars away from the cabana lights and Jesse and I walked out towards the tide line, which had pulled back into the ocean and we walked where earlier that day we had struggled to stay afloat. We looked up and the entire universe was overhead. The milky way, a cool blue star, something red, all breathtaking. We are but specks and it's always there on that beach that I feel it most, gazing into other worlds.

One day we drove into the mountain area named Volcan for the dormant volcano nearby, and the breeze took the bite out of that sun and we were surrounded by lush greenery and Panama's agricultural center of farms and silos and greenhouses and animals. Everything seems much more vivid in that country of my birth. When we flew between cities the coastline's blues and greens were bordered by jungle and not even near Panama City did I witness too many of the resorts that pepper every beach in the United States like the ones last year we saw descending into Tampa or even San Francisco. Panama's beauty is still vast and there are those who don't venture past its capital -- for now. I visit every other year and there's a fear I'll come back to a ruined nature of things as I knew them. I held my breath this time as we rounded corners--for just a second, though, because everything is still lovely and some things even improved.

Time with my family is always full of laughter, jokes, easy camaraderie, and love. My godmother and mother's twin, Tia Lita, always putting others before herself and making sure Jesse had air conditioning in the room that's usually hers. Always practicing her English with us and making sure we know how happy she is that we are there. My Tia Belly, the young rascal who used to model and wants everyone to think that she's my sister, not twenty years older. My Tio Neco, serious and efficient sometimes, but just the opposite when he decides to let loose. He brought over his two new kittens to the house because he knew how much I wanted to meet them. My Abuelo and Abuela, together forever in that same house since I was a babe. There are many, many others. I think of them and I feel warm again.

On our last night in Panama City, all my cousins took us out for an evening on the town, finding a craft beer bar that Jesse would appreciate. They spoke in English and I practiced my Spanish--we all seemed to speak with more ease once we started imbibing. My cousins are all of my generation and we are most curious about each other's lives in different countries and we talk about pop culture and politics and our family and our differences but our surprising similarities. At the end of the night, it was hard to say goodbye to my Panamanian counterparts, as a few hours seemed too few for all we wanted to say to each other. 

My mother is in Panama for another month; it was her birthday yesterday and we're able to text, but I really can't wait to see her again. For now I can only imagine myself next to her and my family out there on that abandoned beach; I've transported there several times in my mind, especially today as I battled the snow into work and on my way home.