Quitting smoking Day #1, #2.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003

This is Day #2. Day #1 was pretty easy. I rented some DVDs, went shopping and just pigged out all night and watched two comedies, then crashed.

Today, well, it's dark now and my body, especially my lungs, are calling for the 1-6ish or so smokes they've had for 19 years. I've smoked less, I've smoked more, like a pack a day when working on a film or two, or drinking at a long party or bar stint. But I've always been able to not smoke during the day, and survive on one a night, or even skip a few days.

But I've never quite for more then a month without cheating at least a little.

Right now I'm freakin'. The addiction is system wide. The 200ml of sustained release Wellbutrin, strategically taken to be at full force from dark to bed, is being out flanked. It is after all a simple second generation something inhibiter, basically a stimulant. The addiction, the nicotine in my cells, the psychological need to take breaks at parties, meet fellow smokers, think, rebel, are deeper.

The addiction are like rebels in a country the Wellbutrin and my brain is trying to attack. The only way to win is to starve them out. The brain has all the control! It can go shopping, it cooks! Hahahahahaah. Addictions can't cook.
---------------------posted by Caleb John Clark on 9/30/2003 07:10:00 PM


Review: Lost in Translation
Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Review: Lost in Translation
Caleb Jonh Clark, 09/23/03

If Bill gets an academy out of this I think I'll know why. There's a scene near the end in the lobby of a shinny hotel as he's leaving Japan. He hasn't said goodbye to Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) in the right way, hasn't expressed some tidbit of the tumult of words merry go rounding his in head that he felt for and about her. He's a crowd of five Japanese handlers and they want a picture. The camera is on him and he keep looking at Charlotte walking away with a wonderful expression of sadness. The flash goes off, and you know what the picture will be like. Then he realizes it went off and does this amazing pained smile, his face betraying the force it is taking him to do it, and at the same time he's frowning too. It was great. Luckily it doesn't end there, or i would have been depressed. But the way it ends was happy for me.
[spoiler]
He got to say what he wanted and hug her (in a brilliant stroke, Coppola made him mumble in her ear so we couldn't hear what he said, anybody know? It's driving me crazy!). She cried. He left smiling. Now able to do what he has to, and ultimately wants to, do.
[/spoiler]
It was a good movie. Slow in a way I have not seen in a megaplex for a while. Coppola had a style of making mini music videos between dialog scenes, shots of the city, expressions on faces, people walking. She also didn't have the characters speak what we were thinking all the time, or what they were thinking, like it is in real life sometimes. To him Charlotte was youth perhaps, the joy of confusion, wrapped in a wise mind that sees the craziness of the world and cringes around those who seem not to and only be wrapped up in living life. I'm not sure what he made her think of, but I am sure that their attraction was based on seeing the same things in life. And they were not so sad, just in melancholy situations. He was struggling to face his life, no longer a young film star acting, but an aging star selling out, married with kids, and out of shape. She was seeing her husband get on with living and being married and working, and she hadn't gotten on the train and didn't like feeling pressured to jump before she was ready. And they were both birds of a feather. The clue I think was when she was wondering what to do in life, and he said, "keep writing." Because they both had the writer's eye. Around her he could smile and be funny, because she got the same joke, she was in on the gag, the joke of trying to make a life real amid such a wacky species as us humans.

---------------------posted by Caleb John Clark on 9/23/2003 10:06:00 PM


Cat proximity
Sunday, September 21, 2003

As I was working at home today I noticed, again, that my big Maine Coon cat, Links, is one rockin' cat - at least for me. The main reason is that he stays close, but is still his own being. I was down on the shared patio having Sunday brunch with friends and he soon followed and lay down about 10 feet away under a chair. I don't usually see him at first, but eventually I'll spy him. One of the guests said "Oh, that's Caleb's cat," and I thought, well he's not really "mine" in an ownership way, more of a partner or friend way, as in "This is my friend Links." After eating I went up to my desk and in about five minutes he followed and lay down in the middle of the rug about 10 feet from me. At night Links will sometimes sleep on my bed, I'll pat him for a bit, he'll curl up and purrr and kick my hand and burrow his forehead into it (Cat for I like you). Then he'll move down to the end of the bed and somehow deal with my kicking feet all night. He's very dog like in this way, close, but not needy or scared. And sometimes he is out at night, all night, for a few days in a row. He's got his own door, just like I do, and he uses it as he pleases. While I do talk sort of cutsy to him, it is very limited, usually a greeting like "He noodle brain (or stink butt, or fart head, or mostly lately, doodle) are you hungry?" But nothing like the shrill, disturbingly progeny heavy pet talk that you hear sometimes. And to be honest, that talk drives me nuts. It seems disrespectful to the animal to me, especially to their parents, the real parents. First of all, humans don't have animal kids, although some humans have kids that act like animals at times. Second of all, unlike a kid, if I disappeared, Links has a pretty good chance of surviving without me, even happily. Sure, I agreed to feed him and care for him when I got him from the shelter. And since I live in a quiet patio, with a big abandoned yard next door, I let him run free. There are big real racoons, and vicious coyotes, and fast cars, all around though. But I respect Links ability to deal with these things in life. Kind of like people let me drive around on the highways, live in city with random crime and airborne viruses, and even be around unpredictable drugged up homeless folks without security forces at my side. So to me, Links and I, see, we're partners in life, trading company for pets, shelter and food. Remember, cats are the only *voluntarily* domesticated animal we have ever had. The others will either run away, or form into packs, if left to run free 24/7 with no fences between them at all.
---------------------posted by Caleb John Clark on 9/21/2003 06:06:00 PM


NM, NH, NYC Trip Pictures
Saturday, September 13, 2003

Just got back from a trip back east during beautiful September. Here's the pics
---------------------posted by Caleb John Clark on 9/13/2003 09:18:00 PM