One can’t help wonder and imagine what’s happening this holiday season on Kepler 22B. Is this a twin universe or just another planet, more than twice our size, that could possibly accommodate earthly humans? Do they celebrate Christmas, Chanukah or Kwanzaa or maybe Keplerians are not monotheists? A new independent film, Another Earth, addresses identical individuals living altered parallel lives on dual planets. A concept that children often ponder.
If I had another identical being, would she make the same decisions, the same assumptions and find the same conclusions?
It got me thinking about my early childhood expression, “same, same” meaning two similar or identical things . Perhaps by providing two examples of something, it’s God’s way of pointing out double coincidences and underlying the necessity to pay attention to what’s presented to us.
This time of year I seem to be discovering so many things in pairs. Last month I listened to two excellent confessional audiobooks. The first was John Lithgow’s memoir “Drama: An Actor’s Education” and the second, Rob Lowe’s "Stories I Only Tell My Friends". They each have opposing views of working with Cliff Robertson, who died this year, and spent their formative years in Ohio discovering their unquenchable desire to perform in the regional theatre companies of Ohio. Lithgow began his education at what became the Great Lakes Shakespeare Company and Lowe worked as a child performer with John Kenley at Kenley Players in Warren.
I’m now listening to Diane Keaton’s memoir “Then, Again” which gives another telling of an actor, a California girl growing up with a need to perform. She begins the book saying that her professional life has hugely exceeded her initial expectations of success.
Working in Indianapolis last week I came across dozens of young actors portraying historical characters or anonymously reenacting people of a specific era. Visiting both the Indiana Historical Society and the Children’s Museum, I interacted with a baritone at the Waldorf Astoria bar singing Cole Porter songs, a European Jewish immigrant and her neighbors sitting around the kitchen table making matzoh ball soup, bystanders to RFK’s April 1968 speech about MLK’s killing, survivor friends of Anne Frank and Egyptian architects discovering an ancient tomb. Play acting with professionals is a fun way to learn history on a deeper level.
As I add comments to this document, I am sharing it between my old computer with a busted screen and the new replacement laptop. It’s always challenging to wean oneself from the systems and environment of one computer to a new one. And amazing to realize how much data is stored within one small machine.
The English language film adaptation of “The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo” opened this week and many of the reviews focus on Noomi and Rooney, the two actresses who have portrayed the title character. It’s a unique way to view, compare and critique two performances of the same character.
The ending bookend for 2011, New Year' Eve, is in eight days. As this week's Christmas remembrance approaches I think back over the year and my summertime visit to Israel. Once again I walked in Jesus’s footsteps in the Galilean towns of his early years and went to the Church of the Multitudes where he was to have expanded the supply of fish and bread. I toured the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built upon the mountain where he died. As a Jew I don’t accept his divinity, but it is easy to fit his, Mary's and Joseph's lives into those living under the tyranny of Rome and their extraordinary influence on the modern world. For us non-believers it's a mystery to wonder about each December.
I only wish that those considering themselves Christians would apply his lessons to the way they treat other humans and non-humans on the planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment