Tonight I met my German friends for All-You-Can-Eat Sushi at one of the few Japanese restaurants in Bonn. The Sushi was OK, and it was plentiful. Plus, it felt good to consume some non-pork derived protein. In New York, once a month my much missed friends in the Village and I would attempt to find a decent place to order in Sushi to their apartment. We would spend at least an hour finding the place online, another half hour making the list of things we wanted and another half to full hour waiting for the food. Usually it was OK, but cost a fortune and came at times with the smallest portions you can imagine. Still, though tonight was enjoyable and I wound up quite full, it made me miss those evenings of Sushi mishaps as in the end they led to many laughs and always came with at least a little time spent playing with my friends' son before he went off to bed.
Most of the day was fairly uneventful. I spent my time doing a heap of laundry, organizing my apartment, running errands, working and reading. I am now past the 1,000 page mark on War & Peace. Though Napoleon has marched into Moscow, he is certainly weakened and overextended, meaning I expect his full retreat to come soon. In the meantime, Prince Andrei, my favorite character, is likely about to die. Well, I am not sure, but this book does feel too true to life to allow a man to receive two major injuries on two different battlefields in the 1800's and survive both of them. I mean, the odds would be astronomical. So, I assume he is not long for this world. The reason I love this character is that I in many ways identify with him. He struggles to find middle ground between terseness and effervescence, lives a life devoted to an appeal to reason, leaves behind his life and family to pursue his career yet displays fierce loyalty to his commitments, has trouble feeling connected to even those closest to him, falls in love with those who embody everything he lacks and copes with grief by throwing himself into his work. His loss will truly sadden me if my intuition is correct. On the other hand, I hope his sister and son will find happiness through it all.
Speaking of loss, some people very dear to me recently lost someone very dear to them. Unfortunately, my interaction with the deceased was limited to what amounted to spending the most enjoyable 4th of July weekend of my life at their residence, but by that time this individual was already in poor health and our interactions were minimal. However, I am extremely familiar with his family.
His son is the kind of man I hope to become. He is smart, educated, talented, reliable, hard working, honest and kind. He is the kind of person who would come home early to make dinner for his family, go for a run while the kids ate, help his kids put together an interesting science project, put them to bed, stay up late to work pro bono designing a building for a school for the deaf, and do all this while talking about politics, science, architecture, literature or anything else with the many friends and stragglers passing through his house.
His daughter-in-law, who happens to be my cousin, is tough, smart and interesting, while in ways and at the most perfect times being the most loving person I know. She is the kind of person who would do martial arts with her kids, take the job pro bono designing a building for a school for the deaf, argue until sun-up about many and varied topics, say exactly the right thing to make you feel better in times of grief or even more elated in times of joy and do all this while talking about politics, science, architecture, literature or anything else with the many friends and stragglers passing through her house.
As a result of these two individuals, obviously this person the world just lost has some pretty amazing grandchildren, whose praises I could sing for a much longer time than anyone would care to read. The bottom line is that I love this person's family very much, meaning their departure from this world makes me feel sad for the loss those I love have experienced. In short I will say to them that this life produced them and the life they have, meaning it must have been well-lived and full of love. That is something to be mourned and celebrated, both of which I hope they do to the fullest extent possible in their own ways.
These Are My People
9 years ago
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