"What if I want to stay...?"

I. Gray Lady is a siren.

Last night Marz said, "I'm worried I'll want to stay here forever, and then what will I do for work? Maybe I should go into wildlife management..."

BELOW: this morning in Duluth, 7:15 a.m. I'm sitting at the nearby food co-op with my laptop, looking over the lake, drinking coffee. Marz is home asleep.
(Behind the tree tops is water, the top is sky.)

When I first came here years ago, I thought this co-op seating area would always be full because––what a view! But Duluth is built between the lakeshore and the hill rising above it--everywhere you go, this is the view.

For whole hours at a time, the lake looks the same, but often it's a shimmering light show. Or you can't see it at all, covered in fog.
Marz's coworker told her the lake is called the Gray Lady.

Fog City! Last time I visited, the liquor store's broken OPEN sign framed blue sky.

Marz moved here three weeks ago.
In a classic––but not guaranteed–– trajectory, she went from "I'm not going" to I'm never leaving.
(Granted, it's been three weeks of perfect weather; Marz says she'll see how she feels in the winter.)

I get it. I looked into moving here a few years ago, but couldn't leave home.

There's the pull of the lake, but not only the lake--the architecture changes on every block, from crummy shack to Victorian vaudeville theater. Much of it rundown. Much of the city is run down (or worse), but ripe for redevelopment--for climate refugees and people who want to stay.

II. Strike the rock, and water will come forth.

I went yesterday to the downtown alt-movie theater, the Zinema in the Zeitgeist Arts building (above) to see Between the Temples (2024, dir. Nathan Silver).

Between the Temples is a story about how refreshment may come to diminished lives from unexpected sources.
A middle-aged Jewish cantor, Ben (Jason Schwarzman) can not sing since his wife died a year ago.
Enter his grade school music teacher, Carla (Carol Kane), widowed and retired. After an unexpected meeting, she asks him to prepare her for the bat mitzvah she, a red diaper baby, never got.

It's somewhat like Harold and Maude, a movie that was important to me when I was young. As I get older though, I think far less of Maude's story arc. It seems thought up by someone with an immature psychological understanding--someone like Harold, bless him. 

Between the Temple's resolution for Carla (with or without Ben) is a mature insight:
you can come of age at any age.
_____________________

I think of Auntie Vi telling me that her life really started in her seventies: "All my life I took care of other people. Finally I was living my own life."

When I talk about realizing I may have only twenty-some years to live, I'm NOT complaining. It's more an experssion of ripeness.

The "complaint" part is that I need to take better care of my body. This is work. (And I'm not chuffed about pain.) I've skated by on my good genetics, but age wears on every body.
So, I've got work to do, but it's good work, after all.

As for paid work... No word from the art store or the library... But I haven't pushed either.
I had the summer off, but because I'd thought I was going back in the fall, I felt employed. Now I feel newly unemployed and, as such, that I should get a vacation. Heh.

We'll see what comes along.
What's coming along now is breakfast at Uncle Loui's [sic] cafe where I ate yesterday. I'm meeting Marz and a pal of hers who also recently moved up here [independently of Marz, but nice for her to know someone from the past].

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!