May be the saddest thing Ebert's ever written

Losing things when you die is one thing - you don't have time for regret,
for longing. It is wrenching to say goodbye to things you used to enjoy.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/02/for_everything_there_is_a_seas.html

Goodbye to all that
 By Roger Ebert on February 9, 2011 10:23 PM | 19
Comments<http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/02/for_everything_there_is_a_seas.html#comments>

[image: 779hourglass.jpg]<http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20779hourglass.jpg>I
sent an e-mail the other day that was one of the hardest things I've ever
had to write. It was to Jim Palmer and Maura Clare at the Conference on
World Affairs in Boulder. I told them I wouldn't be coming back this spring.
I sent it, and stared into space, and was flooded with sadness.

I don't intend to write here about the Conference, which has allowed me to
live more than nine months of my life in Boulder, one week at a time. I
wrote about CWA in a 2009 blog entry titled * the Leisure of the Theory
Class<http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/the_leisure_of_the_theory_clas.html>.
* I need not tell you again about Howard Higman or Daddy Bruce Jr.
You will have to take my word that the week at the University of Colorado
every spring was a lodestone of my life. A week of talking, listening and
learning. It was at Boulder in 1975 that I began the annual sessions called
"Cinema Interruptus," during which I joined a roomful of strangers in the
dark as we took a week to look closely at a film, one frame at a time. When
I lost the power of speech, I couldn't do that any longer. In 2009 I asked
Ramin Bahrani to join me in dissecting his great film "Chop Shop." Jim
Emerson acted as the facilitator. It was a form of torture for me to sit
silent. I couldn't type in the dark, I couldn't scribble notes fast enough
to keep up, and my gestures meant nothing. I wasn't there.


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I realized that had to be my final Interruptus. When you can't run, you
can't be in the race. But Ramin mentioned that he very much wanted to meet
Werner Herzog, and together we plotted to convince Herzog to come to Boulder
in 2010. After meeting by e-mail, they met even sooner than that, and Werner
did the narration that added so much to Ramin's masterful short film,
"Plastic Bag."

In 2010, Bahrani and Herzog together talked their way through Werner's great
film "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." That was an experience for a lifetime.
Also last year, I was on a panel or two, went to the legendary free jazz
concert, and on the Wednesday night, as always, I joined a group of old
friends for a ritual dinner at the Red Lion Inn.

Bill Nack stood up and recited the final page of *The Great Gatsby."* Calm,
kind Diane Doe was there, who was my secretary at the Sun-Times before she
met a Boulder bookseller named Richard Schwartz through me and married him,
and lived happily ever after until Dick died. Alice Higman was there, one of
Howard's jolly daughters, and we could not have guessed that she would be
dead within a year. Rich and Linda Loose were there, and Linda's sister
Vickie McKay, who is the best dirty joke teller I know. They were some of
the Boulderites who ran the conference every year. Andy Ihnatko showed us
his new iPad, many limericks were recited, memories were rehearsed, and it
was a perfect evening except that it was missing dear Betty Brandenberg,
Howard's long-suffering assistant, who was the first person I ever met in
Boulder. She was the CWAs' godmother, but she doesn't get around so well
anymore.


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I sat at the table and in my mind said goodbye to this dinner, and to all
the other Boulder rituals. The next night many of the jazz musicians
convened by Dave Grusin were had a jam session in the living room of ///,
the CWA chairman, and I had a great time. That's one thing I can still do,
is sit and have a great time.

I could go back to Boulder as an audience member. But no. It would be too
poignant. Here for 40 years I prowled and spoke and joked and hit every used
book store in town and even began a few romances, and I feel no enthusiasm
for returning as the ghost at the banquet. The Daily Camera asked me what I
thought of the choice for this year's film, the Coens' "A Serious Men," and
I had to write back that I was not aware a choice had been made. If I could
speak and was planning a farewell, I probably would have chosen "La Dolce
Vita," as I did in 1979, 1983, 1994 and 2005. I always said at Boulder that
since I first saw it in 1961 it had become the film of my life, and I could
measure out time by how my ideas of its hero's life changed.

Well, now I've outlasted Marcello. I've come out the other side. He is still
standing on the beach, unable to understand the gestures of the sweet blond
girl who was his waitress at the restaurant, that day he was going to start
his novel. He shakes his head resignedly and turns to walk back into the
trees and she looks after him wistfully. I am in the trees with Marcello.


[image: CWA_group4.jpg]<http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/assets_c/2011/02/CWA_group4-31399.html>

My senior high school English teacher, Marian Seward, asked me in front of
the class one day, "Ebert, why are you always writing about death?" She was
right. I did. I wasn't melancholy or depressed, nor was I obsessed by death
like the hero of Henry James' *The Altar of the Dead. * Being dead in fact
held little interest for me then and holds still less today. The fullness of
life is all. Even in high school I was keenly aware of floating on the river
of time. I was placed in the current at birth, and given the opportunity to
experience consciousness for an undetermined number of years as I drifted on
the river out of Eden.

As a traveler might trace his journey by cutting his mark into the bark of
trees, or arranging stones in little piles, I created rituals over the years
which, by being repeated, reminded me I had passed this way before and gave
me hope that I would pass this way again.. I've written about those before,
too--Lino's place in Venice, a walk on Hampstead Heath over London. Every
year I had a coffee on my first morning in Cannes and thought, yes, here I
am again, at the same corner, at the same table. Now that I cannot talk it
isn't safe for me to walk alone in another city. I made Millie, my
care-giver, wake up early and walk with me to the same cafe, and I wrote out
a note with my order (cafe au lait, Perrier, croissant), and she had this
little breakfast and I am sure enjoyed it. We walked back to the Hotel
Splendid and I joined Chaz in the breakfast room and had my second vicarious
breakfast.


[image: CWA_group5.jpg]<http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/assets_c/2011/02/CWA_group5-31402.html>

But you see there is something perverse about such persistence. Better to
make a clean break with the past, and clear your mind of the things you can
no longer do. At a film festival I can still go to the films and write about
them and see friends and hear gossip, and I never went to Cannes for the
coffee anyway.

When first coming to terms with the fact that I would never speak again, I
filled my head with denial and coping strategies. I would use my computer
voice, for example. And I do. But that is no way to participate in the flow
of a conversation, and I realize so clearly now that conversations are all
about the flow, the timing, the music. Now that IBM's Big Blue has beaten a
grandmaster at chess and promises to win at Jeopardy, I have a challenge
that will grind it to a halt: I challenge Big Blue to tell a joke in a voice
that has the tone and the timing, the words and the music, just right.


[image: CWA_group6.jpg]<http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/assets_c/2011/02/CWA_group6-31407.html>

Saying farewell to Boulder forced me to acknowledge that I must abandon many
rituals. I can no longer rise at dawn and trace out my usual steps around
the Lincoln Park ponds and the Lily Pond. I can no longer sit in a coffee
shop and read, unless I want to order a useless cup of coffee. I can no
longer wander aimlessly around London. Because of the damage done to my
shoulders during the surgeries, my wandering days are over. I can walk for a
mile, maybe two, before the right shoulder starts to hurt too much.
Ironically, it hurts more when I stand than when I move. Walking is now
single-minded, and not a meander. I will certainly never take The Perfect
London Walk again.

I've been to my last Formica restaurant, one of those places where they
serve breakfast 24 hours a day and the waitress calls you "honey." When I go
to a restaurant now, Chaz makes sure they have a chair that goes easy on my
back. I often find myself sitting at a lower level than the others, like a
child at Christmas dinner. It is difficult or impossible to revisit most of
my ritualistic stops. It is even impossible to routinely make the rounds of
used book stores, because I can't stand for hours studying the shelves. Not
being able to speak causes me no physical pain. Ironic, that surgery
intended to restore my speech took away my freedom of casual walking.
All of those things are over and done with. Finished. I am left with the
companionship of the faithful Chaz and my family. There will be a reunion
this spring with my downstate cousins. I can still drive as well as ever,
and last August bought a new car, probably my last. I have books, movies,
newspapers, magazines, television. I write more than ever. The social media
are more social for me than for most people. My troubles haven't prevented
me from participating in our new TV show. I would like to have a dog, but I
can't walk one.


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

*“I am not responsible for actions of the imaginary version of me you have
inside your head.”
Attributed to Teresa Nielsen Hayden*

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