I found out last night that a long-planned kitchen renovation at Steph's brother's farm commences next Monday. He's going to leave here on Monday morning to start the demolition, and come back on Wednesday night to help out with the banking with our sixteen closings on Thursday and Friday.
As much as I will miss him (and I'm really not a big fan of sleeping by myself, if you know what I mean, and I think you do!), the first thing that went through my mind was, I'm totally going to see The Life of Pi on Monday night.
I went through an incredibly difficult degree program, reading-wise - the Great Books (everything from Homer to Kant, and a shit-load of stuff in between, philisophy, literature, science, political discourse, plays, religion), English literature and medieval history. We read Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems over three classes, and I never actually got beyond the first ten pages. It induced instant paralysis, and I slept for a couple of hours each time. I don't read anything anymore that I don't WANT to read. If I start reading it and I don't like it, down it goes. Life's too short.
Have you ever read a book that has completely taken you over? That was The Life of Pi for me. I bought it on a whim at a bookstore to use up the rest of a gift card, on a table of 'reccommended' books because it won the Booker Prize in 2002. I was totally enchanted by Yann Martel's story, which went on my "top ten books I'd take to a desert island" and has stayed there ever since. I asked for, and received, the beautiful hardcover edition illustrated with paintings by the Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac.
A couple of years ago, I recommended it to Steph. To say that he hated it doesn't quite encompass the depth and breadth of his feeling. Worse was the encounter we had at one of his family get-togethers where one of his uncles, a literary type, when I asked him if he'd enjoyed my favourite book, he told me he not only disliked Yann Martel personally, but said he'd found everyone who genuinely enjoyed it was trivial-minded and an insipid conversationalist. I have a serious issue when it comes to this kind of conflict, especially anything that smacks of name-calling, and walked away from the conversation. Lame, I know.
I wistfully watched the ads that said The Life of Pi had been made into a movie by the incomparable Ang Lee, and that it walked away with rave reviews at the New York Film Festival, and thought how unlikely it would be that I would end up getting to see it in theatres. Not that I'm opposed to seeing a movie by myself, or (more unlikely) finding someone else to go with, but I put the thought away as something that I'd be unlikely to do, just because of that residual wistfulness, wishing he'd go with me instead of sitting at home. I consoled myself by thinking that I'd download it and watch it sometime.
Suddenly, knowing I'm going to have a few evenings to myself? I'm so there. And bonus!LYS visit, as the theatre I'm going to see it at is right down the street and around the block from a dynamite little yarn store.
Is it ridiculous, how childishly excited I am by this?
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