Sunday, to escape the news from Ukraine, we drove to Savor Cinema to watch the live action short films that have been nominated for an Academy Award.
The first, from Denmark, was about a man whose wife is in the hospital on life support. The second, from the U.S., was about an innocent man who gets put into an automated prison where his only communication is with a computer screen. The third, from Poland, was about a dwarf who works as a chambermaid in a roadside motel and longs to experience love. The fourth, from the U.K, was about an extended immigrant family that gets rounded up by a paramilitary or neo-Nazi group and shot in the street. The fifth, from Switzerland, but set in Kyrgyzstan, was about a young woman who is kidnapped to be a bride. In this one, at least, the scenery was beautiful.
The video of the woman playing "What a Wonderful World" on a piano outside the Lviv train station is impossibly moving, not least because of its echo of the orchestra on the Titanic.
2020 was the year of Covid. Last year, for me, was the year of cancer. Will this year be the year of war?
I keep thinking back to the opening of the Olympics last month - Putin standing alone and maskless during the parade of nations. And I think of the 2,000 Ukrainian civilians - and the 6,000 Russian soldiers - who were still alive then, perhaps watching the ceremony on TV.
Yesterday I posted my 100th cartoon. I started drawing them shortly after the start of the pandemic - I don't bake bread and I'm a terrible dancer - and made sure I had one to post every Monday. Actually, I'm not that great a draftsman either. Many of the drawings are of a man sitting in an armchair and saying something, sometimes to a partner, sometimes into a cellphone. I'm very happy when I can draw two people standing. My latest drawing features me sitting in a chair and saying to Hania, "I wish we could throw a party for all the people who have liked my cartoons." It got over 70 likes on Facebook, which was lovely, but I was secretly hoping for a hundred.
I have a series of morning appointments for the next two weeks so I'm going to temporarily halt my daily posting here under the assumption that nobody wants to read an afternoon blog. Will be back to regular posting by the end of the month. Thank you for your followship.