I am Zhivago

 The novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak which follows a physician-poet during the Russian revolution came out in 1957. Among the books my late father owned was a first edition hardback. He had read it as a young man and was greatly influenced by it. The volume he gave me contained his handwritten notes listing the characters as they were encountered in the book. He gave it to me at one point and advised me if I read the book that I should emulate this inventory of characters, making my own list, as it is almost mandatory to do so, to keep straight the Russian names. 

I have never gotten around to reading the book. I think the copy he gave me is now in the possession of my sister in her library in Colorado, which I am happy about. Thankfully I have a sibling who is even more obsessed with our family than I am, and she has a much bigger house than I do, with lots of room for books, including ones from my own childhood which I let her have and keep a few years ago, when we were in the process of cleaning out our parent's possessions after my mother's death.

I know the story, however, as I have seen, several times, the 1965 movie adaptation directed by David Lean. I saw it in full on TCM years ago and have seen chunks of it several times since then, often watching it from wherever I pick it up until the end. Oh, that scene on the tram.

Whenever the topic came up, my father would invariably tell the story of how he and my mother went to see the movie, leaving me behind to be babysit by my grandparents. At the time were probably still living in student housing on the Iowa State campus, we had one of our many Volkswagens.  I know because he said it had a "supercharger" like the link here. 

The movie was not playing in Ames, which had only a few theaters back then. So they had to go down to Des Moines to see it, as one often did back then. That was a big thing for my parents to do--go to a movie, let alone one out of town. 

It was in the middle of summer and it was to be a hot midwestern evening.

Somehow the little toddler me decided that I would help out. I had seen my father working on the car, which he was very often doing. For example, I took it upon myself to emulate him. I took the garden hose and filled the crankcase of the engine with water (where normally one would put in oil). In doing so I mangle the tasks I had seen him to do into one disastrous outcome. 

Somehow the car still started and they made it to Des Moines to the theater, but the car seemed to be dying on the way. Nevertheless they watched the movie, which is three hours long, but the state of the car troubled my father. 

Now if you've seen the movie, you would know that a lot of it takes place during a cold bleak Russian winter in the countryside, where the protagonist is staying during the chaos of the revolution. It is during this time that he transitions into becoming a poet, which was his true vocation. The director Lean does a delightful job showing Zhivago's silent contemplation of daffodils in the spring, and when I saw that years ago it hit me it was exactly what I have done, with those same flowers, and felt this overpowering urge to communicate something of the essence of the experience, to someone who understand it as well, and thereby break down, at least fleetingly the barriers between our souls. The rare individuals with whom I've been able to make this type of connection remain to me the treasures of my life.

The funny part of the story is that the winter scenes are so overpowering in the movie that they played a trick on my father. The air conditioning in the theater was blasting, making it almost chilly inside. So my father forgot that it was summer, and instead thought he was in the middle of a cold Iowa winter. While still in the air conditioned lobby, he used a pay phone to call his father, my grandfather, and tell him that he was going to try to make it home, but that if they something happened they would need help because of the weather. My grandfather was a bit confused by this, but agreed.

Then my folks went out the doors and were met by the blast of humid heat of summer. 

As for the rest of the story, I know they made it home. I don't know how he found out from me what I had done to the car. Somehow he figured it out and got me to admit it, no doubt.

He told the story many times, and I was somehow embarrassed by it, and in the later years I sort of closed my ears to hearing it. How I wish I could hear him tell it one more time. There is no one left to ask about it. I am the only one left who knows it. 

My father was a sensitive soul and no doubt identified with Yuri Zhivago. Sitting here I realize how much I am Zhivago too, if much if not more than my father.  In part because I feel like the disruptions of our current era are on the level of the Russian Revolution in many ways. Society is being restructured wholesale at the briskest pace imaginable. One can say this is because of the current Administration, which it is, certainly in terms of speed and timing, but these things were bound to happen eventually by some means, and I think we are lucky to have them happening now. 

The result is that old barriers are being torn now. Doors are opening. Connections are being rearranged. Things are possible now that were not possible even two months ago. We are all being swept up in it, like Russian peasants.

One of the things that has been emerging for me is just how tired I am doing the same kind of work I did for years. I never liked it much along the way. It was a way to make money on my own terms, and have some freedom while doing, which I did. But the era of it really being sweet and enjoyable probably ended in 2014, and since then I have felt weighed down by my choices, and wishing to return to something more meaningful that better fits my true vocation. I thought I had to do what I did, to be, and to be seen as, a productive member of society. I don't care about that anymore. It's only about the money, which feels so mercenary to me, and is only chewing up the time I have left.

Something I can't explain has opened up in me in just the last few weeks. Maybe it started with reading A Wrinkle in Time in Maui, and having the realization that it was far more enjoyable than I realized, and that children's literature has a purity of expression in it I could not have imagined until now. Also the story is explicitly about rescuing a physicist from being trapped and held prisoner in stasis by evil forces. 

But it's more than just the reading. It's that I---gosh I can't barely type this I am so embarrassed---I want to write again. In the last few weeks I found myself able to connect to lyric expression that has felt hidden in me. But what to do with it. Responsibility calls. Duty calls. Somehow I have to find a way to do both, even as a great part of me wants to forget everything I know about software development. I can dimly see the bridge to where I want to be, like a footbridge across a creek in a town park. Writing is joyful and painful. I don't mind that pain now. I am ready to feel it.

The truth is that I have been writing all this time, consistently for sixteen years now, on this blog. I set up this blog for a specific purpose, and it has served the purpose well. I feel connected to others, just as I do when I do my podcast. It is the greatest feeling in the world to feel that connection. I want more of it. 

If I am going to write for real, then it means ripping myself open in a way that I have not done before.  All this time I have been able to hide myself masks, and present an image of how I want to be seen, not as I am. That has to change.

Most of the years of my life have passed, in a great sterility waiting for spring, waiting for the revolution. I remember what it like to feel young. I feels so awkward, as it did back then. There is only one piece of advice worth while, said by a great man many years ago: "Begin! Begin! Begin!" 

OK. Now I need to make a new version of my resume. Thankfully I have AI to help me.