Summary:

At first the title seems to relate to the main character's lay-off or departure from his job as a professional cellist in a bankrupt and dissolving orchestra.  As the story continues, the title's unpredictable meaning becomes clear. 

Not surprisingly, jobs for cellists are difficult to find. Shattered by his desperate situation, Daigo, the central character (Masahiro Motoki), and his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), return from the city to his hometown where they begin to experience stresses and discomforts associated with joblessness.  After a long period of searching, Daigo responds to an ad for someone to work in departures. Believing that he is applying for a travel advisor job, he discovers that the position involves the ceremonial art of caring for the bodies of those who have recently died--or departed.  He learns about encoffination, the elaborate ritual of washing and dressing the body before placement in the casket prior to burial, from Sasaski (Tsutomu Yamazaki), his new employer. 

Mika is so appalled and ashamed when she learns about his new career, she decides to leave him.  In spite of his own unhappiness, Daigo continues on.  With the remarkably skilled Sasaski at his side, Daigo develops great sensitivity in the ritualized care that is provided before family mourners.  Each of the caring situations becomes for Daigo, a rich story about the textures of human life.  He seeks solace for himself and another measure of dignity for the departed by playing beautiful music on his cello.  Most viewers, including the eventually reconciled Mika, are impressed by the beauty of this probably unfamiliar Japanese ceremony.

Another moving dimension of Daigo's personal story occurs when information is revealed about the father who had abandoned him when he was a child.  Circumstances intervene so that Daigo's new skills and sensitivities contribute to an understanding of that distant past and an opportunity to provide his father with a dignified departure ceremony.    

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Summary:

This suggestively titled collection of poems provides a lyric record of a physician’s way of seeing.  The situations to which the poems bear witness are not only medical, though many are.  Some are cityscapes into which are woven surprisingly astute observations of homeless people or hitchhikers or ducks in the park.  Some explore the geography of a body where memories are held in “neuron chains.”  Some articulate bits of personal history from the point of view of a woman who has spent years in medicine, caring for the elderly, seeing bodies with the double vision of a clinician and a person whose spirituality clearly informs all she sees.

Titles like “ER Alphabet of Hurt” or “Looking for God On the Radio” or “Hippocrates Voyeur” or simply “Scars” may give some sense of the range of focus.  Her vision and voice are strongly local; those who know Marin County, north of San Francisco, will recognize the places that become the poet’s personal geography.  Those who don’t will still see in these poems a sensibility shaped and refined by the knowledge that comes from deep habitation.  

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Summary:

Mueller traces the path from forced exodus/immigration to struggling with a new language, to the eventual day when "you dream in rhyme, in a language / you never wanted to understand." In this evocation of diaspora and eventual acculturation, speech and language are important metaphors.

The poem is in three sections. Part 1, "Asylum," (14 lines) is enclosed by quotation marks, perhaps because the speaker describing a border crossing is still articulate in her native tongue. This section is highly personalized, written in the first person, and speaks of homesickness, dislocation, abandonment--"the life you say I must leave . . . bundled and tied . . . for the trash collector."

Part 2, "English as a Second Language," (15 lines) is written in the third person and describes the state of estrangement from meaning that accompanies unfamiliarity with a new language and culture. Letters of the alphabet become "crushing crossbar[s]" and "spying eyes." This section ends, however, with some hope that understanding will develop: the letters for the word "tree" might become intelligible, "could take root, / could develop leaves."

The final 16 line section, "Crossing Over," is written in the second person and marks the day when the transition to the new country and the new life and the new language is as complete as it ever will be. Now fully able to comprehend her surroundings, the speaker feels compelled to name the details of her environment, finds herself "humming the music you stuffed your ears against" and notices a certain strangeness when she communicates with those she left behind--"voices from home arrive . . . bent by the ocean."

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Summary:

Holding Our Own: Embracing the End of Life is a documentary film that shows aging and dying as anything but morbid, and death as the final healing in the hospice way. Art and music are combined as a way to bring people into a subject that they'd rather resist.

The film begins with an art opening in New York City and with the commentaries of curator and others as they view Deidre Scherer's large fabric and thread paintings (see annotation of "Surrounded by Family and Friends")--of people at the last moments of their lives. The artist has captured for us, even in the midst of suffering, genuine moments of tenderness.

An interview with palliative care physician Ira Byock guides the conversation, presenting a most refreshing doctor's perspective. The commentaries of hospice personnel, artist, and members of the Hallowell singing group punctuate the profoundly intimate scenes, filmed in institutional settings and in homes. The singers, who sing to the dying patients, see beyond their own fears; they recognize and want to honor dying persons for who they are: "This is not about singing it right for an audience...its about being totally present for the people you're singing for...and wanting it to be a gift." They model the magic of human connection called by Byock "the ground substance of therapeutics" The healing is mutual: "I can feel sad, cry, I can feel a heavy heart...but it's not depressing....It's a wonder...you can feel love, joy, sorrow, but so alive.... you feel the blessing of your own life."

Two additional segments, "More about Deidre Scherer," and "More about the Hallowell Chorus, and a concise study guide are offered with the DVD.

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Summary:

This groundbreaking international film documents the positive impact of art and other creative activities on people with Alzheimer's disease. The film's intention is to change the way we look at the disease.  It does just that.  Brilliantly.

Narrated by the actress Olivia de Havilland, the film opens with a 96 year old woman reading classical music as she's playing at the piano. Her music becomes gentle background sound track for the first vignette, a group of people intently viewing and commenting on Seurat's canvas, "Sunday in the Park."  From their intense concentration and voiced observations, one would never believe this was a group of nursing facility residents on an outing to the Chicago Art Museum.

Throughout the film--at the circus, visiting museums, or in painting workshops conducted at day care centers, nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in Europe and the US-- the hopeless, fatalistic, nobody's there stereotypes of Alzheimer's sufferers is unequivocally denied.  We continually witness people with serious memory problems being brought back into active communication and a rich quality of life.  This is more than busywork arts and crafts: trained professionals knowledgeable about both art and Alzheimer's are providing essential treatment "just as effective if not more so than the drugs."  The benefits of the non-pharmacological along with the pharmacological not only extend life, but create a life worthwhile, where people find meaning and connection.
 
In direct interview, voice-overs and interacting with "patients" and their family members, eminent experts from multiple medical fields - neurology, gerontology, psychiatry- punctuate the film reviewing the latest technologies and concurring that the essence of the person lives on. The latest brain research provides evidence that the parts of the brain related to emotions and creativity are largely spared by the disease and that our technologies for assessing dementia --dealing with sequencing things, dates in order, and what one did this morning--rely on short term memory which is totally irrelevant when enjoying a masterpiece or listening to a symphony.  The documentary also includes comments from art therapists, occupational therapists, directors of specialized care facilities, but the film is anything but talking heads.  The cutaways and extensive footage of the care giving staff and specialists interacting emotionally and physically, visibly bonding with the residents and family members is sincere, loving and inspiring professionalism.

The inspiration for the film and project is filmmaker Berna Huebner's mother, Hilda Gorenstein, once an accomplished painter known as Hilgos.  In one of Huebner's visits to the nursing home, she asks "Mom, would you like to paint again?"  Quite unexpected came the reply, "Yes, I remember better when I paint."  Learning this, the staff psychiatrist who had been prescribing small doses of a tranquilizer for her apathy, anxiety and agitation suggested Huebner enlist art students from the Chicago Museum school to help her mother to begin painting again.  We are not spared the slow and sometimes discouraging process as Mrs. Gorenstein comes alive regaining mobility and communication skills and interacting--bonding-- with the art students.  The film is replete with her colorful paintings created in the next few years until her death at age 93.

"The creative arts are a doorway.  Once that doorway is opened ... things are tapped ... that are genuine and active and alive that don't get tapped in our normal day social interactions when we sit at a table and make conversations over a meal or we read a newspaper article and then talk about the headlines of the day.... The creative arts bypass the [cognitive] limitations and simply go to the strengths. People still have imagination in tact all the way to the end of their disease."

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Summary:

George Washington Crosby is dying from kidney failure. The eighty-year-old man has a crumbling body - Parkinson's disease, cancer, diabetes, and previous heart attacks - and a murky mind. He is hallucinating and his memories are disordered. George occupies a hospital bed in the living room of a house that he constructed himself. His family keeps him company as they await his imminent demise.

Some of George's thoughts revolve around his passion for clocks and his skill in repairing them. Most of his memories center on his father, Howard Aaron Crosby. About seventy years earlier, Howard owned a wooden wagon and a horse and scratched out a living as a tinker and a peddler of household goods. Howard's father had been a Methodist minister who exhibited worsening signs of mental illness. The man was eventually escorted out of his home. Only a young boy at the time, Howard would never see his father again.

Howard suffered from frequent and violent epileptic seizures. His wife and the family doctor thought Howard should be admitted to the Eastern Maine State Hospital, an institution housing feebleminded and insane individuals. Howard had a different opinion. One evening, he left his wife and four children and headed to Philadelphia. He took a new name and a new wife. He found work in a grocery store. The frequency of his seizures decreased dramatically.

George's final memory before death is a vivid one. He recalls a Christmas dinner in 1953. Someone is at the door. It is a surprise (and brief) visit by Howard to George's house. It is the first time that he has seen his father since George was twelve.

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Summary:

In 1954, a United States Marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner (Mark Ruffalo) take the ferry to Ashecliff Hospital, a forbidding asylum for the criminally insane located on Shutter Island.  Their mission is to investigate the disappearance of an inmate who has apparently escaped without a trace.  Under the supervision of the chief psychiatrist, Dr John Cawley (Ben Kingsley), they become increasingly entwined in a twisting tale of fear and suspicion.

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Summary:

This is a collection of four stories and a novella with pervasive themes of death, loss, grieving, mourning, and anger; the characters live in rural parts of the upper midwest, and there is much unhappiness in their lives.

In "Catch and Release," we accompany Danny, a talented fishing guide "not quite thirty," as he floats down a stream he knows well. He and his siblings have divided his father's ashes, his portion now in a thermos. His father died suddenly, absurdly on a bathroom floor. Although Danny knows nature well (and loves it), he is angry and heartsick. Nor is religion a comfort. Bit by bit he scatters the ashes, but there is no healing ritual.

In "Bloodsport" a young man murders is wife and then kills himself. The town funeral director feels this is "utterly incomprehensible" but provides his professional services to the family and all who  come to the service and burial. He knew the young woman, Elena, and found her attractive; now he embalms her. Twenty years later he feels a "sense of shame" that men "let her down badly."

"Hunter's Moon" presents Harold, a casket salesman. Retired, he goes on long walks, trying to make sense of is life and loves. He likes naming things. His first wife left him for another woman. His daughter (pregnant and drunk) was killed by a train. His second wife left him. His third wife died of cancer. He abuses antidepressants and liquor. Sitting on his front porch, he slumps over. All night a dog keeps watch over, we assume, his dead body.

In "Matineé de Septembre" we find a reworking of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice." In both stories, a literary figure escapes ordinary time, falling in love with a young person of the opposite sex, and falling into decadent gestures in the hope of recapturing youth. Both efforts end in failure and death. In Mann's story, the person is an older man of much literary accomplishment. In Lynch's retelling, the person is a professor and "poet of note," although not really of international fame. Actually she's a woman of inherited wealth, a wealthy snob, a narcissist, a survivor of a "perfectly bargained marriage." Her one child was stillborn. A dozen hints at her headaches suggest that she is doomed, and she dies in the last paragraph, without (as in the Mann story) the notice of the literary world.

After these grim tales comes the satiric (and also grim) novella, "Apparition." We follow one Adrian Littlefield (the last name is symbolic) who was a strait-laced pastor, then (after his wife left him) a self-help author who urged post-divorce people to live it up. The satire is trenchant. Adrian's big book is "Good Riddance." A church fundraiser with gambling allows "otherwise devout people to wallow in sin for a worthy cause." Adrian has girlfriends and one-nighters. He's an expensive speaker. Fortunately one Mary De Dona provides him with gratuitous sex, and he is saved. Now 50+, he visits the empty house where his wife once lived, learning little; his tour guide, one "Gloria" is in her 70s, married for 58 years, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He wishes he could have had such a life and feels "a wave of sadness." 

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Summary:

A number of expressionless faces blindfolded, bandaged, many eyeless, some with hats of the 1930s, glasses, masks, bullet-ridden helmets, comprise three fourths of the canvas.  Anything but a group portrait, these totally disconnected faces staring straight ahead are all on different planes. None are connecting with another. Remnants of crematorium smoke stacks and a burned city are the only visible detail in the upper fourth of the canvas, from which a series of tired male refugees, painted in a much smaller scale, appear to be walking down into the portrait.

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Summary:

Edited by psychiatrist and poet Mark Bauer, this anthology collects poems about mental illness, broadly defined to include such topics as alcoholism and drug abuse, depression and melancholia, and post-traumatic experiences (with World War I's shell-shock and the Vietnam war's PTSD represented by Siegfried Sassoon, Ivor Gurney, and Wilfred Owen, and Yusuf Komunyakaa, respectively).  Bauer provides an introductory essay, arranges the selections chronologically rather than thematically, and, in a welcome touch at the end, offers brief biographical sketches of the authors.  A Mind Apart would form a nice companion piece to Poets on Prozac, edited by Richard Berlin

The represented poets are: Thomas Hoccleve, Charles d'Orleans, William Dunbar, Alexander Barclay, Fulke Greville, Thomas Lodge, William Shakespeare, Sir Henry Wotton, Sir John Davies, Robert Burton, John Fletcher and/or Thomas Middleton, Lady Mary Wroth, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, Thomas Traherne, James Carkesse, Anne Finch, Edward Ward, Isaac Watts, Edward Young, William Harrison, Mary Barber, Matthew Green, William Collins, Thomas Mozeen, Christopher Smart, Thomas Warton, William Cowper, Robert Fergusson, Thomas Chatterton, John Codrington Bampfylde, William Blake, Robert Bloomfield, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Gordon (Lord Byron), Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Clare, John Keats, Thomas Haynes Bayly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Sydney Dobell, Emily Dickinson, Henry Kendall, Thomas Hardy, Robert Bridges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A. Mary F. Robinson, Ernest Dowson, Edward Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon, Ivor Gurney, Wilfred Owen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Louise Bogan, Hart Crane, (John Orley) Allen Tate, Richard David Comstock, Stanley Kunitz, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, J. V. Cunningham, Delmore Schwartz, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Weldon Kees, Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, Robert Edward Duncan, Howard Nemerov, Hayden Carruth, Philip Larkin, Anthony Hecht, Richard Hugo, James Schuyler, Donald Justice, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Bly, Wiley Clemens, Anne Sexton, Carl Wolfe Solomon, Ned O'Gorman, Stuart Z. Perkoff, Sylvia Plath, Lucille Clifton, Jim Harrison, Les Murray, Sharon Olds, Timothy Dekin, Quincy Troupe, Thomas P. Beresford, R. L. Barth, Jane Kenyon, Yusef Komunyakaa, Joseph Salemi, Aimee Grunberger, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Mark Jarman, Franz Wright, David Baker, Michael Lauchlan, Joe Bolton, Kelly Ann Malone, Brian Turner, Kevin Young, Jeff Holt, Ricky Cantor, Anne Stevenson, and several contributions that are anonymous, including some from nineteenth century popular songs and selections from two collections of poetry by people with mental illness.

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