Yesterday afternoon, I saw the Life of Pi movie, even though I haven’t finished the book, which is something I intended to do last week. I read to page 51 and stopped, and that was four years ago when I started reading it out loud to a friend who had just undergone eye surgery and had to keep his head face-down for about three weeks. When someone so vigorous and active—and such a voracious reader—is incapacitated for a while, boredom is a threat. So began the reading of Life of Pi, and so, for the same reason, it ended.
The movie was not boring, and I’m still thinking about it this morning. Pi and the digital Richard Parker tiger are terrific. And Pi’s description of the freighter as a moving continent was especially meaningful since during the wee hours of yesterday morning the earth’s great undersea movements triggered a 7.5 magnitude earthquake near Craig, Alaska.
Moving continents, like the one that sank in the movie, are anchored now in Kachemak Bay with real, not digital, people on board, who pass through real storms. So instead of pondering the deep meaning of Pi’s story, I am pushing the scenes of storm and shipwreck out of my head.
Dinner after the movie was shrimp curry. Earlier in the week, on my way home from a Silver Waves water aerobics class at the Bay Club, I had purchased the shrimp at the seafood truck that is occasionally parked near the post office at the intersection with the big traffic light. The proprietor of the mobile seafood market told me, as he does every time, that my card statement would show a charge from Soldotna, not Kodiak, so I should not call the bank to dispute the charge. Every time he says that, I wonder, just for a second, where the seafood really comes from, which really doesn’t matter. I might ask next time, though, if I’m paying for the additional weight of shrimp eggs, because now, in regard to this one small thing, I am not such a cheechako.
Copyright 2013-2014 Genie Hambrick
The Cheechako Diaries 