gorgeous morning. woke up 20 minutes later than i usually do and still ended up at the office early. decided to walk down to the pier and by chance, saw the sea lions! totally didn’t realize this was the pier where they congregate. this is an awful photo, but you can kinda make out a sea lion in sun salutation pose.
i saw the movie version of proof last night. gwyneth paltrow plays a daughter coping with the recent loss of her schizophrenic/alzheimer-plagued father, a renowned mathematician played by anthony hopkins. paltrow dropped out of college to care for him, but now isolates herself for fear that she’s inherited his illness. her type-a sister, played by hope davis, arrives from new york to help out with the funeral and further fuels paltrow’s paranoia that she’s a little cray-cray. a young, studly, nerdy, phd-teacher played by jake gyllenhall enters her life to research hopkin’s old notebooks hoping to find potential mathematical proofs that the ill-genius may have written during the peak of his insanity. she slowly opens up to him and we find out that while paltrow may have inherited some of her dad’s mental instability, she may have also inherited his genius.
i read the script for the broadway play awhile ago and had high expectations, but this movie stunk. still, david auburn made an admirable attempt to detail the struggles for family members that accompany mental illness. it’s tough choosing between your life and having to care for the afflicted. my grandma suffered from alzheimer’s and her health deteriorated really quickly and unexpectedly. my cousin, who lived with my grandma at the time and was one of her caretakers, told me about how impossible it was to have to watch after her 24-7. there were times when grandma’d see and talk to a little boy who didn’t exist. other times, she chased after him outdoors in the middle of the night and fell, hurting her head. we found out later that she was probably seeing visions of her son who passed away when he was only an infant. we like to think that he was coming back to make sure grandma had company on her journey to the afterlife.
after she passed, we all had varying levels of guilt. my cousin and her parents also had to deal with a fair amount of blame from those who had the least involvement in grandma’s life during the latter years. oh chinese families.
alzheimer’s runs in my fam. our eldest uncle had it and i’m pretty sure a few relatives are exhibiting early signs. i’m just bracing for the day when i finally succumb to it, too (dun dun dun). i already have trouble remembering what people told me five minutes ago so the future’s not looking too bright, although recent research seems to be pretty promising. fingers-crossed that they’ll have a cure in a couple of decades.
Will Dao 