lights on the water
shrimp boats tied up to the dock
shrimp, shrimpers on break

Night time at the shrimp docks.

We went hoping to see the northern lights but the lights we saw were on the boats at the Hudson’s Restaurant on the shrimp dock.

The shrimp boat were tied and the shrimpers were inside at the bar.

What do the shrimp do when not being caught?

Do they know they shrimpers are taking a break.

Do they sigh in relief that they made it through another day?

Do they look at each other and say, ‘What a day!’ or ‘That was a close one!’

Do they gather at a bar an exchange stories of close calls with all those things that want to eat them?

Do they live in ignorance that their world is filled with all those things that want to eat them?

Or do they live with the goal that they might someday be a part of some magical dish of shrimp served in a waterside restaurant where they are the end of someone else’s day.

Maybe next time I order a shrimp boil, I will think of this.

But I hope not.

S C D O T
suggestions for your commute
ummmm, avoid rush-hour …

They tell a joke in Michigan that there are two seasons, Winter and Construction.

They tell a joke in Michigan that the State Flower is an orange traffic cone.

At least in Michigan, they tell jokes about the Department of Transportation.

Down here in the Low Country, the South Carolina Department of Transportation is a joke.

Full transparency, the State of South Carolina is as poor as the dirt in the salt marshes (read swamps, alligator infested swamps) that make up up half the State.

Since moving here, the Hilton Head Island Bridge has been a topic of discussion but nothing besides some traffic studies have been done.

This despite the fact that the United States Corps of Engineers will NOT give the current bridge a ‘Safe to Use’ certificate.

When we drive to Savannah we take SC Highway 17.

It has been under construction to change it from 2 to 4 lanes since we moved here almost 4 years ago.

Turns out it has been under construction for 7 years.

You can read about it here.

It’s been 7 years of treacherous travel. When will crews finish Speedway Blvd?

It has another year and a half to go.

One of the steps in building a road down here is pile up enough dirt to get the road bed out of the swamp.

They have to build it twice as high as you might think then wait for a year or more for it to settle into the pluff mud before they can pave it and start using it.

That and a lot of other problems just seem to plague road building down here.

But when you build a road through a swamp you are going to have problems.

Did not anyone in the SCDOT ever watch Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail and the saga of Swamp Castle?

The Castle Owner declaims, “I’ve built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. All the kings said I was daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ’em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up.”

Go another couple miles and you get to the State of Georgia.

There is a lot to not like about Georgia if you look for it but I have to say the build roads seemingly overnight.

In my 12 years of commuting in Atlanta, I can’t count how many freeway projects I saw start and complete in an amazingly short amount of time.

Even when a section of freeway bridge burned up, they got it fixed in reopened in a matter of weeks.

They call this part of the United States, the Low Country.

People who live here wink at you and say, “It’s really the SLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOW country.”

And Boy Howdy! but is it.

There is a significant number of people who live in the Savannah area and use Highway 17 to commute to jobs up here in the Hilton Head area.

One of my coworkers makes the trip once a week.

For those commuters, the SCDOT gave a list of tips for using Highway 17.

The first tip is, Avoid rush-hour if at all possible.

Just makes you feel good knowing these folks are out there.

said his thoughts aloud
many times – there was no one
that they could annoy

He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was by himself.

He had sung when he was by himself in the old days and he had sung at night sometimes when he was alone steering on his watch in the smacks or in the turtle boats.

He had probably started to talk aloud, when alone, when the boy had left.

But he did not remember.

When he and the boy fished together they usually spoke only when it was necessary.

They talked at night or when they were storm-bound by bad weather.

It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea and the old man had always considered it so and respected it.

But now he said his thoughts aloud many times since there was no one that they could annoy.

From The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1952).

When I have to be in the office, I like to go in early.

I get to see the sunrise out of the Atlantic Ocean.

I get to drive through an empty resort town with too many people still asleep from their efforts to enjoy this resort town.

I get to the office early.

The ladies who clean the resort buildings are just finishing up with the offices.

I often catch them vacuuming.

They often catch me with their vacuuming.

So sorry sir, they mummer.

Worried they might annoy me I guess.

Da Nada, I reply.

I learn their names and say buenos dias but they always call me sir.

I work at desk in the quiet and the ladies come in and empty the wastebaskets and clean the desktops … and they see the pictures of me and my grand children.

I also showed the ladies pictures of my new grand daughter and they laugh and smile and congratulate me.

I enjoy the quiet.

And I wonder, what do these ladies think of me and pictures.

syuzhet? fabula?
cause-and-effect chain of events
narratology!

I picked up a copy of ReFocus: The Films of Lawrence Kasdan by Brett Davis (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2024).

It is a part of the ReFocus books that make up a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of neglected American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture — its myths, values, and historical precepts.

That use of language in that little blurb alone takes my breath away and deserves its own appreciation.

Through out the book though, two other words caught my eye.

Syuzhet.

And Fabula.

When I first hit these words as I read through the book, I thought they were interesting and thought, ‘I’ll have to look those up.’

And then I hit them again and again and again.

As in … Bordwell states that any film narrative is supported by two systems: syuzhet and style. Syuzhet (often translated as “plot”) was a term coined by the early-twentieth-century Russian formalists such as Propp and Shklovsky to describe the way in which the fabula (“story”) is presented and arranged. According to Bordwell, while “the fabula embodies the action as a chronological, cause-and-effect chain of events occurring within a given duration and a spatial field,” the syuzhet is what guides the audience to comprehend the fabula.

What great words!

The Wiktionary defines syuzhet as narratology or ‘The way in which the story is told throughout a book or film; an employment of narrative.’

Wikipedia goes on to state, “… in narratology, fabula (Russian: фабула, IPA: [ˈfabʊlə]) equates to the thematic content of a narrative and syuzhet equates to the chronological structure of the events within the narrative.”

What was I getting into here?

But the Wikipedia article has the disclaimer, “This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, jargon, and incomprehensible text which fails to explain the topic.”

What another great bunch of words!

It is fascinating book!

In the book, it was the coupling the words neglected American directors with name Lawrence Kasdan that stuck with me.

Neglected?

This is the guy who wrote or directed, or both, movies like Body Heat, Accidental Tourist, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Silverado and the Big Chill.

His career is the stuff dreams are made of.

And it started when Mr. Kasden enrolled at the University of Michigan.

Because, according to legend, of the Hopwood Awards.

When the football team of any College plays on TV, the contract allows that College to air a commercial about the wonderfulness that is that College.

One year, the University of Michigan made a short Film Noir clip of a young man in a garment factory (implying it’s in New York City in the 1930’s) trying to convince his Dad to let him enroll at some College far away from New York.

“And Dad”, he says, “The schools biggest, most prestigious award doesn’t go to an athlete. It goes to the best writer.”

The kicker is that the young man is supposed to be Arthur Miller and he is talking about the Hopwood Awards at the University of Michigan.

Mr. Miller would go to win 2 of them.

So did Lawrence Kasdan.

I never met him but one night, I held a seat for him.

And the syuzhet of this night is best understood within this fabula.

While I was a student in Ann Arbor, I had a good friend in the Film School and he called me one night and he asked if I could help him out ‘with an event’.

He couldn’t tell me what it was but to be at Auditorium A of Angell Hall at 7pm, don’t be late … and bring a date.

Aud A of Angell Hall was the largest lecture hall on Campus, but it would be locked up at 7pm.

And bring a date?

My friend was being generous about my available options.

Still I got in touch with another student I was friendly with, one who had made it clear that the door was open to friendship and closed in every other way, and I explained to her my mystery date and for some reason she agreed to meet me at Angell Hall.

I got there a little bit before 7 and there was this line at the door, down the walk and around the building.

I spotted my ‘date’ and she looked at me like, ‘maybe we should have got here earlier’ as she gestured at the line.

But I grabbed her hand and with bravado I didn’t feel, I said, ‘gotta find my contact.‘

We walked to the front of the line and my friend from Film School was looking out a half open door, blocking the entrance to those at the head of the line, spotted me and yelled, ‘MIKE … OVER HERE!”

We ran up and he pulled us through the door and slammed it shut.

‘Come on‘ he said and he ran into an empty Aud A.

The lights were dimmed and we could just make out the two aisles and three banks of seats.

He ran down an aisle and stopped at about the 7th room and said to my ‘Date’, ‘HI, I’m Mike (he was a Mike), I need you guys to hold this row for me.’

‘You‘ he said to her, ‘stand here and don’t let anybody sit here. This row is reserved.’

‘Mike‘, he said to me, ‘You go down to the other end and don’t let anyone into this row. Got It?‘

‘Got it!’

And I ran between the seats to other end of the row.

Mike said they were going to open the doors and we should guard those seats with our lives.

And he left.

We were alone for a few minutes.

I looked at her and I shrugged.

She look back at me and shrugged back.

Then a mob was let into the room.

It was dark and it seems like all the seats were gone in a few seconds.

People sat on the side of the stage, on the floor in the aisle.

For some reason, the mob accepted that that 7th row was reserved and we got little hassle from anyone.

What in the world was going on?

I could not imagine.

All at once it got quiet.

Here came Mike leading a party of folks.

He came down the aisle and told my ‘date’ that she did a great job and to go sit be me.

Then he let his party into the row.

It the middle of the group was Lawrence Kasdan.

I asked the person in front me what was going on.

First the feller stared at me like I was too stupid to believe.

Then he pointed at Kasdan.

‘It’s Kasdan‘, he said, ‘and he brought a print of his latest movie. No one has seen it yet!’

Aud A went dark and the movie started and up the screen was Kevin Kline giving a bath to a kid singing ‘Jeremiah was a bullfrog.‘

So Lawrence Kasdan introduced a bunch of Michigan Film students (and me) to Mr. Kasdan’s homage to the University with his movie, The Big Chill.

Years later I live in the low country of South Carolina just miles from where the movie was made and the story takes place.

I have walked down the main street of Beaufort, SC, where Tom Berenger, William Hurt and Kevin Kline go jogging (Kline in a raggedy old Michigan T Shirt) more times than I can remember.

I try to tell folks about the scene.

I try to describe the movie to these kids who haven’t seen it.

Said to say so few remember it today.

Maybe neglected does apply.

But I’ll always remember the night I almost met Lawrence Kasdan.

As for my ‘Date’?

She had been trying to get her foot in door at the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily and once we figured out what we were seeing, she squeezed my arm and said, “I could be the first person to review this!” and she started working on something she could type up and get to the paper and maybe gain entre.

Sorry to say about 200 other students had the same idea and her review was not selected for publication.

For us, the door to friendship stayed open, but nothing more.

Happy for that.

Happy for my brush with greatness.

Happy to have seen the movie.

That’s enough.

As Chloe says in the movie, “I haven’t met that many happy people in my life. How do they act?’

Syuzhet?

Fabula!