Wednesday, June 13, 2007

"No actor ever forgets a role"

I was 34 years old in late 1993. I haven't found an exact date, but maybe this was supposed to be a 34-59 type of clue from my family. I have also been thinking I might have walked by her in an airport in California back in 2000.

http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/8303/24299.html
...
A Memory Lapse

For Maureen Reagan, the journey began in late 1993 with her first "click of awareness" that something had gone awry in her father's mind, she wrote in a January 2000 essay for Newsweek magazine. Maureen Reagan died in August 2001 of malignant melanoma.

She and her father, former President Ronald Reagan, were talking about one of his movies, the 1954 drama Prisoner of War.


"For years he had told me about the gruesome tortures inflicted on American prisoners by the North Koreans," she wrote. "But now he seemed to be hearing me tell the stories for the first time. Finally he looked at me and said, 'Mermie, I have no recollection of making that movie.' "

"No actor ever forgets a role," she wrote, "so I should have realized something was wrong."

A few months later, she wrote, her father complained to his doctor about feeling disoriented in hotel rooms. In August 1994, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and on Nov. 5 of that year he released a brief statement about his illness, in hopes of promoting "greater awareness of this condition."

Warning Signs

Although the early symptoms of Alzheimer's vary, Thies said, what Maureen Reagan described is a common pattern: "not remembering things that had a relatively high profile in your life, and certainly disorientation in strange places."




A dream I had a few hours earlier, there was a lot I want to record but there is some much that I can't articulte. Phoebe came over and sit down next to me. She was complimenting me and I ponder, either at the time or after I woke up, over why she was telling me all that. I don't mind the compliments, but what is it about that part of the dream? I had my arm around her and we were talking about her movies. I was seeing everything around me as through my eyes. I was telling her that I had input into all of her movies, and she was about to that wasn't true and I want to say now she was referring to a movie that had something to do with, either as a topic or a name, 'sensationalism' in 2007. I countered with something about 'before I left' and I think that was when I saw a small smile on her face. She might have turned to look me in the face at that point, I'm not sure. After I awoke just now, I wondered if that part was about 1987. It wasn't 2007, we were talking about "Bright Lights, Big City," in 1987 and she thought I didn't have any input on that and I told her I had given somebody my input to her role in that movie before I left in 1986. Don't know. I think that was it, but don't know. That might apply to "The Anniversary Party" too, or what it all means, I don't know. I was deep in conversation with her and somebody yelled to get attention and said something about a leak he needed my help with. I didn't want to stop talking with Phoebe, but I went with him and then we were in another part of the house the looked like a car garage in the basement. I can't find the words to express some stuff that was going on before we were in the garage. I lot of people walking around that I cannot articulate. Then in the garage, the carpet against the wall was wet from a water leak that I was supposed to help fix. But there was already a lot of people standing around in there so I didn't know why I needed to be there. And I don't actually remember doing anything. I remember seeing the guy who asked for help examining the leak, but there were other people standing in front of me. I remember one of those guys swinging a metal pipe very close to me but it didn't hit me and I think that is the last part I remember. Throughout the time since I awoke, I have intense feelings that I miss Phoebe and I wish I could see her, but that is nothing new. There is more I cannot express. I can only describe it as a strong feeling of loneliness because I can't be with Phoebe.

What that dream I wrote of earlier reminds me of something I "remember" Amanda telling me, in what would have been 1987. In the dream, Phoebe was telling me how much she liked my body and that was what Amanda had been telling me. I imagine it has something to do with my flights with the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. I read recently about how the Blue Angel pilot cannot wear anti-gravity suits - I think that is what it's called - that other high-performance pilots wear so they compensate by tightening the muscles in their abdomen to keep from passing out as the blood shifts from their legs, or something like that. Judging by photos I "remember" of me when I was 18, Phoebe liked that I had very good muscle definition in my abdomen.