Endings

A number of years ago I attended a party, and engaged a very pretty young woman, literally half my age.

Series
The Other Side
Original Broadcast Date
1/20/2002
Cast
Larry Block, Kristine McKenna, Jack Kornfield, Joe Frank
Format
Karma Style, 57 minutes
Preceded by:	Plerophory Of Pain
Followed by:	Time's Arrow
Purchase

Endings is the final program Joe Frank produced for the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast on January 20, 2002.

Synopsis

'Endings' is all re-used, from 'Karma' parts 1, 4, 5, and 6.

Joe tells of meeting a pretty young woman 'literally half my age' 'a number of years ago'. She has only a shower in her apartment, misses taking baths. Joe invites her over to use his 'large luxurious' bathtub. They talk the first time, then she sews the buttons back onto his pajamas. The next time Joe joins her in the tub (!) and they make love. She wants to have a more serious relationship, Joe doesn't, citing the difference in ages. Joe says, 'I pointed out that when I was 70, she'd barely be 40'. He tries to get her to compare their relationship to her having one with 15-year-old (half her age) boy. She falls in love with him, he breaks it off. She visits and calls, desperate for him.

5:50: Larry tells of a love affair he had '22 years ago' when he was '32, 33 years old' with Barbara, a tall blonde woman from Washington (state) who worked as a waitress where he worked as a bartender. It lasted for '3, 4 weeks', ended Larry did not know why. Larry was distraught, told her that he had given her his 'love feather', didn't know if he had another. She married soon afterwards, later divorced, teaches acting at Rutgers and has 2 grown daughters. That was the last time he really fell in love.

'After her, I did one of those "Albert Camus" things when the first woman who came along and said "Let's be boyfriend-girlfriend" I said, "Okay". And that's kind of the way it was with my wife. I didn't care, I had no will. I felt by the time I was 35 that I had failed in my life. Of course now it's 22 years later'.

12:00: Larry Block tells of the woman moving into a nearby apartment. She's an attractive older woman from California, an actress. They hang, ride bikes around town, eventually have an affair. Larry talks to a friend about the friend's affair, mentions his; his daughter Zoe overhears it, tells Jolly, who decides Larry has to move out. Larry has a job in California. The time away cools out their anger; they allow Larry back into the home. Larry and Jolly move into the alcove in the living room (just big enough for a bed and a few little dressers), Zak into the master bedroom.

23:10: Joe talks about relationships and the painful memories that persist after they end.

25:00: Joe imagines Kate's future lovers, first a wealthy older Hollywood type, 'Felix Handelsman', who names his yacht after her.

28:00: Joe is tormented by grief at the thought of her, but doesn't answer her calls or e-mails: he's cut himself off completely from her but is obsessed with her.

29:20: Joe imagines Kate's next lover is a brilliant young screen-writer, winner of the biggest advance ever for his first script, a man so thoughtful and widely-read Kate can learn a lot from him; compared to him, Joe is a 'retarded schoolboy'.

30:50: Joe imagines Kate's next lover is a champion triathlete, next to whom Joe is a 'failed physical specimen'.

33:50: Larry says he thinks he'll never experience real love again.

36:10: Kristine McKenna talks about bad relationships, mentions one of hers. She draws a parallel between romantic love and extreme performance art. She tells of Chris Burden, the performance artist who had himself shot, crucified on a Volkswagen, sealed in a box for 3 days, then the Viennese Actionists, one of whom cut off slices of his penis.

39:20: Jack Kornfield tells of a woman whose husband had died. They were involved in the spiritual community. 3 friends told her different stories about what had happened to him - they had seen him. The stories disagreed, so she asked Kornfield to sort it out. He told her to focus on what she knew. He quoted Suzuki Roshi's single comment that embodied Zen: 'Not always so.' He tells us that we should focus on what we know.

46:50: Larry Block tells of a relationship with a woman 25 years ago, when he was one of the Dromios in Comedy of errors in Shakespeare in the park. (1975). He had a brief passionate relationship with a woman, was distraught that it ended.

54:50: Kornfield leads a meditation, asking how our heart responds to different circumstances.

58:10: Joe talks about love, that pop songs are about love, never about business affairs or unpleasant family matters.

Legacy Synopsis

• Joe - he meets a young woman at a party, she uses his bath tub, they become involved, fight over age, and he breaks her heart.
• Larry - He's afraid to care after having been hurt when a woman grew cold to him. Giving away love feathers. Feeling that he had failed by age 35. An affair with an older bicyclist is discovered by Larry's daughter. Zak plans for the master bedroom.
• Joe - Remembering an ex after a relationship. Imagining Kate's next lover. Physical description of Kate.
• Larry - physical intimacy is bizarre.
• Kristine McKenna - Longing for unity with another. Love as extreme performance art; the Vienese actionists. Denial of death.
• Kornfield - A woman is told by people of various religions that a loved one is in multiple afterlives. What do we really know to be true?
• Larry - a fellow actress loses interest in him.
• Joe - Popular songs are about love, song titles which will never be written.

Music

• "Spacebeach" - Arling & Cameron (from Music for Imaginary Films, 1999) | YouTube [Intro]
• "Brazil" - Antonio Carlos Jobim (from Stone Flower, 1970) | YouTube [31:55]
• "323 Secondes De Musique Repetitive" - Rinôçérôse (from Installation Sonore, 1999) | YouTube [50:54]