This blog is meant to be a way for me to work through immense grief. January 25, 2016. A birthday unlike any other. I spent the day driving up to Punxsatawney, PA, home of the groundhog Phil, and inspiration of sorts for the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, a film that holds a special place in my heart. I was deeply disillusioned to find that the little hommlet of Punxsatawney was a mummified remainder of what had once been a thriving if small industrial Pennsylvania town. The empty storefronts, sad people, and bad food were far worse than anything Phil Connors had to endure again and again every 6:00 am. The Punxsatawney of Bill Murray was mere Purgatory; the real town would have felt like a deep dark hell. This saddened me, as I had hoped for picturesque, touristy, quaint, and still lively. I was greeted only with death moths. The film had, I knew, not been filmed in the real Punxsatawney, but rather in a fine place called Woodstock, Indiana. But I had ...
Writing my way out of despair, inaudibly and blindly, but not without memory.