My favourite Word of All, #SoCS #SongLyricSunday

I want to walk amongst you, the many shelves and shelves of you. Bookstore or library. Doesn’t matter which.

I want to write you and read you and hold you in my hand. I want to flip through you, feeling your pages slide through my fingers.

Hard-cover. Paperback. I love you both.

I want to disappear behind stacks and stacks of you. I want to live among your silent stories, stories which come alive when read.

I want to vanish into you, to go on the adventures you hold.

I want to book a trip, a hotel, in Hawaii or San Fransisco or Iceland or New Zealand. On a beach somewhere, I want to read a book as the waves come rolling in and back out again.

I want to read with my eyes, but I settle for reading you with my fingers or else I must listen to audio books instead.

I want to write my own version of you. I will do some day.

Books. Glorious books. I open one and, yes, I rest it against my face, taking in the scent of so many past memories. The pages of you hold so much, everything I love about you.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SoCS

with my favourite word

BOOK!

And, in honour of getting this post in at the last hour of Saturday and nearing the start of

Song Lyric Sunday with Helen Espinosa,

I end this post with a classic (50 years old):

PAperback Writer – The Beatles

You Are My Sunshine

You know those cinnamon hearts so common for Valentine’s Day?

He carried a clear plastic heart, but instead of filling it with candy, he placed inside the heart a picture of her – his dear wife of fifty-five years.

He had the words of the song written out on a piece of paper inside with her picture.

You Are My Sunshine

She was taken from him, suddenly, as is often the case.

He lost his sunshine and I lost my grandmother.

How can I make it possible, even through my precious words, for someone to understand just how special she was?

I had dealt with death, more than once, but I felt entirely unprepared for it when it came around again.

She has been gone for ten years and I wish I could tell her about my life since that day she had to go.

The Ties That Bind

I didn’t get to say goodbye. I just figured I would visit her the next day, either in hospital or out. It never really occurred to me that she would never come home again.

I heard my mom on the phone and I heard the news. I would not be visiting her in the hospital the next day.

My cousin stopped in on his lunch hour, as he worked nearby, and was speaking to her. My uncle and grandpa stood beside the bed. My cousin looked away for one second and when he looked back at her, she was silent and would not speak another word. He said her name, but she was gone.

I knew it wasn’t good news. I laid down on my bed and let the tears fall onto my pillow, unconcerned with the business of wiping them away. What was I going to do without her?

Her last diary entry

***

Thur. 21 32 degrees low 19
Telephone repair man here at 5 o’clock. Phone out since Sat morning, July 16th.
Caned 1 jar pickles..

Wed. 20 31 degrees low 20
I got pictures developed. Janet took of our 55th Ann. (tried out new canon camera)

Tues. 19 33 degrees low 21
I washed 2 loads. My right big tow sore. We rested in afternoon. I using Myoflex on arms & legs. It relieves pain.

Mon. 18 32 degrees low 22
Dad picked first pickles. All big. I cut some up 5 jars caned.
I phoned Connie at Dr.’s . She has to make an app for 2-D-Echo Cardiogram for me.
Craig came at nit to say Good-bye. He leaving to go to camp tomorrow till school starts, at Lions Head.

***

She kept a diary, as she called it, on her own terms. She did it her own way. I admired that about her.

I sat in their bedroom, with a cousin and we discussed our memories, and I wondered if my uncles or cousins might have any objections with me keeping her diaries. I certainly could not read the entries, but I wanted this one part of her, her memories and her words, even as I was being forced to let go of the rest.

I wanted to write the tribute to her. I wanted to be the one to read it at her funeral. I worked hard at what I wanted to say about her, writing it out and printing it out in braille, so I could take the words up there with me. I wasn’t going to draw a blank.

The three of us went up to the microphone. It was me, my sister, and my cousin. If I got choked up, my sister could take over. Our cousin was a back-up, just in case she too could not speak. I broke down a few times throughout, but after taking a few seconds to recover myself, I got through it. My usual issue with being unable to speak when I cried did not seem to be happening now.

As we stood at her grave, her sisters gave me flowers. I wanted to put my copy of the tribute, in braille, with her in the casket. I hoped my words were enough to show what she had brought to my life.

She was truly the only one who understood. She fussed over me when I was in pain because she knew my pain better than most. She had lived with her own pain since her children were young.

Many people didn’t understand it and she felt alone. I felt alone too. Together, we weren’t alone anymore. I feel alone sometimes because she is now gone.

I’ve lost something, an innocence not from childhood, but from her presence in my life. I miss it and I miss her.

I miss her singing.

She had a sweet naive quality about her, instilled from her upbringing in the tiny corner of the world she’d always lived in, but her many travels (Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, Australia) were just as important to the two of them. I love travel because of all the times I hoped she would sneak me along in one of their suitcases.

She loved Niagara Falls and she taught me to love it too.

Finally, we would go to Cuba together. She loved Varadero. She loved to watch the people in the hotel’s open-air lobby. She loved to stroll the town, not remaining in the resort the whole time. She loved to meet the people and to speak with them. Her open, friendly nature made other people feel at ease. She wasn’t afraid to try new things, no matter how old she got.

All the times we would stay awake long into the early morning. We would talk and before we knew it, it would be late. My grandpa could be heard snoring from the couch in the family room or in the spare bedroom across the hall. He could sleep for hours. She didn’t sleep well, for years, from pain and other things. I think she enjoyed having someone to talk to.

She said it so sincerely. She said she knew, somewhere out there, one day there would be the right man for me, someone who would take care of and love me for me. I believed her then.

Sometimes – I don’t know if I believe her anymore. I feel like I let her down, as her words and the reassurance in her voice once felt like the greatest comfort, but of which I can no longer hear.

I have only a far off impression of her telling me that, back at the back of my brain and it feels like the confidence in her statement, which she sounded so certain of that night, well I hold onto her and her words of love and comfort and I cling to that purity of hope she had, the sort of positive and optimistic nature she passed on to my mother.

I have my mother still and for that I am blessed because she continues to offer hope.

All I learned about love from my grandma is still in there somewhere.

It feels like more of a rarity now, with all the modern conveniences and technologies, whether that’s actually the truth I don’t know. I hope it isn’t.

But love, like the sort she and my grandpa had in each other, that must be proceeded by hope.

Love. Marriage. I stopped pretending those weren’t things I wanted, like having a bucket of cold water dumped, suddenly, over my head.

It’s something to hope for…something, worth risking failure for.

No matter how painful those failures may be.

I don’t know if what they had, the kind of love and connection, if that really even exists anymore. It’s rare, I know that much. It existed in a time long gone now, as fast-paced as things move these days. It’s a vanishing world of which they lived.

I often feel stuck between the beliefs she had, the religious woman of faith she was, and all she used to tell me and the modern world I live in. I sometimes don’t know what to believe, what I believe, but having her inside me somewhere, I know I follow my heart.

His heart was all wrapped up in her. When she went first, he would carry her photo in that Valentine’s Day heart, and for five more years he lived. She was his heart and he was hers, and now I think I will go visit their graves because writing this isn’t getting me to where I’d hoped.

Ruby Red

Without her here to read what I write, I can’t quite get over these last ten years she’s been gone.

After the funeral and all the family gatherings stopped, a stillness and a silence fell over my mother and me in the kitchen, as we wondered where to go from there. What to do now, without her?

Ten years, flying by like nothing now. I wish I could feel like she’s not really gone, as long as I remember her and write about her.

I need to hear her in myself when I clear my throat. I need to recognize my own naivete, of which I got from her. I need to run my hands over her diary and feel the indentation of her hand writing on the pages within.

Since I began my blog and knew this anniversary was coming, I started wanting the day to get here for me to write, assuming I would write a ten year tribute, building on the one I wrote the day we said goodbye, but I guess it’s something different. It’s everything I’ve thought about her and the things I’ve learned since losing her.

It always comes back to the two of them, for me, and the life they shared for more than fifty years. I wanted to find someone I could love like they loved each other. That was all fifteen-year-old me really wanted.

She was a warm woman and a bright light to all who loved her.
Ruby Witzel, 1929-2005

My Free Five

It’s been a while, two weeks in fact, since my last post for

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge.

As a refresher, my previous post for the challenge, on Memoir Monday two weeks back:

Indefinable, Undefinable? Definitely

This week I am given free rein to speak on whatever just so happens to be on my mind.

🙂

***

#1 Emily’s Oz

On Facebook I came across a post about a commercial that would be aired during the Academy Awards. I watched the Canadian broadcast and saw no sign of what they were talking about all evening, but that is where the internet is so wonderful.

🙂

I am including both commercials: with descriptive and without,

(Emily’s Oz, without descriptive).

I recommend watching both short commercials, paying attention to compare the difference between what it’s like to watch, with and without the descriptive track.

It reminds me of those commercials: one has a woman arriving home with a bag of groceries and being frightened by something and the other is a woman panting and yelling and being told to push.

These are to advertise the need for descriptive services for television and films.

In the former, is she being frightened by a mouse or by a child?

In the latter, is she helping to move furniture or is she having a baby?

🙂

Just this weekend I tried to watch an important documentary on a brutal attack on a woman in India. I found I was unable to watch for a lot of the hour because there were only subtitles, which caused me to miss out on more than half of what was being said.

Of course, the example I give here is much more lighthearted, but I just wish something like descriptive for watching any programming wasn’t still so hard to come by.

Anyway, I thought that Emily was pretty cute and figured today was a good time to share her and the project built around her.

For a behind the scenes for the making of…check out:

The Making of Emily’s Oz

#2 TED Talk On Why Disability Does Not Equal Inspiration

I immediately heard the term this Australian comedian used, “Disability Porn” and I was drawn in, but not for what it might seem like.

🙂

All icky jokes aside, she makes some excellent points in her talk, of which I highly recommend.

Disability Porn – Definition: The objectification of one group of people (living with a disability) for the benefit of another group of people

She believes that having a disability does not make someone exceptional, but questioning what we’ve been taught to believe about disability does.

I couldn’t agree with this more.

I have grown very uncomfortable of late with the idea of being seen as overly inspiring by others.

I know. I know. This probably makes me come off as a bit self deprecating and the rest. I don’t mean to seem like I am being bashful or unwilling to accept praise when given it. I have been called inspirational before.

I just wish, sometimes, it was not all because people are so amazed I can function at any sustainable level. Yes, I can brush my own teeth, hair, dress myself, and cook a meal. Shock of shocks.

Just because someone can’t themselves imagine how they would do these things if they could not see, does not mean I should be praised for something I am saying I have no problem doing. If I say it I mean it.

Stella says in her talk that someone wanted to present her with an achievement award as a teenager, but her parents turned it down because, in their eyes, their daughter hadn’t done all that much to deserve special attention and praise.

This could be seen as mean-spirited or unfair, but I “admire” her parents for taking a stand, when they showed others that they didn’t really think of their daughter having done anything all that spectacular.

Others might not have taken such a stance, but I applaud them for not singling her out. We hear the word inspiring and that automatically must be a positive thing, right?

I may be called ungrateful or a jerk for seeming to push away a well-meaning compliment, but just think about what Stella and myself are proposing.

It isn’t our job as people, who just so happen to be living lives others can hardly fathom, to be here solely to inspire.

I myself have been guilty of it: of saying I must be grateful when looking at someone who has it worse off than me because it could always be worse.

How do you or I think that makes that other person feel to hear that? Oh, so they think we’re inspirational or they are just glad they aren’t us.

This speaker, unfortunately, has passed away now, but this awesome and cut-to-thecore TED talk made me think and it was just the sort of radical idea I guess I had been looking for myself, although I just couldn’t vocalize it in the way she did.

RIP Stella

#3
DRUMSTICK FOR A BLIND MAN, PLEASE!!!

One thing I like least is hypocrisy, but I am as guilty as the next person of exhibiting it.

As I grow older, I suppose, I become more and more uncomfortable with things like my number three today.

I even recently answered a question for this very challenge about the

Blind Bonus

sometimes given to myself and others.

When I was sixteen I got a trip to California from an organization who awards wishes and dream trips to young people with disabilities. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything now, but as I look back I feel a strange discomfort.

A blind man holds up a sign, like they would have done hundreds of years ago, as beggars on a street corner. This feels wrong to me.

Don’t get me wrong…Dave Grohl was a stand-up dude for fulfilling the guy’s request, my own blind brother received a pair of drumsticks from R.E.M. once, but I just wish we didn’t have to use such a thing to get attention and gifts.

I make jokes and I share this story because it really was a nice thing to do and supposedly the Foo Fighter’s front man is known for granting such favours; there’s nothing wrong with giving a dying cancer patient something they greatly long for. I don’t mean to take it all so seriously.

Take what we can get, is the “blind bonus” motto, but I honestly don’t think, as an adult, I would want to hold up any sign.

#4 Would You Rather?

I recently came across a Facebook status on an author’s page. The game of “Would You Rather?” is played often on such FB pages.

This time the question was:

Would you rather…be unable to speak or be unable to see?

I generally do not like these kinds of questions. I have often thought would I rather be blind or deaf…and I guess that’s a question for another day’s post.

😉

I wasn’t so bothered by the question, in this case however, as I was to read the responses and to see that nine out of ten people said they would rather be unable to speak than see.

It just sort of shocked and saddened me to realize how much fear there is out there about losing one’s sight. I thought, to be unable to communicate one’s thoughts, feelings, and needs through words might be more of a concern to those answering.

A common response I saw was: “I could still write down what I wanted to say. At least if I couldn’t speak I could still read. I need to be able to read books.”

Coming from those on an author’s FB page I wasn’t so surprised to hear that, but I did reply with the solution that I assumed might be more well-known. There is always the technology to read without sight. Audio books are becoming more and more common. These things don’t immediately occur to most people and I get that.

I just know that people take for granted being able to relay to someone else what they want. I know of people who can not do this and I have seen how hard that is, for everyone involved.

The fear of blindness is just so common and I am left feeling like the monster everyone is afraid of. I realize it is the blindness not the person they are referring to, but here I share my biggest fears with disability. That is what this challenge is all about.

I will tackle the question of how I feel about my own blindness and whether I would choose to see if I could, in a few weeks time here.

#5 Disability Confident: Rethinking Disabilities

“Would you like to have higher employee retention, lower absenteeism, greater innovation, and profitability? It’s possible…if you change your thinking.”

Who wouldn’t want this, right?

🙂

This was the pitch by the Ontario Disability Employment Network to attract businesses to attend their one-day conference on the benefits of hiring people with disabilities.

At the start of February I was watching a program on my local television channel here in Ontario:

TVO.org – Creating a Barrier Free Ontario – On The Agenda with Steve Paikin

On their nightly program they focused on a conference being held the day after my birthday, at a hotel in Toronto, and I immediately perked up. It definitely sounded like something I would like to attend.

Ontario Disability Employment Network (ODEN) – Rethinking Disabilities Conference, Toronto

It goes on to say the benefits already found are that companies who hire those with disabilities are found to:

**revolutionize their workforces and delivering bottom line results.

And at the conference attendees would be:

**Learning how to leverage the latest in progressive employment practices to put your organization at the forefront of a new movement.

**You’ll hear from business leaders from across North America who have embraced this new approach to hiring and are now disability confident.

**Build your knowledge and learn about a whole new way to create an inclusive workplace and gain a strong competitive advantage through improved culture, loyalty and employee innovation.

Disability confident…hmmm.

I was intrigued to listen to the program and maybe even attend the conference. I knew it was for employers more than myself, and was happy to hear about the fact that these conferences were happening, but maybe if I were there I could represent more of those who are in need of the chances to prove our skills and worth.

I didn’t want to look at it like that.

I guess though everyone must prove their worth and skill to an employer and I have always wanted equal treatment and consideration.

The term “disability confident” was an interesting one to me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why.

I looked into the specifics of attending and emailed someone in charge. I received a reply very quickly, which was most appreciated.

It looked like they were happy to have me there, if I were willing to pay the price of admission.

I suppose businesses are able to afford hundreds of dollars for a one-day conference which might help them achieve everything I listed above, but I certainly could not afford it. I was not one of the people on Steve Paikin’s program: a lawyer or a politician. I was on fixed government income and assistance and one of those hoping to get off those one day.

This is not to complain because they gave me a discount, but unfortunately it was still more than I could spend, even on a worthy cause.

It was too last minute and they informed me:

Hi Kerry,

So sorry I didn’t respond to your email sooner. I was out of town at the end of the week and it slipped by me while I was trying to catch up.

Unfortunately there’s not much else I can do this time. Typically we try to keep 2 or 3 complementary passes for situations like this but we are running very close to the wire and may even lose money on this particular event. As a not-for-profit without any financial resources, we just can’t afford to do that. Our food costs for the day are running almost $200 alone, plus there’s all the other expenses.

I hope you understand our situation and perhaps we can accommodate you at a future event.

Thanks,

Joe

—–Original Message—–
From: Kerry Kijewski [mailto:kkherheadache@gmail.com]
Sent: February-05-15 9:35 AM
To: Joe Dale
Subject: Re: Inquiry

Hello Again,

Thank you again for looking into this for me and for offering me the discount.

Unfortunately I am unable to come, due to the cost.

This is really a shame because I saw the program on TV the other night and I am very passionate on the subject of it and this conference.

It’s unfortunate, again, because I am not one of the lucky and hardworking few, like on that program the other night, with a well paying career. I am one of the majority of people with disabilities who hasn’t had so much luck finding jobs and thus I am on government assistance and am unable to afford this conference.

I just figured that it might be a positive thing for me to be there, as I am one of those for whom the speakers are going to be speaking about.. I am not happy with the current situation and would love to see improvements on employment opportunities for myself and others with visual impairments.

I am saying this just to explain why I seemed so interested in attending your conference and why I now have to decline.

Is there any other conferences or public forums you could recommend that I could afford, that are about these issues?

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,
Kerry Kijewski

I included the above email exchange to show that I did my best to inquire and explain my situation and they seemed to do their best to accommodate, however it was not enough and did not work out in the end.

“Join the movement that is changing the face of Canadian businesses and building a powerful new economy.”

http://www.crwdp.ca/en/rdc

I hope to find a conference of some kind, relating to these issues most important to me, sometime in the future. I would like to get involved somehow and am passionate on these issues and thought this would be a good topic to end with for this week’s free posting.

***

Hope you enjoyed my Free Five today. I borrowed the framework and idea from something new I am trying and of which I started a few weeks back, with the following:

In The News and On My Mind: #1000Speak Edition

I hope to continue, on Wednesdays mostly, but have already veered from the plan I had for it when I posted it.

🙂

I don’t know what the future of Redefining Disability is, as these things rarely go as planned when the bloggers who come up with them start out. Like #1000Speak, this one took off and Rose of

http://rosebfischer.com

had no clue anyone would even want to take part in the beginning.

I will go on because I like devoting my Memoir Monday to this topic and because Rose came up with a set of questions such as this one:

What would you tell someone who has recently been diagnosed with your disabilities or disabilities that you are familiar with?

I will answer that one in one week’s time.

Lucky Ones

“Nothing gives easy. Easy gives nothing.”

On September 23rd she released Little Machines, her third studio album, not including the acoustic records she has put out following each.

LIGHTS…CAMERA…ACTION!

Last week I wrote about three inspiring women, at least for me and my life,

Here.

And Lights is one of them. When I first heard her newest single, Up We Go, I immediately felt the energy I had been lacking. It was at the beginning of September, school was starting again for many, and summer was unofficially over.

Up We Go was an up-tempo little song that caught my attention and wouldn’t let go, but letting go of the past seems to be the point of the song.

I waited weeks for the official music video to be released, and in it she is apparently in a hotel elevator. The only signs of this for me are the soft music and the ding of the elevator door, but that elevator music that is so easy to distinguish is such a beautiful contrast to the fast-paced forward movement of the song itself.

Lights has been one of my favourite Canadian performers, for the last five years, since I saw her play live. Many of her songs, and indeed her herself, often seem other-worldly, with an alien element somewhere in there. The first song on this album, Portal, is the perfect example of this feeling you must hear her to fully understand.

Her style is all her own. Each one of her songs infectious and her brand of fast-moving electro-pop is a mood booster for me every damn time.

Her lyrics are a lot more abstract and philosophical than other music I have recently been listening to, but this allows for much room for one’s own interpretation.

***

Lucky Ones, Lyrics.

Who knows. Doesn’t matter anyway.

Let’s go. You and I will be okay.

Cause after all this time, still don’t know where we’re going. but look how far we’ve come.

And as long as you’re just as lost as I am

I’ll hold you in the mornings, like we’re the lucky ones.

***

I recommend checking this album out. I find these lyrics and the entire thing wonderfully upbeat and uplifting. I can’t tell you how comforting the above lines were to me, from this bonus track, the moment I heard her sing them.

I have been listening to a lot of music lately, to help me through times of transition and of uncertainty.

Little Machines and Lights have been just the thing to keep me moving forward and motivated, in those moments where I am in most need of the assistance with both.

***

As a proud Canadian woman I want to highlight the talents of those Canadian female artists who are making a name for themselves in the big wide world of music.
Tegan and Sara are another example, along with Lights, of this amazing female Canadian artistry. If you enjoy one you will probably enjoy the other.

I Was A Fool

Goodbye Goodbye

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Friends and family have seen Wes Anderson’s latest on-screen masterpiece and they highly recommended I see it too.

I haven’t been a huge fan of Wes’s films in the past, one or another, here or there maybe. It is undeniable, however, that his style of making movies is different, in our time, from most other modern blockbuster films and their celebrated directors and writers. This one sounded interesting. A hotel in the thirties, I love historical time periods in films. The wide assortment of well-known actors sweetened the deal.

(Beware! Possible spoilers ahead!)

I have had some issues in the past (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) and so it’s never certain the service will be up and working, but it makes it easier for myself and my companion to both be able to concentrate and enjoy the movie.

Not all theatres offer the DVS (descriptive video service) for their movies, so it takes planning to find out where to go. The Grand Budapest Hotel isn’t the latest blockbuster and is not in a super wide release.
I placed the headset on as the movie began and it was a good sign when the older woman’s voice came through, in my ears.

His movies have an odd and out of place feeling to them, in and amongst most movies of today. The Grand Budapest is no exception. From the very beginning the style is Anderson’s own unique feel.
The movie takes place in eastern Europe. From a snowy graveyard to the snowy countryside, on trains and in giant estates and the hotel, the basis for most of the movie.

It took a while to follow the time changes, the three separate stories, through three different generations. This creates a highly effective layering of story lines and also of the lives of the characters.
The film begins with a girl reading a book, the book written by an author about the hotel and this feels like it is speaking directly to me, as a reader, as a writer, and as a movie fan.

One article I saw on the movie was entitled, “Grand Budapest Hotel is more than Fiennes, it’s wonderful”; aptly named in my opinion, thanks to the talent of the main character. A favourite of mine, Ralph Fiennes, plays the main starring role and his portrayal in this film is another stellar performance to be sure. He plays Monsieur Gustave, a mysterious hotel manager in a fictional country (a mixture of Russia, Romania, etc) during the thirties. He plays this character with humour and skill. He is witty, flirtatious, and clever. It is hard not too root for him all the way through.

The author is old when the story begins and he is retelling, speaking about the time he stayed at the Grand Budapest and wrote about its history.

The first flashback, soon into the film, is of this writer’s experience while staying at the hotel. He meets the elderly owner and manager and learns through this reclusive man the story of how he came to be there.
Once again we are brought back even further, from the eighties to the sixties to the thirties, where most of the movie takes place.

This film has a little bit of everything: luxury and opulence, wartime struggle, mystery and suspense, intrigue and murder. A painting of a boy eating an apple. This particular painting belonged to a very wealthy old woman who Ralph’s character has been having a relationship with. When she suddenly ends up dead the fight for the painting begins, between the old lady’s family and Fiennes’s character, Monsieur Gustave.

Gustave has a new lobby boy working with him who soon becomes his confidant, partner in crime, and best friend. Zero is a memorable name and describes his ranking. However, there is just enough mystery in Monsieur Gustave’s past to give hope that Zero could one day be where he now is. Both their pasts are unknown, suggesting a possible orphaned childhood or loss of family, leaving them essentially all alone in the world, until coming across one another.

As Gustave and Zero embark on a journey which begins with the two of them stealing the painting, chaos ensues. Gustave is charged and sent to a harsh prison, where he and some fellow inmates decide to break out, with the help of Zero and the Budapest cake decorator. A romance develops between Zero and this young girl.

Zero soon will do anything to help his protege. From there the old woman’s family members chase the painting, which Gustave and Zero have hidden away, all the way to the Budapest. The climactic scene involves the young girl and turns into a shoot-out across the hotel.

This movie ends badly on many levels. It is no happy romantic ending, not in the true movie sense of the term. Zero loses the little family he had, but he has continued to hold on to the hotel that meant so much, where he met the love of his life and family in the most unexpected of ways.
The young writer decides to capture all of this in a book, as he sits down in the lobby of the hotel to write down all that the elderly Zero has retold to him.

Wes Anderson is able to take this movie and turn it into a nostalgic look at a time long gone. He combines artsy with action-packed chase scenes down a ski slope and a bobsled track. He dares to be bold in how he chooses to make his movies, in a time when modern special effects are everywhere.
As a fan of old movies, it is a nice break to see the kind of smart writing style of today mixed with the old vintage feel of the cinematic past.