What a Pleasant Surprise (on Mt. Pleasant) to Have a Unplanned Visit by Ger Duany on Memorial Day Weekend. Thrilled to Know This Amazing Man

And look! That's the painting by Leo Robinson of my father, Butch. Ger & Butch. Now that is a story to be written about.

I received a text message from Ger than he returned from the Cannes Film Festival in France and he wanted to stop by the house, but only if I barbecued like I like to do and make a small gathering out of the evening. Well, of course. Off to Big Y I go to get materials for a dinner party on the back porch. 

I love this man, and I am so thankful to Penguin Random House for sending me his draft of Walk Toward the Rising Sun when it was in the editing phase. I'm also glad Abu Bility and I were able to do the educator's guide for his text (and hope I'm able to continue when they adapt the book to a movie). 

It was spur of the moment, and I asked Kris & Dave what they were doing and they were running ragged working on their back patio and felt a Crandall dinner was perfect for their Sunday plans, too (because they wouldn't have to cook). Ger and Makuach showed, too, and we had a fantastic, spur-of-the-moment Sunday dinner discussing books, memoirs, globalization, Westernization, parenting, and this crazy life thing.

The coincidence continues. I can't help but laugh about I Heart Huckabees back in the day, when I used to show it to students and some of them, Alex Shultz in particular, fell in love with the philosophical storyline of the movie. I mean, Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman were in the same film. 

Then came The Good Lie with Reese Witherspoon and Emmanuel Jal (who I meat with the Red Mountain Writing Project in Alabama). There are coincidences galore. 

Who would of thought in the 2000s when I started working with Sudanese communities in Louisville and was teaching high school (including I Heart Huckabees) that one day Ger Duany, the "coincidence" and I would be comes friends? That is the amazing way the Great Whatever operates! 

His latest film is Good-bye, Julia which just premiered at Cannes. It debuts this Fall and is about the succession of South Sudan, where a married former singer from the north seeks redemption for causing the death of a southern man for hiring his obvious wife as her maid. It was written and directed by Mohamad Kordofani, and stars Emma Yousif, Siren Rick, Nazar Goma, and Ger Guany. 

It is a heavy script, indeed, and I can't wait until a Western agency picks up the script and shares it in the Unites States. What a wonderful evening to jump into existence out of nowhere. These are the type of nights that we live for. Happy Memorial Day. So much loss, everywhere, has brought us to where we are today - the fight continues.