Saturday, May 30, 2009

Back in familiar territory

Arriving in Schlaining, where I spent a year in 2006-2007, memories are being played back to me like an internal youtube playlist.

Coming here in 2006 was another chapter in the script that is still in the writing, although some universal force seem to be guiding me in the to where Im supposed to be.

From the first awkward moments of my self-conscious awareness of the world around me up until today, I have from time to time, usually 2-3 years between each time, after having gone through a lot of experiences during that time and just living in the moment, had awakening periods. Awakening, in that Im able to look back on who I was two years ago and realising how much I have changed since then. The first few times I was completely attached to my own ego, not realising that my every thought and feeling was a result of my egos hold over my being, resulting in me interpreting this personal development as a sure sign on my own excellence.

I have since then been blessed with meeting people not so attached to their own egos. Slowly but surely, it began sinking in. Meet people with an open and curious mindset, and life will give you plentiful rewards. Starting doing this, but still not fully realising why and still being for the most part bound to my own ego, the next couple of awakening moments led me to interpret them differently. 

Now, realising how much other people contribute to my own growth, I started seeing how everything is connected. What used to seem like coincidences, or products of my own excellence, now felt like were not random at all. I could see that because I treated people with care and respect, and even if not seeing them again for years, the very same people came back into my life and with them opportunities that I would not have been given if they didnt have a favourable impression of me. Coincidence became more and more of an illusion, but my own excellence I couldnt quite seem to shake off. These incidents of positive karma were still too far between for me to rule out that this could just be because I "deserved" it.

This brings us right up to the time when I arrived in Schlaining for the first time. I was really ready for a new direction and influence in my life, but not knowing how to get there. Thinking that peace studies would be the thing for me. But even though I met people with an open and caring mindset, I was still to some extent using people for my own benefit and amusement. I couldnt have come to a better place.

My year here was utterly painful. I thought that I had "understood" something about the world and about myself, and came in with a cocky attitude. What happened was the following: after being put in place several times by other students trying to inform me of my destructive behaviour and me still not getting it, the universe itself turned on me and gave me a lesson of a greater dimension. I kept making worse and even worse choices, going in to a spiral of hurt. My reaction? Drinking shitloads of alcohol, and when not doing that, keeping to myself in my room too embarrassed to face the world.

After receiving my first and hopefully last death threat, crashing a car while drunken driving, crashing my beloved laptop while drunk, breaking a tooth (yes, while drunk) and making "enemies" because of treating women like sexual objects, I finally let go. I cried, and I cried.

It was a crash course, and a very much needed one. I am immensly happy that through all of these endeavours, I still managed to make some friends that will be friends until the universe dissolves. My friends were my biggest critics, and for that I salute you. 

Even though, I had to wait two years, almost to the day that I crashed the car, for my next awakening moment. Im not keeping you in suspense on purpose...but right now I have to take a break. The youtube playlist just pumped up the volume.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Confessions of a Confused Soul

These past few months have been like an emotional roller-coaster for me. I have been torn between nostalgic and often angry flash-backs of my childhood and the potentially bright but not-necessarily-so future.

It seems that my ideas of self-healing were misled or at any rate haven’t worked yet. I used to believe that integrity with my past came from somehow flying back through time and righting every wrong; of course every wrong that is judged by my current worldviews.  More specifically, if I felt that somebody has done me wrong, I should somehow make them, though only in my mind, admit their mistake.

I am starting to feel that it might be that I need to leave the past were it is and accept that whatever that has happened has basically acted as building blocks of my very person. I face two paths now: if I like “me”, then I should stop dwelling on the unchangeable past and merely appreciate the effect of these events. If, however, I don’t, then I need to be changing something and that something is in the now. Either way, rationally speaking, not much can be done about the past but to get more and more entangled in a rather tedious and useless act.

Well, now that I am writing this, it seems very obvious. But believe me; I have been struggling with it constantly, surely without result.  

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Goodbye Solo (2007)

Solo is a cab driver in Winston-Salem NC. He is originally from Senegal and is the opposite of his name. A passenger, William, is planning a one way trip to a desolate spot called the Blowing Rock and be left alone there. He offers solo $1000 to take him there in about 10 days.

This, however, is not one of those movies in which everything goes according to plan and things fall neatly into place. A bond of sorts does form between Solo and William, but it's not the kind either of them anticipated, and the film never even comes close to straying into Lifetime movie territory.

If you are planning to drop by at Ritz to watch this, I think it will be a good idea to bring Taste of Cherry up in your Netflix queue and watch it if you haven't done so yet.

Bahrani, Iranian-American director of the movie, relies on the legend of the blowing rock, which I did not know when I watched the movie. The legend has it that

a Chickasaw chieftan, fearful of a white man’s admiration for his lovely daughter, journeyed far from the plains to bring her to The Blowing Rock and the care of a squaw mother. One day the maiden, daydreaming on the craggy cliff, spied a Cherokee brave wandering in the wilderness far below and playfully shot an arrow in his direction. The flirtation worked because soon he appeared before her wigwam, courted her with songs of his land and they became lovers, wandering the pathless woodlands and along the crystal streams.

One day a strange reddening of the sky brought the brave and the maiden to The Blowing Rock. To him it was a sign of trouble commanding his return to his tribe in the plains. With the maiden’s entreaties not to leave her, the brave, torn by conflict of duty and heart, leaped from The Rock into the wilderness far below. The grief-stricken maiden prayed daily to the Great Spirit until one evening with a reddening sky, a gust of wind blew her lover back onto The Rock and into her arms. From that day a perpetual wind has blown up onto The Rock from the valley below. For people of other days, at least, this was explanation enough for The Blowing Rock’s mysterious winds causing even the snow to fall upside down.

Friday, May 15, 2009

The pinnacle of human history

What is the greatest moment in human history? Landing on the moon, D-day, invention of printing, making and consequent use of Little Boy and Fat Man. I don't think so. All of those may be important days in human history but definitely not its culmination. I think it is the moment that human for the second time used a psychoactive drug (most probably weed). The first time was a jackpot hit, a vary lucky accident, bound to happen, important in its own right. Nevertheless, the second time is when the Homo sapien, consciously, said to himself or herself, "dude I want to get stoned, f*** with hunting and gathering", this is what I call a climax.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Le mépris (Contempt)

The opening line of the contempt quotes Andre Bazin, "The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our desires." That made me expect a movie about desire and cinema and I could not be more wrong. The 1963 international coproduction is in beautiful Technicolor and cinemaScope. The story focuses on the relationship of playwright Paul Javel (Piccoli) and his wife Camille (Bardot). Paul is hired by ab American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Palance) to rewrite the script of a project, based on Homer's Odyssey, being directed by Fritz Lang (Lang himself).

On the surface, Contempt is a movie about movie making, the relationship between the producer and director. It ask what is the price of selling out; If the director is the prostitute who sells out the box office, the producer is, then, the pimp. In all aspects the movie doubles back on itself. Paul is selling himself out tho Prokosch and as his wife watches him, she falls out of love with him overnight and feels nothing but contempt towards him. But I was sure that all of
this was on the surface only. I tried to dig and figure out what Godard is saying. So like any self-respecting scholar, I reached over and Googled. After a rather long search, I could not agree more with Jonathan Rosenbaum saying:
Contempt is not simply a look at antiquity from the vantage point of modernity. Contempt is something more nearly akin to the reverse: a look at ourselves as we might appear to the Greek gods. Layering one antithetical style over another--classical over modern--Godard necessarily produces a work shot through with contradictions.

Godard, playing Lang's assistant director in the film, has the last word, heard over the final tracking movement across the sea, a final command to the film crew, "Silence," as the camera starts rolling--a command that's then translated into Italian. Godard's view of serenity and continuity is necessarily splintered, because the modern world is a Tower of Babel where languages and discourses compete for mastery over a purity that eludes our grasp. Not even silence is unmediated. There's a French silence, an Italian silence, a German silence, and an American silence; maybe even a Greek silence, which the film prefers to remain silent about.
All in all this is a dazzling movie and not be missed by any Godard
fan; something we should all be by now
.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

It’s been a while…

It’s been a while since I’ve felt so confined in this small cell, my world; barbed-wired by space and time. The walls, my body. The guards, people. Even my sun of passion is overshadowed by the thick clouds of my reason. It’s been a while.

It’s been a while since I’ve forgotten how to release myself of the shackles of my murky past. The rape of my soul by the monsters of this universal prison, the society. Veneered by such beautiful titles: parent, friend, teacher. 

All the signs lead me to shut my eyes. “Yes” says I; easier to forget the pain than to fight. Oblivion engulfs me and I drag myself on as a zombie with the filthy euphoria of ignorance. But flight is inevitable, I pry them open again. It’s been a while.

It’s been a while since I drew the essence of my being on the once white canvas of this life. Now, infected by the shades of dark grey morals that have blurred meaning.

It’s been a while since I used my wings. They’re gone now. Heavy with experience, can my limbs shoulder the burden? Can I leap far enough?

It’s been a while since I lived…