Every time I see someone put "award-winning (insert profession)" on their profile, it gives me an ick. In the field I work on now, lighting design, there's this annual award for lighting designers all over the world in lots of different categories. I first noticed it when my then-boss would always put the award and its logo as his email signature. Awards like this are always by submission, and it was judged only by photos. The thing with lighting design is you really can't judge the quality of the work by photos. Same thing applied to any architecture and interior design works. But especially lighting design because the light on what you see on the photos could be very different than the reality. Also photos are very easily manipulated.
In architecture we can't really judge a building by looking at the photos, sure it could look nice, but what mattered most is the space, how the experience is within the space. And I also always judge by the details and workmanship, something we can't always see from photos. I went to several building built by the most famous architects in the world, and I was always surprised at how different they are from what I perceived from knowing them before from photos. Some of the freakier shape of buildings could turned out to have a very nice flow of space. Some of the prettier building could have the nastiest workmanship and made me feel easily disoriented inside. Some of the nice looking building with good space could be standing out of nowhere having no respect to the its context and surrounding at all.
The thing about awards is that they mostly never are about awarding the bests in the industry, but about marketing. It's not always a bad thing. Awards create buzz and make people talk. But it bothers me when people see awards as a measure of quality. Take the Oscar for example, the most known award out there. It is more a popularity contest than a judgement of quality. If it's for quality, why do the nominees even need to campaign? The works are already there to be judged for their quality. When you see the list of winners and watched the films, it's crystal clear the winners aren't always and most likely aren't the most deserving. Rather than a celebration of talents, it's a marketing tool at best. Awards are there to support the industry.
I once watched a crime documentary and it was so good I looked up the profile of the person who did some kind of psycho-analysis on criminals. On her instagram page she wrote on her profile: award-winning criminal behavioral analyst. Like what do you even mean? You analyse criminal behavior, what would an award have to do with anything? It gives me an ick but it is what it is. In capitalism everything is about marketing and driving engagement. People often notice the loudest but more often than not we have to look at the quieter for better quality.
Update: Here's Damon Albarn talking about how all awards are fucking bullshit that are never fair and therefore shouldn't exist: around minute 18.
Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts
the hour of the star
"I write because I have nothing else to do in the world: I was left over and there is no place for me in the world of men. I write because I'm desperate and I'm tired, I can no longer bear the routine of being me and if not for the always novelty that is writing, I would die symbolically every day. But I am prepared to slip out discreetly through the back exit. I've experienced almost everything, including passion and its despair. And now I'd only like to have what I would have been and never was."
The Hour of The Star is the first book I finished this year and I think I have found my favorite book of the year on the first week of the first month. I highlighted passages almost on every page on the first half of the book. I am in awe with how Lispector wrote the interiority of her characters, how she could translate her feelings and thoughts into words. And how I could find myself in the many words she strung into sentences gave a bewildering feeling. The passage above reminds me of what I wrote about writing some time ago. If only I possessed a small tiny amount of capacity to write so beautifully.
I fell even deeper into admiration when I read the afterword. I have known that her writing is something special before I read any of her books but I had never read about her political activities, although of course this book displays her deep empathy for the marginalized people. Reading her son's words about her gave me the same exact feeling as when I was reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Woman Destroyed. It's this feeling of yearning to belong to a family that stands on the right side. It strangely gave me two kinds of longing.
beauty standard
The other day I saw on instagram a photo of Pamela Anderson on red carpet with her bare face without make up. She has been doing this for a while now and in my opinion she looks great. But I saw then on the comments people were being very negative and vile criticising her saying she should wear make up. And most of them were women. I wasn't surprise because just as we say homo homini lupus, women oftentimes are women's wolf. I can recount many instances where my female friends criticised my appearance.
One said during a dinner at an udon place that my eyebrows shape was weird. They looked like rainbow. (What?) I've always think that my eyebrows are fine, they're not perfect but they suit my face.
One said during a group dinner at a pancake place that the way I use eyeliner was weird. I rarely use eyeliner but when I do I have to use it in a way that accommodate the shape of my eyelids because it smudges very easily.
One said when we're walking in a mall that my feet looked weird. For the love of god. My whole life I always see my feet as completely normal. It is normal and I like them.
All of them are women. Who for some reason projected what they think is the norm to me and felt the need to say to me that I didn't fit in those norms. I'm not saying we can't comment on each other especially when it's an objective constructive criticism or comments that are sometimes necessary. But I think what older generations, my generation included, fail to realise is that there's no one formula fits all.
***
In recent years there are a lot of emerging "trends" on the internet about colour analysis, Kibbe body types, Kitchener style essence, Zyla archetypes, etc. Those who don't really (try to) understand would usually be the cynics who say oh look another beauty standard bullshit for women. But it really is quite the contrary. They are there as tools to help women realise that every woman is different. And we can find what works for us according to our own complexities. What works on others wouldn't necessarily means it would work on us.
a heavy lid over a well
"I'm not sure if I'll ever truly leave my childhood behind. A sticky fog seems to have descended around me and it obscures all possible paths. I feel discarded, and the awful memories of those early years press down on me like a sheet-metal lid over a well, all weighed down by an enormous boulder, leaving me with no chance of escape. All my shouting and banging from within feels useless. What's the point? No one can hear me.
It's like I am barely able to tread the water; it rises and soon it will reach the top, to the sheet metal lid. I will begin to gulp down my fear and choke on it until I cease breathing.
Or maybe somehow the water will swell and blow off the lid that holds my life captive and my fears will overflow and then subside, releasing me." - from Four Minutes by Nataliya Deleva
I always say that the best kind of art is the one that makes me feel like I want to make one myself. It's so good and it resonates strongly that it gives you the urge to create one yourself. Four Minutes is a very compelling read about childhood and the harshness of life. It's a short book with short chapters and unique structure inviting people to empathize. It makes me wish that someone would write the stories of my life turning it into a piece of literary writing. Or that I am talented enough to write one myself. Not in a biographical narration but in a lyrical dissection of my darkest thoughts.
Couple of months ago there's a tweet on my twitter timeline about a mother who was abusing her oldest daughter that was eleven year old in favor of her younger sons. At first I was sympathizing but then it clicked in my head that I was once that daughter. And I laughed.
It took me a very long time to realized that I was raised in deeply patriarchal household. I didn't realize until a couple of years ago when I was having a conversation with a friend who came from the same cultural background as me that it wasn't how working class households operate universally back in the 1990s.
universal moral law
I had been avoiding The Zone of Interest because I didn't feel like watching yet another film about the nazi holocaust, especially when there is an ongoing genocide happening right now. There have been so many medias on the nazi holocaust that many people especially in the west have an impression that it is a singular most horrific atrocities ever committed to humankind. It isn't.
But the director Jonathan Glazer's speech at the Oscar ceremony got me really curious and I found his approach to the film to be very interesting. He shared the perspective of Primo Levi on how the nazi in cinema were often portrayed as "mythologically evil". Levi wrote, "Monster exist. But they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." He also drew from philosopher Gillian Rose who envisioned a film "that could make us feel 'unsafe', by showing how we're emotionally and politically closer to the perpetrator culture than we'd like to think" and a film seen through the "dry eyes of grief" that is unsentimental and "forensic".
It is unsettling how eerily close to the present the feeling is when watching the film. Very recently a close friend for almost twenty years said that genocide, mass killing, rape, kidnapping, murder, were just parts of our dark history and were necessary "price to pay" (quoted verbatim) for political stability and power. She also talked about a particular murder of an alleged dissent with such glee like it's just a usual and necessary procedure to do within the military. She believes that she's immune and isn't in the slightest worry that all those atrocities could happen to her because a certain family member was a high rank in the military.
I have been questioning since what exactly "morality" is when people don't seem to have the same code of standards to uphold. It is disturbing that I can't see the difference between her living in the present day among us with the SS commandant's wife living by the wall of Auschwitz.
C.S. Lewis on his book 'Mere Christianity' defended the existence of God because there is a universal moral law, we know what is good and what is bad. But is there really?
another writing about writing
"People said to me, 'Why do you like to contemplate? You're a marxist, marxists don't contemplate'. I said I'm not a marxist, I'm Javanese. And these contemplations are what guide me to continue living."
I caught this while watching The Exile in theatre. Near the end of the film there was a shot of one of the political exiles, who had been living on foreign lands for more than fifty years, sitting at a corner desk with his computer. He mentioned how he found contemplating in writing as a part of his way to continue on living.
Days later I read a thread on twitter from a man describing his experience at the height of his depression on the verge of suicide. He explained how it was through writing he was able to pull himself through those darkest days.
I kept thinking of both of these especially the first one. These days I feel like I don't really have much ambition for life anymore. I feel like I've experienced all that I've wanted to experienced. I've lived my youth, the good and the bad. I've lived in another continent. I've travelled to many countries. I've known love in the deepest way and broken in an even deeper way. I've had good sex, bad sex. I don't want children so I don't feel I'm missing out in that department.
Of course there are many things I've yet experienced, but I don't have any strong attachment that makes me want to hold on to this life. Like I could go anytime and I wouldn't mind. Perhaps it's a product of my depression in the past because people with trauma generally don't hold on to life too preciously and are mentally tougher when facing the apocalypse.
But saying all these, there's one thing I feel like I still need to do. And that is to write. Not to anyone in particular, not to anyone at all. But just to write. To get things out of my head. As someone who often felt misunderstood, who hold on to trauma, and who often bundle things inside, I feel like I have to clear it out. Clear out the rotting sediment inside my head and put it all out. Just to make myself feel lighter in a way. I don't know if I could do it, I don't think it could be completely cleared out. And I might not succeed in my lifetime. But I guess I'm writing this to say that I shall try.
let's go back to writing
"I never wanted to blog before. I’ve never liked the word blog—I suppose it is meant to stand for bio-log or something like that, but it sounds like a sodden tree trunk in a bog, or maybe an obstruction in the nasal passage (Oh, she talks that way because she has such terrible blogs in her nose). I was also put off by the idea that a blog ought to be “interactive,” that the blogger is expected to read people’s comments in order to reply to them and carry on a limitless conversation with strangers. I am much too introverted to want to do that at all. I am happy with strangers only if I can write a story or a poem and hide from them behind it, letting it speak for me.
My trials/attempts/efforts (that’s what essays means) so far have very much less political and moral weight than Saramago’s and are more trivially personal. Maybe that will change as I practice the form, maybe not. Maybe I’ll soon find it isn’t for me after all, and stop. That’s to be seen. What I like at the moment is the sense of freedom."
My trials/attempts/efforts (that’s what essays means) so far have very much less political and moral weight than Saramago’s and are more trivially personal. Maybe that will change as I practice the form, maybe not. Maybe I’ll soon find it isn’t for me after all, and stop. That’s to be seen. What I like at the moment is the sense of freedom."
When browsing through some reviews on goodreads I found a link to Ursula K. Le Guin's blog. The passage above was her very first post. And then two days later by chance I started reading her book No Time To Spare which I only realised later was a collection of her blog posts. Only several chapters in and I'd already so delighted by it. They were snippets of her thoughts and her daily life and I really enjoy them. I was reading both Le Guin's book and Annie Ernaux' book in the same day and I found it amazing how I could fall in love with someone through their writing, no matter how simple.
I have been saying over and over again that I wish we're back to the day where everyone had blogs. A lot of times I find myself thinking but I wanna know your deepest thoughts, your rumination, your fascination when all I got was posts and stories on social media which more often then than not are just subtle boast of how successful or happy one's life is. I mean I don't hate it. It just doesn't really mean anything.
It is of course a lot harder today to really take time to sit down and write. Back in the day entertainment was very limited, phones weren't "smart" yet. We had time to sit down with our thoughts and had time to really process them. Today everything is effortlessly within the reach of our fingers. Endless entertainment online, bottomless scroll of social medias, mobile games, etc. Thoughts are easier to be shove down with distractions. Even when we are already sitting down to write, distractions are still there so easy to reach. As much as I like to write, it is hard. It often took me three months to even finish a post. I'm still often amazed of myself back in the day when even on a busy day I still could sit on the bed and write my thoughts out.
Many of my friends stopped writing and deactivated their blogs in order to be more private, not revealing too much especially to newer people we met when we're older. I also am embarrassed of many things I posted when I was much younger and still have many posts I need to set to private. But these days I feel a lot more urgency to write my thoughts than ever. I am a lot older now therefore having more conviction on many things, I understand the world a little better now and I want more to say it. And I want to know other people's thoughts. I am still getting older and the world keeps going and changing, writing can in a way reflect the journey of growing.
And then the word "blog" itself these days seems to be getting slightly negative connotation. I remember reading someone criticising a book by saying the writing feels like a "blogpost writing". What do you even mean? A "blog" is just a medium to put writings online. The quality of the writings will depend on who writes them. I really disliked it when people started migrating to medium.com from their own personal blogs. They put statistics on each writings. How many likes, how many "claps", how many quotes, whatever. Sure with these kinds of platforms it's easier to draw traffic to certain topic of writings, but it feels like another attention seeking competition.
Anyway, I think missing the "blogging" era is in a way a craving for more meaning or deeper thoughts in the midst of endless entertainment, mindless scrolling, and the joy in vanities. With no likes no statistics, just let's be quiet together in conversation.
about astrology
"I think we all feel great ambivalence at the sight of our own horoscope. On the one hand we're proud to see that the sky is imprinted on our individual life, like a postmark with a date stamped on a letter - this makes it distinct, one of a kind. But at the same time it's a form of imprisonment in space, like a tattooed prison number. There's no escaping it. I cannot be someone other than I am. How awful. We'd prefer to think we're free, able to reinvent ourselves whenever we choose. This connection with something as great and monumental as the sky makes us feel uncomfortable. We'd rather be small, and then our petty little sins would be forgivable. Therefore I'm convinced that we should get to know our prison very well."
The passage above is taken from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, best book I've read this year. In the book the protagonist is an old lady who is an amateur astrologer. She uses a lot of terminology of astrology. So in order to really understand the book I started to learn about astrology. Like the true Sagittarian that I am.
I learned how to read birth charts, the twelve houses, the planets, sextile, trine, and all that. Perhaps to no surprise to anybody who had properly tried to learn about astrology, I found the reading of my birth chart to be eerily accurate. I read several of my friends charts and got even more fascinated. About two years ago I had also learn some basic of Chinese astrology, bāzì, which is based on Taoism. Chinese astrology, like the western one, is also based on reading someone's specific birth date and time. I had also found the reading to be accurate.
Now of course we can argue about what accuracy here means. What we tend to do is to ignore the bits we don't identify with and mark the ones we like as accurate. In bāzì, as in Taoism, there are two things that make us who we are, the things that are inherently given to us by the heaven, the universe, and the things that happen to us and what we do on earth. Basically the nature and nurture concept. So in a way I think there's no way a reading can be 100% accurate because of the life that happens to us, but there are certain things that are specifically our given characters.
The passage above is taken from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, best book I've read this year. In the book the protagonist is an old lady who is an amateur astrologer. She uses a lot of terminology of astrology. So in order to really understand the book I started to learn about astrology. Like the true Sagittarian that I am.
I learned how to read birth charts, the twelve houses, the planets, sextile, trine, and all that. Perhaps to no surprise to anybody who had properly tried to learn about astrology, I found the reading of my birth chart to be eerily accurate. I read several of my friends charts and got even more fascinated. About two years ago I had also learn some basic of Chinese astrology, bāzì, which is based on Taoism. Chinese astrology, like the western one, is also based on reading someone's specific birth date and time. I had also found the reading to be accurate.
Now of course we can argue about what accuracy here means. What we tend to do is to ignore the bits we don't identify with and mark the ones we like as accurate. In bāzì, as in Taoism, there are two things that make us who we are, the things that are inherently given to us by the heaven, the universe, and the things that happen to us and what we do on earth. Basically the nature and nurture concept. So in a way I think there's no way a reading can be 100% accurate because of the life that happens to us, but there are certain things that are specifically our given characters.
I don't agree with all the results but I can tell that my birth chart reading is distinctively mine and the readings of other charts are definitely not me. I found things I had never realised point specifically to me. This is the one important thing I learn from astrology. That people are different. It isn't a new profound thing to discover but it's one thing we often forget. That everyone is wired differently. We can't expect people to have the same mindset as we do. I myself am often disappointed when I find people don't have the same conviction as I do.
Astrology of course has been trivialised with the popularisation of horoscopes on the golden age of magazines, turning it into the oversimplified twelve zodiac that really doesn't mean anything and therefore became object of mockery. I might sound like I'm taking astrology very seriously, but I really don't. No one claims astrology as science. People who understand the concept of astrology often says that it's very much a self therapy. I think I agree. It helps me understand what ticks me and what fuels me. And why those things don't necessarily work on other people. It is frustrating sometimes that I am frustrated about things that don't frustrate others at all. As Tokarczuk wrote on the quote, our selves are our prisons and whatever helps me understand my prison is welcomed.
Astrology of course has been trivialised with the popularisation of horoscopes on the golden age of magazines, turning it into the oversimplified twelve zodiac that really doesn't mean anything and therefore became object of mockery. I might sound like I'm taking astrology very seriously, but I really don't. No one claims astrology as science. People who understand the concept of astrology often says that it's very much a self therapy. I think I agree. It helps me understand what ticks me and what fuels me. And why those things don't necessarily work on other people. It is frustrating sometimes that I am frustrated about things that don't frustrate others at all. As Tokarczuk wrote on the quote, our selves are our prisons and whatever helps me understand my prison is welcomed.
Aside from astrology there has been a lot of efforts to create human classification both psychologically and physically, the MBTI (which I don't care about at all), the enneagram, the blood type psychology, etc. There are also certain classification of body types and colour analysis that classify people based on physical appearance. I found many of these to be helpful. Aside from the physical classification which we can directly see the analysis, I do believe there is a certain order of the universe in which biological and psychological are somehow related. I don't necessarily believe that the planetary alignments in the sky the minute we were born determine who we are. But I am open to the possibility that there are some celestial orders we may never understand.
the poor doesn't want to sit with the rich either
Some days ago there's one popular tweet asking where your school bully is today. Funny because I had just finished watching The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence and layer after layer of wikipedia pages led me somehow to this particular guy that was my high school bully. My answer to the tweet was that he is now a Komisaris Utama (the chief commissioner holding position higher than the board of directors) of a nationally owned company. A company belongs to his father, of course, one of the powerful oligarchs of this country.
I wasn't bullied physically or verbally assaulted, I was looked down upon by the popular kids because I didn't come from rich family. My parents sent me to expensive private christian junior high and high school with a homogeneous demographic without actually having the ability to pay for it. I was sent to the principal's office every month because my tuition hadn't been paid. One time during physics class I was sent to the principal's office to then got sent back to class to pack up and head home immediately and was told not come back until my tuition and entrance fee were paid off. I skipped school for about a week or so. Apart from these, I didn't look like rich kids, like everyone else. I didn't wear fancy shoes. I didn't have the nicest bag or stationery, like everyone else. I still remember the name of a girl who sneered at me and called me derogatory version of the word "poor" because I didn't own a scientific calculator. I had close friends but it never really was bff kind of thing because I didn't belong to the same class of wealth as they were. I couldn't tell them the causes of my stress was because my parents were poor. I remember one friend being so elated that I finally had my own mobile phone, way after everyone else. Some years later, one of my closest friends from high school ended up threaten to sue me on court by law because of some paranoia that could only exist when your family is so rich.
team deakins and the bear
During the pandemic in early 2021 I discovered the Team Deakins podcast. At first I thought it's probably run by people who admire Roger Deakins' works or maybe by his teams. I was surprised that it was he himself and his wife James who were (and still are) taking times to do a podcast. It was understandable of course because it was during the period of lockdown, some people might want to spend their time doing rather productive things. But it was a huge deal in my opinion that someone as accomplished and well respected as Roger Deakins would still have the curiosity to learn from his peers in the industry, a lot if not most of them are way younger than him, and from his colleagues working on other fields that is not cinematography. We are talking about someone that is widely regarded as the best cinematographer working today.
I probably shouldn't be as surprised as I was but I work in the field of architecture where most architects I know are creatures of arrogance. A lot of them act like they have known everything that is to be known, even when it's not actually their field of competence. Even someone like Kaoru Mende who is a very respected lighting designer when asked by an interviewer about what's it like working with architects who won Pritzker Prize (a prestigious award for architects), he emphasised how important it is to respect each other. That other consultants, lighting designer or landscape designer etc, are not below architects to command but are equal collaborators.
Another thing I admire from the podcast is that in the episodes Roger mentioned about how he still get nervous entering new projects. I think the question was asked by his fellow cinematographer who was also often nervous whether or not they can do the job. I found this very reassuring as I almost always think that I am still not good enough yet. I often get nervous about some things I don't really understand. It really says to me that we are allowed to be nervous. And that it is impossible to know everything even when you are already very good at what you do.
...
the nature of mind
"Despite this massive and nearly all-pervasive denial of its existence, we still sometimes have fleeting glimpse of the nature of mind. These could be inspired by a certain exalting piece of music, by the serene happiness we sometimes feel in nature, or by the most ordinary everyday situation. They could arise simply while watching the snow slowly drifting down, or seeing the sun rising from behind the mountain, or watching a shaft of light falling into a room in a mysteriously moving way. Such moments of illumination, peace, and bliss happen to us all and stay strangely with us.
I think we do, sometimes, half understand these glimpses, but modern culture gives us no context of framework in which to comprehend them. Worse still, rather than encouraging us to explore these glimpses more deeply and discover where they spring from, we are told in both obvious and subtle way to shut them out. We know that no one will take us seriously if we share them.
We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do we will be in danger of madness." –from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
I think we do, sometimes, half understand these glimpses, but modern culture gives us no context of framework in which to comprehend them. Worse still, rather than encouraging us to explore these glimpses more deeply and discover where they spring from, we are told in both obvious and subtle way to shut them out. We know that no one will take us seriously if we share them.
We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do we will be in danger of madness." –from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
let if enfold you
either peace or happiness, let it enfold you
when I was a young man, i felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated.
i had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing.
i was hard as granite, i leered at the sun.
i trusted no man and especially no woman.
i was living a hell in small rooms,
I broke things, smashed things, walked through glass, cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights,
in and out of my mind.
women were something to screw and rail at,
I had no male friends,
I changed jobs and cities,
I hated holidays, babies, history, newspapers, museums, grandmothers, marriage, movies, spiders, garbagemen, english accents, spain, france, italy, walnuts and the color orange.
algebra angered me, opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a fake and flowers were for pansies.
peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority,
tenants of the weak and addled mind.
but as i went on with my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through any number of women-
it gradually began to occur to me
that i wasn't different from the others,
i was the same,
they were all fulsome with hatred,
glossed over with petty grievances,
the men i fought in alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage,
the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty,
darkness was the dictator.
cautiously, i allowed myself to feel good at times.
i found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser
or listening to the rain in the dark.
the less I needed the better I felt.
maybe the other life had worn me down.
i no longer found glamour in topping somebody in conversation.
or in mounting the body of some poor drunken female whose life had slipped away into sorrow.
i could never accept life as it was,
i could never gobble down all its poisons
but there were parts, tenuous magic parts open for the asking.
i re formulated i don't know when, date, time, all that but the change occurred.
something in me relaxed, smoothed out.
i no longer had to prove that i was a man,
i didn't have to prove anything.
i began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe.
or a dog walking along a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose,
it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful.
then- it was gone.
i began to feel good,
i began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those.
like say, the boss behind his desk, he is going to have to fire me. i've missed too many days.
he is dressed in a suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'i am going to have to let you go'
'it's all right' i tell him.
he must do what he must do,
he has a wife, a house, children, expenses, most probably a girlfriend.
i am sorry for him he is caught.
i walk onto the blazing sunshine.
the whole day is mine temporarily, anyhow.
(the whole world is at the throat of the world, everybody feels angry, short-changed, cheated, everybody is despondent, disillusioned)
i welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness.
i embraced that stuff like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts, singing, the works.
(don't get me wrong, there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism that overlooks all basic problems just for the sake of itself- this is a shield and a sickness.)
the knife got near my throat again,
i almost turned on the gas again
but when the good moments arrived again i didn't fight them off like an alley adversary.
i let them take me, i luxuriated in them, i made them welcome home.
i even looked into the mirror once having thought myself to be ugly,
i now liked what i saw, almost handsome,
yes, a bit ripped and ragged, scares, lumps, odd turns, but all in all, not too bad, almost handsome, better at least than some of those movie star faces like the cheeks of a baby's butt.
and finally i discovered real feelings of others, unheralded,
like lately, like this morning, as i was leaving, for the track, i saw my wife in bed,
just the shape of her head there
covers pulled high, just the shape of her head there
(not forgetting centuries of the living and the dead and the dying, the pyramids, mozart dead but his music still there in the room, weeds growing, the earth turning, the tote board waiting for me)
i saw the shape of my wife's head, she so still, i ached for her life, just being there under the covers.
i kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, i entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, i saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.
poem by charles bukowski, as narrated by timothée chalamet at the end credit of beautiful boy
when I was a young man, i felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated.
i had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing.
i was hard as granite, i leered at the sun.
i trusted no man and especially no woman.
i was living a hell in small rooms,
I broke things, smashed things, walked through glass, cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights,
in and out of my mind.
women were something to screw and rail at,
I had no male friends,
I changed jobs and cities,
I hated holidays, babies, history, newspapers, museums, grandmothers, marriage, movies, spiders, garbagemen, english accents, spain, france, italy, walnuts and the color orange.
algebra angered me, opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a fake and flowers were for pansies.
peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority,
tenants of the weak and addled mind.
but as i went on with my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through any number of women-
it gradually began to occur to me
that i wasn't different from the others,
i was the same,
they were all fulsome with hatred,
glossed over with petty grievances,
the men i fought in alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage,
the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty,
darkness was the dictator.
cautiously, i allowed myself to feel good at times.
i found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser
or listening to the rain in the dark.
the less I needed the better I felt.
maybe the other life had worn me down.
i no longer found glamour in topping somebody in conversation.
or in mounting the body of some poor drunken female whose life had slipped away into sorrow.
i could never accept life as it was,
i could never gobble down all its poisons
but there were parts, tenuous magic parts open for the asking.
i re formulated i don't know when, date, time, all that but the change occurred.
something in me relaxed, smoothed out.
i no longer had to prove that i was a man,
i didn't have to prove anything.
i began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe.
or a dog walking along a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose,
it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful.
then- it was gone.
i began to feel good,
i began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those.
like say, the boss behind his desk, he is going to have to fire me. i've missed too many days.
he is dressed in a suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'i am going to have to let you go'
'it's all right' i tell him.
he must do what he must do,
he has a wife, a house, children, expenses, most probably a girlfriend.
i am sorry for him he is caught.
i walk onto the blazing sunshine.
the whole day is mine temporarily, anyhow.
(the whole world is at the throat of the world, everybody feels angry, short-changed, cheated, everybody is despondent, disillusioned)
i welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness.
i embraced that stuff like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts, singing, the works.
(don't get me wrong, there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism that overlooks all basic problems just for the sake of itself- this is a shield and a sickness.)
the knife got near my throat again,
i almost turned on the gas again
but when the good moments arrived again i didn't fight them off like an alley adversary.
i let them take me, i luxuriated in them, i made them welcome home.
i even looked into the mirror once having thought myself to be ugly,
i now liked what i saw, almost handsome,
yes, a bit ripped and ragged, scares, lumps, odd turns, but all in all, not too bad, almost handsome, better at least than some of those movie star faces like the cheeks of a baby's butt.
and finally i discovered real feelings of others, unheralded,
like lately, like this morning, as i was leaving, for the track, i saw my wife in bed,
just the shape of her head there
covers pulled high, just the shape of her head there
(not forgetting centuries of the living and the dead and the dying, the pyramids, mozart dead but his music still there in the room, weeds growing, the earth turning, the tote board waiting for me)
i saw the shape of my wife's head, she so still, i ached for her life, just being there under the covers.
i kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, i entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, i saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.
poem by charles bukowski, as narrated by timothée chalamet at the end credit of beautiful boy
to each of our own stories
"When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you’re telling it, to yourself or to someone else." - Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
basically i love watching documentaries. with this one, i noticed so many good reviews although to me what it's actually about wasn't really that interesting. so here the director tries to tell the story about her late mother and also how she found out that she wasn't his father's biological daughter.
halfway through the film i kinda expected something big to happen. i kept looking at the remaining time left and wondered what kind of drama or plot twist that would happen next. it didn't happen. and i realized that it actually wasn't about it. it wasn't about the story itself but how the same story was told by different people from different perspective. and who these people are were revealed one by one as the story goes, which makes such a good structure for the film. and then the most exciting part is of course the faux home videos shot in super 8. they're all beautiful and convincing i spent most time wondering which one was the actual real footage from the 80s and which one was shot later with actors for artistic purpose. if i were a filmmaker i think this would be the kind of film i would make. it's simple in its sense but well thought and artistically made. as i've been always saying, the most beautiful art piece for me is always the one which somehow makes me think like oh i could actually makes something like this. like it resonates to me personally instead of just being something i'm fascinated by.
there was one scene where her father was asked about something related to his wife about her death, i don't really remember the exact question, but he began to get teary, with the fact that she passed away almost thirty years ago. it struck me how one person could have such a significant impact on how some other person write their own stories. i've been wondering these days about relationships and how someone that is not myself could have such control over what i feel. and i tried somehow to take over that control as hard as i could. i read about and i have a friend who try hard to live in solitary in order to have such control over themselves. to be content with oneself. but i don't think it's really a solution. at the end of the day as cliché as it sounds, as bob marley said, the truth is, everyone's gonna hurt you, you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.
basically i love watching documentaries. with this one, i noticed so many good reviews although to me what it's actually about wasn't really that interesting. so here the director tries to tell the story about her late mother and also how she found out that she wasn't his father's biological daughter.
halfway through the film i kinda expected something big to happen. i kept looking at the remaining time left and wondered what kind of drama or plot twist that would happen next. it didn't happen. and i realized that it actually wasn't about it. it wasn't about the story itself but how the same story was told by different people from different perspective. and who these people are were revealed one by one as the story goes, which makes such a good structure for the film. and then the most exciting part is of course the faux home videos shot in super 8. they're all beautiful and convincing i spent most time wondering which one was the actual real footage from the 80s and which one was shot later with actors for artistic purpose. if i were a filmmaker i think this would be the kind of film i would make. it's simple in its sense but well thought and artistically made. as i've been always saying, the most beautiful art piece for me is always the one which somehow makes me think like oh i could actually makes something like this. like it resonates to me personally instead of just being something i'm fascinated by.
there was one scene where her father was asked about something related to his wife about her death, i don't really remember the exact question, but he began to get teary, with the fact that she passed away almost thirty years ago. it struck me how one person could have such a significant impact on how some other person write their own stories. i've been wondering these days about relationships and how someone that is not myself could have such control over what i feel. and i tried somehow to take over that control as hard as i could. i read about and i have a friend who try hard to live in solitary in order to have such control over themselves. to be content with oneself. but i don't think it's really a solution. at the end of the day as cliché as it sounds, as bob marley said, the truth is, everyone's gonna hurt you, you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.
on certainty
"Certainty is the most terrifying thing to me. I think a life of faith is not a life of certainty. A life of faith is a life of doubt. And i think it is so healthy to doubt. It is so healthy to doubt oneself, it is so healthy to doubt any assumption we make about how to live. Certainty starts war on behalf of ideology. Certainty that, "I know and you don't". That's the scariest thing to me." - Andrew Garfield talking about Silence
minimalism
i lived a life as a nomad in europe for almost two years, moving in and out four different cities. i will have to write more about it sooner. but all i had with me on that period were just one big suitcase, one small suitcase, and a backpack. then three months ago i moved back to my hometown, to my bedroom, and after just a short while i realized how many things i have and how i've been living for two years without needing any of them and i barely have space for all of them.
another thing that i realized was that for the last three months being back in the city, i've been wearing not more than ten pieces of clothing when i go out everyday, rotating just the same pieces over and over without having much worries. well the point of dressing when you go out are just two things, being comfortable and confident. and if you think about it, it actually doesn't really take that much. (ps. it has to be added the fact that i haven't been going out on dates these days. eeps). and i have to say, i'm pretty much doing well with the simplification i've been doing for more than two years now. what this girl has been doing is admirable tho i don't think i can pull it to that extend even if i want to.
on another note, last december was a disaster. worst month of the whole 2016. i've never been in such low state of mind for years for as long as i remember. then on the very last day of the year, i went on a trip to a friend's hometown. it has a completely different vibe with the city i live in. and somehow being there has taught me how peaceful it is leading a life that is modest, being content with what we have, doesn't matter how much or how little money we make. it made me realized how deeply superficial and capitalistic the life in big cities is.
after barely sleeping, on the very first day of the year we drove to the temple for the first sunrise. and although it wasn't ideally the situation we hoped for, it did provide me some good thoughts and good ideas on how i should really start to clear out my thoughts on regular basis. and start to seek out to straighten out my tangled fucked up head more than anything else.
ps. i don't really talk about the documentary itself, but it pretty much resembles the thoughts i'm trying to convey here.
an existentialist.
sartre claimed that a central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals—independently acting and responsible, conscious beings ("existence")—rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individuals fit ("essence"). the actual life of the individuals is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.
the cord of life
i believe there's a time and a place
to let your mind drift and get out of this place
there's no secret to living, just keep on walking
i believe there's a time when the cord of life should be cut
i'm gonna die in a place that don't know my name
it was just yesterday when i had a talk with a friend about what is it to live. he told me all he wants is to take care of his sisters, until they got married or can managed their lives, then he'd go to a place far away where he doesn't know a single soul and choose to die there. like he wants to have the power to control over how he would end life. like it was his decision. his way. coincidentally today i found this song which sounds exactly like his thoughts, "i believe there's a time when the cord of life should be cut. i'm gonna die in a place that don't know my name."
death is the topic i write about again and again, being something that no one actually has any idea about. and as someone who is consistently labelled as pessimistic, i am labelled as a very optimistic when it comes to death cause i believe in the afterlife. i always believe there is something greater out there after this one. there has to be. the one that makes all the sufferings and pain in this one make sense.
i ended up falling in love with the song (and the band, which i had listened to some years ago) and played it a little too often, like i always do when i found new songs i enjoy. it pretty much also in a way gives voices to the sound of my head these days.
to let your mind drift and get out of this place
there's no secret to living, just keep on walking
i believe there's a time when the cord of life should be cut
i'm gonna die in a place that don't know my name
it was just yesterday when i had a talk with a friend about what is it to live. he told me all he wants is to take care of his sisters, until they got married or can managed their lives, then he'd go to a place far away where he doesn't know a single soul and choose to die there. like he wants to have the power to control over how he would end life. like it was his decision. his way. coincidentally today i found this song which sounds exactly like his thoughts, "i believe there's a time when the cord of life should be cut. i'm gonna die in a place that don't know my name."
death is the topic i write about again and again, being something that no one actually has any idea about. and as someone who is consistently labelled as pessimistic, i am labelled as a very optimistic when it comes to death cause i believe in the afterlife. i always believe there is something greater out there after this one. there has to be. the one that makes all the sufferings and pain in this one make sense.
i ended up falling in love with the song (and the band, which i had listened to some years ago) and played it a little too often, like i always do when i found new songs i enjoy. it pretty much also in a way gives voices to the sound of my head these days.
a dying beaver
some years ago, discussing about what it is to live, someone told me about this story about the beavers. beavers are known as very productive animals. they are known for their natural trait to build dams on streams or rivers. they work with their long teeth which continuously grow so they will not be worn out chewing wood. now up until here the story is factually true. then she continued the story saying that the beavers would die if they don't work because their teeth will keep growing no matter what and they will kill them if they aren't used.
now that last part i'm not sure how true it is. but the story is supposed to be an analogy to what human being is also like. that human being is supposed to be productive. to produce, to create. that to counter depression, whether it's because of psychological trauma or loneliness, what's needed is to produce. creating something out of yourself will generate the joy and appreciation of yourself and therefore increase the contentment of being oneself. my other friend once sent me a comedy video in which one said, "having children is sort of like a way of achieving something without having any talent". which also explains the producing theory, although jokes aside, i'll leave this sensitive subject out of discussion.
iceland as one of the happiest country on earth is a place where everyone creates something. as kjarri from sigur rós once said in an interview, "I think that people just feel the need to create something, painting, writing a book.. which can be annoying sometimes specially, you know, these days, because if you're not doing something, you're nobody. why, you're not writing a book?". same thing is also mentioned by eric weiner, talking about iceland in his book 'the geography of bliss', where the government gives incentives to writers and artists.
sadly, in the world today, we are mostly driven by consumerism rather than productivity. not just consumerism of materials but also of overly excess informations. we have so many options of online entertainment, social media and such, we spend most of our free time indulge in it.
crossing the border
right around midnight when the day was shifting from the 7th to the 8th of december local time, i was standing on the border leaving croatia trying to enter bosnia-herzegovina. it was a cold 2 degree winter night, all around me was foggy, and i was the last one on the queue. it took a little too long for my passport to get stamped and returned. everyone else has already got back to the bus, the driver tried to calm me down with his broken english telling me that it's not unusual, they're just making some copies of my passport. i started to get really anxious when it took way longer than i expected and even the bus driver has decided to return to the bus leaving me worried that he'd leave me here out of nowhere because my passport was issued by some faraway country with not a really good reputation. when the official finally showed up i was sort of hoping that he would greet me happy birthday while handing me my passport so it would make a perfect story for me spending my minutes of turning in to the last year of the 20s having difficulties on the border of an ex-conflicted country in an unknown town called gradiska.
it's always such a thrill getting passport stamped when i travel. in most european countries that i've been to, there are 3 kinds of stamp, each represented with different icons: by plane (which is the least exciting because you got stamped not on the border but at the airport), by train, and by car (this includes the bus).
the most confusing one for me was when i was crossing from spain (tarifa) to morocco (tangier) by a ferry. we have reached the land when they told us to get back to the ship, go up to the second floor, find a room, there they took our passport inside, asked us to wait outside, not knowing what's happening with our passport, while at the same time worrying that the ship might leave at any time. the coolest one has got to be the one on a train when i was on the border between slovenia and croatia. two officials in uniforms came in the coach carrying two big stamps as if they're carrying guns. they asked several simple questions before one of them stamped us out and the other one stamped us in. so fast, no fuzz, so cool. the one with the bus has several type of procedures. on the one between croatia and bosnia-herzegovina we have to step outside the bus and personally queue at the immigration control, while on the one between bosnia-herzegovina and serbia, an official got in the bus, collected all documents from the passengers, and then later the driver would return them all.
it was such an exciting part of a journey it make me kind of wish they would stamped us in and out on every single country within the schengen area, although it might not be the most practical thing to do.
2014.
"a few decembers ago, when asked about my wishes for the coming year, i remember saying that i had only one: i wanted there to be twists to the story, so that by year's end, the world looked different. that's been my wish every new year since. these past twelve months my world has transformed in unpredictable ways. i hardly recognize it sometimes — but i like to think that's a good sign." - shoko wanger
i don't usually do this kind of year-end reflective cliché thing because for me it's always just as any other day goes by. but these days i've been thinking about the bigger picture. going back ten years,
i don't usually do this kind of year-end reflective cliché thing because for me it's always just as any other day goes by. but these days i've been thinking about the bigger picture. going back ten years,