mahasatipatthana

I've had the strangest injury: first, 3 weeks ago I sprained my ankle, then the weekend before last just as that was getting better I jumped into a pool I thought had 3 more feet to the bottom, and injured the heel of that same foot, so it hurts like hell unless I walk incredibly slow. So slowly in fact, that I have time to just pay attention to everything - I'm forced to, in fact. And my shoulders relax, and my spine straightens, and I get this nice harmonious feeling, just walking with calm awareness. Everything feels natural. Slowing everything down... you realize how in a rush you are to get everywhere. Haste is an awful thing.




Current Beverage: stash kopili assam.

is this not a perfectly reasonable place to park?

SO. Hi! It's been an interesting week + a half, having been to parts internationally northern last weekend, followed up by almost this entire week spent down in Tacoma helping Hava convalesce from oral surgery. Well, helping her mother help her, which works out best for everyone, because she likes to pay in beer.

The reason we went to Canada was, as I told the customs officer on the way back into the states, we got a cheap rate on a Hotel. $29 a person for 2 nights, not too shabby...



There, some wacky pictures of the room. We went with 2 others: a friend of H's since seventh grade (Jared), and another friend of hers from Pierce from a year or so ago (Rachel). Aside from seeing a lot of pretty scenery and expensive cars & clothing, the main feature of the trip was the fracture of the friendship between Hava & Rachel. Not much to tell really. Jared, Rachel & I were all a little drunk and standing out in the snow, when Hava made a minor mistake (we were going to a club, and Hava forgot her ID) and Rachel acted very rude and condescending, and that started one of those awful chain reactions, where the plugs are eased out of the dam and all those little annoyances that build up come bursting out... not pretty. This story wouldn't be topical at all (the big T!) without extensive character building - but I wanted to tell it to pose a question, kind of like the setup to a riddle, so prepare to introspunctify: we however many (you know if you are, if you're reading this) wouldn't come to that at this point. Why not? It's not that we haven't come close a thousand times. Or, do you think it could happen? Or, Vishnu forbid, has already?

It's been an incredibly self-reflective couple weeks; I guess I've been searching for what sets me apart from my surroundings, how my relationships hold together or don't, trying to glimpse that part, or those processes, at the center of my being that constitute an individual. And especially what it all means in the context of existence, both mine specifically and as a human being in general. Boiled down, purpose. Is there personal purpose, or is our script plotted by our DNA? It's probably got a pragmatic root in my school situation. It's sometimes hard to see the light on the end of the tunnel (the carrot on the end of the stick?).

Addendum - There were good happy times, e.g. 2001 - that entire year, we first watched all that anime, discovered Sapporo and blah di blah, it was fantastic. Then those times had to end, as does everything; or better yet, that quantity that is the sum of all the factors of existence (a.k.a. "good times") was continually augmented until unrecognizeable. Am I responsible for maintaining the good parts? Or must I let them go, as I must with everything? This discussion is far from over, and I didn't get as much out this post as I wanted. I'm going BACK down tomorrow morning for y'Easter with the parents, so more stories later.



Current Music: Steely Dan, Hey Nineteen

When the sun comes up, and everybody runs...

Hi! I've been in Canada last weekend, and am spending most of this week in Tacoma (vacation, and H's wisdom teeth, respectively). Big post coming soon. Many pictures. I have my cell phone. *wink* K!

the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget

I yearn for this again. Soon.

Current Music: Sigur Ros, "Nýja Lagið" from Svefn-G-Englar EP

Going under

Drove to Seattle yesterday to hang out with friends, and also see Der Untergang (or Downfall), which as it settles more & more with my mind, I realize is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Essentially it tells the story of the last 12 days of Hitler's Third Reich, centering around the events that took place in his underground bunker headquarters; it tells the story of the falling apart of a fascistic command, and the downfall of a vision, in the literal deaths of Hitler's closest idealogues. The movie has aroused controversy for sympathetic portrayal of Nazis, and for "humanizing" Hitler; the semantics are arguable, but it is this phenomenon exactly which make the movie so powerful: we are allowed to see the face of the world's most hated man.

If you don't believe me, pay attention early in the film, as Hitler screens women for a secretary position: before we ever see him, we see nervous young women waiting outside his office, told to wait as Hitler's aid notifies him of their arrival. The aide stands just inside the open doorway and speaks to the off-camera Fuhrer. There is a pause, which seems to never end, and he appears. In that pause, all your built up labels and notions, your societally-implanted hate for this man are summoned before you, and temporarily dismissed. You feel nervous. This is Hitler.

This in contrast to Hollywood movies, which cast endless extras as ever-expendable Nazi "stooges." A man behind us laughed as characters uttered lines full of blazing self-confidence and faith in the future of the Reich, as though to say "see? You lost. Ha!" He made the mistake of distancing himself from men & women, in Germany, in the 1940's. Waste of a 6.00 movie ticket. Is it not the purpose of drama to give us characters in whose shoes we can walk for a while, to use our imaginations and wonder what goes on in their inscrutable little minds? To wonder what it would take to put us in their positions? (Even the nearly deleriously delusional Hitler) The very idea that you could get inside the head of Hitler, or even Goebbels or Himmler or any of the innumerable Good Germans is by default taboo in our society; this movie dares to break that taboo, not to generate sympathy, but to prop up a mirror: these were humans, just like us, and we could do this again. We are capable of this, see? It happened right here! Now, how did it happen, where did it start? Think about it.

From an interview with the director & Ganz: " There is no need to humanize Hitler because we all know that he was a human being. The task was to create a three-dimensional picture of this man. It was to get as close to what this man really was—and had to be—to seduce a whole civilized nation into barbarism. To me it's obvious that a demonic creature would never be able to lure a whole people into something evil like that. Of course he was a politician. Of course he had all the means as a human being to manipulate people. And therefore we depict him in that very way. [...] It's not enough to explain. It's not enough to describe the horror, because in doing so, you diminish the horror. You have to examine the background. You have to find out what the roots of this were, and you have to find out why all this was possible."

And the interesting thing is, okay so the Nazis are all guilty, the German people are guilty, because they allowed Nazism to flourish. "They gave us their vote, now their throats are being slit." What then is the level of responsibility of the rest of the Western world, considering America only went to war after being attacked by Japan? And what bearing does the answer to that question have on our curent political situation? Hm. To be continued?

Current Music: William Shatner, Mr Tambourine Man
or, alternately: Pain, Chuck al Hashib

she thinks she's missed the train to mars - she's out back counting stars.

"Then all the words, the ideas, the memories, were drawn together like the cords of a hundred kites and he said:

'I'd like to work now.'

Lillian watched the transformation in him. She watched the half open mouth close musingly, the scattered talk crystallizing. This man so easily swayed, caught, moved, now collecting his strength again. At that moment she saw the big man in him, the man who appeared to be merely enjoying recklessly, idling, roaming, but deep down set upon a terribly earnest goal: to hand back to life all the wealth of material he had collected, intent on making restitution to the world for what he had absorbed with his enormous creator's appetite."
~from "Ladders to Fire," Anais Nin

Current Music: Hum, Stars

the birds in the trees don't compare to your knees, Louise

Look at me! I'm up before ten! Weeeeeeeee!!! Just walked home from H's place (she has to work 8-5), birds all going nuts singing away, cold fresh morningtimes air. Ah. Behold our mountain city. It loves you, too.

Current Music: Tom Waits, "Earth Died Screaming"

Home, home again. I like to be here when I can.

Last night was a mind blowing experience - we watched Wizard of Oz alongside Dark Side of the Moon. My favorite moment (among many) was when Dorothy opens the door to Oz for the first time... just, wow. A better soundtrack, for sure; it's awesome to be able to find new dimensions in something you've known since childhood. I recommend the experience to all.

"In a laboratory, she would have caused explosions."

Yesterday H's film class went to a local indie theater to see Bad Education, a disturbing (and beautiful) spanish film about um, identity? Child abuse? Homosexuality? Anyway it's one of those films you see once, appreciate, and never want to see again. I put it on the same shelf as Naked Lunch, sorta, except I just rented that and am going to make H watch it. Hehehe.

Also yesterday, I went to the library and checked out Ladders to Fire by Anais Nin, who is fast becoming of my new favorite authors. She has a style that's both lucid & surreal, engaging to the point of obsession. Her equivalent in music would have to be somewhere between the later, grander Chopin, and middle Scriabin, before the surreal-to-the-point-of-unintelligible (programme-wise) late sonatas.

The weather lately has been great for outdoor studying... can't wait for this bloody quarter to be over, though.


Current Music: Devendra Banhart, Nino Rojo