Love-4

Its long time that her affair has come to a logical end. Time heals most of the wounds, mental, physical, metaphysical. Now she feels a tickling feeling all over the body, full of nostalgia, full of childlike titillation. Has it ended, or just buried, what will happen if she meets him again, near a shopping mall, while buying those red flowers for gift to some unknown acquaintance. Nothing will happen, nothing should happen, mind is now occupied with all types of worldly worries, all types of domestic desires, all the layers of happiness, all the air of busyness. Yet at night, one or twice in a blue moon, she adores her affair like a scented secret. It all looked pleasant, all looked so very childish. Never will she be able to feel the anger in such a raw form, everything is ordinary, subdued, life is slow and sweet, a life of stagnation can give rest and this rest may be seen as pleasure, pleasure of simplification of life.

That day when it was a relatively bad weather, she was crossing the road, she realized that she just wanted to run, run as hard as she could, but she just stopped and laughed at the stupidity of the thought, madness of yesteryears was good to laugh at and giggle to, but not worth practicing. Her one hand is full of packets of newly bought clothes, and the other with a light colored purse that helped buy them. She was thoroughly occupied with stuff, which may look mundane, but that is necessary to live. There were times when she wanted to weep like the wind that brings rain with itself, it all calmed down now.

Later at night, one of those blue moons appeared, she thought of those days, they looked so distant, and therefore so sweet, she thought to her, how all the bitterness is gone, how she has hold herself upright in those days of pain and agony, it just looked like the reminiscence of some previous life or a dream she was once part of, where she was given a bitter part, but that's all she could have done. She opened a book near the table lamp and tried to close her eyes, she saw his youthful face with anger and love mixed together, she cannot figure out what this all mean to her now. She switched off the lamp and later put it on. That night she slept with lights on.

The Death of a Blog

I have not written on any of the movies I am seeing and I really feel bad about it. Bad, not because my blog seems dying but because when you see one movie after the other and don't jot down about the previous movie, the virgin experience of movie viewing is lost all together. We can always see those movies again, and if they qualify to be good movies, they should give us more and more insight onto themselves on repeated viewing, but the first pure experience is lost some where and its difficult, rather impossible to recollect it once its two or three days past, given that you have moved to another cinematic experience. All in all it is not a good feeling to leave what you love and not even leave the traces of it on your blog so that at a latter day, when you see that piece of art again, you can reflect more clearly with greater pleasure. Also once I see a movie, I cannot hold myself to read the good, bad, ugly or whatever reviews I can find and it corrupts your pure (which may be incorrect or naive) views on the movie and this leads to a concoction of world wide views, necessarily not yours, and you loose interest in due course too. Again you feel bad.

I thought I will write about The Trial the day I saw it, but I couldn't gather much time (rather initiative) to do so and now I feel totally lost to write about it. I am planning to see it gain shortly and write about it then, but I know it will not be the same, I have lost all my thoughts and messed them with other in the meanwhile and therefore I feel so bad about them.

One more movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed and even started to scribble about was Red, but I refused to post it then, decided to post it when I will complete the Color Trilogy and now its all lost somewhere. I feel that I have lost my rustic thoughts, and did severe injustice to them. One other movie which I loved to the core, and wanted to write about was Nights of Cabiria, but I consoled myself just by writing a poem and a post on Cabiria. There are several more such type of instances where my laziness pushed my thoughts to their natural death.

For some time, I am reading some extraordinary stuff, I felt so good the day I read Kafka's A Hunger Artist, but I couldn't gather much thought to write about it, see this is a different problem from one discussed above, here I am falling short of ideas at the first place. This is my second concern, the dearth of ideas to write upon, I thought to write about some topics like 'the meta-movies I have seen', and 'the relationship between films and literature' (Although I feel acutely uneducated on this), 'the genesis of an idea', 'the endings of commercial cinema', 'Calvin's Philosophy' and so forth but nothing materialized, I have uncompleted drafts of some of them which I consider unworthy of posting even on my stupid blog. Of late, you must have seen me, pumping oxygen though silly poems to my blog in coma :)

Lets see, if I am able to break out of this circle of void and scribble something, that at least I can enjoy !

The Unseen Drop

Has the color of color died or the paper was too smooth,
Poor fellow tried to show all what he could see with naked eyes.
He again painted with different colors, may be it would show,
Is it color or paper or the dead soul, that refused to register.

A voilin cried in perfection all night to symphonies of masters,
No one stopped by to drop a tear or eye to its passion.
They all danced laughing to the screams from the other side,
Voilin played the music feeding his soul, fasting all night

A penman scribbed his absurd agonies on parched paper for ages,
He thought to store them in a place, away from heat of the sun.
Wisemen came with sweet lullabies, wrote on stone in calligraphy,
Penman died someday, thinking of a story, in the heat of the sun.

Dreams

Something that is locked in the vast fantasy of our heads and yet to come out is a dream. There are chances that once it comes out of your mind, it may be turn into what it is supposed to be or to something totally different, but most of the times it loses its lustre by coming out of womb. We, the mother of the dreams, bearing the pains of nurturing them, feel, is this my dream, so horribly different from its perception and conception. Dreams walk just one step ahead of us, you can't catch them by running on skates. You can possibly get them if you stand still and let them reveal themselves. When people say 'Follow you Dreams', it looks nice, but probably it has most dreadfully misunderstood cliché, just beaten by the oldie 'Believe in Yourself'. What are we supposed to mean when we say a flamboyant banality like 'Follow your Dreams', is it to follow whatever lead to your dreams, go grab it from neck till they suffocate and succumb to your fist. Before moving on, let me make clear that when I talk about dream, I am not talking about aims, ambitions or aspirations, first of all they stink of corporate jargon and second, dreams are as fragile, as uniquely colored and as elevating as an air bubble ever to share the same closed space as ambition. Aims and ambitions looks only like a constrained/trivial solution of the equation of dream.

For me 'Follow your Dreams' means enjoy your dreams with a responsibility to nurture them, let them grow up in your tiny heads feeding them with some reality so that they can survive on being delivered. But this simplification also doesn't help, especially in those cases where dreams are driven by the labor pains of passion or the other times when your dreams become too heavy to carry, sort of a extended pregnancy with rotten fetus. You need to take it out, at times to save you, other times to relieve you from pain, yet other times to satisfy you. Dreams are born babies only, they have to take the weather by themselves. They lose their form, their baby smile, their innocence very soon and can't be called even a dream afterwards. Its reality, a grain of dust in the enormous stadium with crazy crowd and razzmatazz. Even though your dream is not dead, it is lost. So what you get by having a dream that is going to get lost or turn into a something grotesque anyway. Apparently you get lots of pain and disappointment, but you have your share of, what I can call, happiness, the peaks of pleasure. Dreams teach you to look inside, to create, to understand, to observe the pain, to comprehend the real world, to search for the beautiful truth, to sometimes die in peace, and to live with hidden smiles of the courage that you have ever dreamt !

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come -Hamlet

Tiny Blades

The gates of tiny blades, the light on the green grass
The dirt of earth below, a foot pressed it all

The soul of night and the son of darkness, sang together
The spirit of dawn, the sister of light, spoiled it all

The unrest of mind, the buses of thought, wandered, waved
The necessity of life, the ruler of might, aligned it all

The burning hearts, the turning clocks, around my side
The whorl of fire, those two stones, flamed it all

B-allads

I am listening to Beatles for some time now (thanks to my Die-hard Beatle-fan friend, he even calls his blog B-Log, Beatles Log, like one of my Proust-fanatic friends refers to Remembrance of Things Past, when he says Novel, with capital 'N'). I am enjoying the swinging 70's and a mild philosophy of their songs. After listening to some 100+ songs 5 songs have struck and the B-log guy says I am picking up well but I need to mature and move to more of Lennon, it seems I am stuck with too much of McCartney. I feel quite naive to write anything on Beatles or their songs so I will just put some of the lyrics of some my dear songs.

Coming to the songs, their is one which is I think not a very popular song like While my guitar gently weeps or Its a hard days night but has something that is really sweet and sad. Its called Piggies and its a bit allegorical in its lyrics which is always to my pleasure. Here is a sample of lyrics.

Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt?
And for all the little piggies,
Life is getting worse;
Always having dirt to
Play around in.

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts?
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to
Play around in.

The other song which is love-stuck and nostalgic and its called Girl. Its the first song that really stayed on.

Is there anybody going to listen to my story
All about the girl who came to stay?
She's the kind of girl you want so much
It makes you sorry
Still you don't regret a single day.
Ah girl! Girl!

The other one is called Eleanor Rigby. Its a true Beatles song with all the characteristic beatles sounds and instruments. I love this song.

Eleanor rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

I will write more about it the songs when I sink in some more but now I will listen to Its a hard days night with my eyes closed, I think it should be made the anthem for all the software professional slogging :)

Suffering !

My Favorite dialogue from one of the best movie of all time, Bergman's Winter Light.

Sexton: The passion of Christ, his suffering... Wouldn't you say the focus on his suffering is all wrong?
Pastor: What do you mean?
Sexton: This emphasis on physical pain. It couldn't have been all that bad. It may sound presumptuous of me - but in my humble way, I've suffered as much physical pain as Jesus. And his torments were rather brief. Lasting some four hours, I gather? I feel that he was tormented far worse on an other level. Maybe I've got it all wrong. But just think of Gethsemane, Vicar. Christ's disciples fell asleep. They hadn't understood the meaning of the last supper, or anything. And when the servants of the law appeared, they ran away. And Peter denied him. Christ had known his disciples for three years. They'd lived together day in and day out - but they never grasped what he meant. They abandoned him, to the last man. And he was left alone. That must have been painful. Realizing that no one understands. To be abandoned when you need someone to rely on - that must be excruciatingly painful. But the worse was yet to come. When Jesus was nailed to the cross - and hung there in torment - he cried out - "God, my God!" "Why hast thou forsaken me?" He cried out as loud as he could. He thought that his heavenly father had abandoned him. He believed everything he'd ever preached was a lie. The moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship? God's silence.
Pastor: Yes...

The Hog Day !

Yesterday was my nth birthday, I ate all day and night. Its for all you missed the 'gluttonous-debauch' :)

Those Characters...

I have always wondered which characters would appeal people, the characters who are like them or the characters who are unlike them or some mathematical mix of both or in a cliched sense, those characters whom they are able to relate to. On a different note, when will Kafka be delighted, if someone is inspired by him or if someone will resonate with same emotions after reading a piece that Kafka felt while writing it. Kafka will better die than give any inspiration. I always remember one of my friends comment, "I hated that novel, I almost felt like I have murdered someone !", after reading Crime and Punishment. What more appreciation Dostoevski will ask for, more than his readers becoming his characters. So its a matter of resonance, these waves do require a medium to hit you, but this medium is a matter of your choice, and its what we call Art. Coming back to my chosen medium, films, and the appealing characters we started with. I have chosen three characters which I really like and resonate with feeling of the masters who created them, at least to some extent.

3. Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley, American Beauty): Ricky is a young drug-dealing boy next door who see beauty in seemingly petty things. American Beauty is one of my favorite film which to some extent explores the meanings of beauty and ugliness, tearing off the everyday farce of out lives. Ricky is rather a strong character of all in the movie, which might not have gone to my liking but as the movie progresses, we see lot of beauty through his eyes, the beauty as he sees it, the uncommon beauty in common things. He finds happiness in recording these beautiful things on his camcorder. What I always wondered about beauty are two things, its fleetingness and its unattainability. Beauty looks like a concept and it has generated lots of discomfort in me lately. May be 'my' beauty lies only in dreams and fantasies. Real world is not good enough to be beautiful. Ricky do something to seize the overwhelming beauty of real world , although a bit figuratively, he records this subjective surreal beauty on his tape.

RICKY FITTS: Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

2. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro, Taxi driver): Travis Bickle is a character which intrigues you to the core and at the same time amazes you with its simplicity and commonness. Travis is a 26 year old, ex-marine who drives Taxi at night to fight insomnia, disillusioned by the norms of the society, is a lonely man. As I started to see Taxi Driver, Travis seemed to me shallow, naive and just like any other young guy as he gets attracted to smart-and-beautiful Betsy and stupidly takes her to a porn movie on their first date. But as the movie progresses we see Travis more clearly, we start understanding the misunderstood Travis and the intent of his actions and above all his loneliness. Robert De Niro gives a mindblowing performance as disturbed Travis result of a much more disturbed society.

Travis Bickle: Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man.




1. Cabiria (Giulietta Masina, Nights of Cabiria): Cabiria is infinitely dear character to me. When I saw Nights of Cabiria, I was amazed by Masina's tragi-comic performance, her character and master Fellini. The last reels of Nights of Cabiria are the best 15 minutes you can ever see on celluloid. Cabiria is a naive prostitute, wandering on the road of Rome, in search of love, one who goes to shrine holding candles in search of some answers, one who bares her deepest desires when hypnotized. Cabiria, who trusts people easily, who is betrayed and robbed again and again, one who is afraid of what will became of her, seeking meaning to her existence, but one who is hopeful of things to come. Something happened in the final moments of Nights of Cabiria that made me feel hopeful in the honest and unassuming way. This is what we can call a true testimonial of hope that is all real and that comes from the unflinching nature of human spirit but not from some phony crap. Cabiria is such a heart-breakingly real character, Fellini's most human and fragile creation. Fellini has gone on record to say that of all his characters, he worries about Cabiria the most. I feel the same.

Cabiria : Kill me! I don't want to live any more!