Tuesday, April 26, 2011

the lion ate the dingo who ate the baby who couldn't even chew

i was biking somewhere, with two other people, on a road that had no bike lane. scared as i was due to that, it got worse: on the side of the road, in a small lake by a house, a guy in a car and his wife were trying to drive out of the lake. (i know this was because i saw some scenes from pierrot le fou last night). we stopped to look or to help, i'd like to think it was the latter, and as we were sitting (maybe we were just looking!) in the field also close to the house, a man with a dog came by. we were all watching this lion who was lurking in the field and had his eye on the people in the car. the dog was silly and wanted to make contact with the lion, the man said he was going to eat us anyway so i said, calmly and collectedly, let's blow this joint. we tip-toed out of the field, the lion had no idea. we decided it's too late to go where we wanted to go, so we split up and decided to go home. so i'm alone on my bike and i look back and see the lion chasing me! fuck! a woman-eating lion! and my bike chain is all rusty!

and then i woke up. at 8.30. double fuck! 

home alone as i was, i put on some lipstick to match my pink rubber gloves, and got to work. i understood: the lion was my conscience, chasing me to do my homey chores. which i have done. in the process of cleaning the bathroom i met with the realization that it's the first time i'm doing this. the whole thing was absolutely weird because it was very much like a really cute flirt: kinda fun, subtly dirty and sort of sexual (!!) and made me feel very proud at the end, even though i'd still be sleeping alone tonight.

afterwards, while kneading, my mind wandered off and my enthusiasm for a job well done plummeted at the thought that i have become a weird future housewife hybrid, which was never part of the plan (mainly because there never was any plan), and i would've face slapped myself if it wasn't for all the sticky dough on my hands.



but maybe it's a fair trade: all my hopes and most of my self-esteem for a cake that no one will remember in few days and a bathroom that will look dirty in another few. 

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

aurora

"hell is other people."
j.p. sartre



for about 80% of the watch time, aurora felt confusing. i didn't know where it was going, but i stuck with it. i wanted to know. the build-up lasted for about two hours, more or less, but it played with my memories and it got me thinking about things i never thought about before, even if i should have, in a way in which the build up was more than two hours, it was so much of my life experience.

aurora could very well seem a cinematic aberration to some. maybe to the same degree it can seem a masterpiece to others. and this is a clue to why it is a masterpiece. there is no clear definition of whose side to be on, there is almost no information (till the very end), all rules are twisted and broken, the main character speaks very little, and when he does, he's always cool and collected or refractory. i believe the key of the movie is in understanding his drama (where "drama" is used loosely, as his drama is something you can't really comprehend, and once you do, for real, it doesn't make sense to relate it to anything).

his killings aren't fueled by hate, madness or what not. but that's again, relative. and he kills his "relatives", as his last resort to making sure his daughters end up right. or better, at least. this makes little sense to you, maybe, but it makes a whole lot of it to me (i used my utter subjectivity glasses, yet again): he's a man who knows he's going to die soon and he wants to leave things in order. his killings are like spring cleaning (spring killing), or, more like tidying up after yourself. in a very radical manner, yes. they are unjustly just and, if not, justified. 


he doesn't find his wife fit to care for their daughters. he doesn't find justice fit to understand (anything). "i don't trust that justice would be able to understand the complexity of the relationship my wife and i had." and probably no one would. 

to me, cristi puiu achieved what no one else did. i've never seen a movie that was so far away, and yet so  invasive, penetrating and complex.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

fondled in gastric acid

the thing about idioms is that you often disregard their words for their socially accepted meaning. romanian folklore is loaded with such non-sensical but deeply-meaningful sayings. i'll enumerate a few, amuse myself at the fact that they make even less sense in english and then get to my point: 

the little stump tips the big cart / don't trade the sparrow in your hand for the crow on the fence / good cheese in dog skin / he who steals an egg today will steal an ox tomorrow / where there's no head, beware feet! / he went as an ox and came back a cow / he who wakes up early gets far / the sparrow dreams of corn flour / don't put your nose where your pot isn't boiling / work is a gold bracelet / where you hit and where it breaks / the dog dies from the long journey and the idiot from caring about someone else / shard laughs at broken pot / admitting your fault means being half forgiven /

but alas!, my point is in the stomach. love passes through the stomach - the ultimate romanian genius cleverly mixing both gastronomy and love in the form of some kind of advice and/or encouragement, used abusively by elderly taunting aunts, who want to make a point that you should learn to cook, when your problem isn't that at all, but might rhyme with it (i.e. you look like captain hook).



so i keep repeating love passes through the stomach to try and make sense of it and its naked truth hits me like the last drop of ketchup in the bottle that wasn't stored upside down: the transformation of that which passes through the stomach (into that which passes through our pipes) is the most sensible metaphor ever used for love. that i know of.  


later edit: romanian folklore might be rooted in dinosaur civilisation.


http://allosaurus.tumblr.com/

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

i never said i was deep but i am profoundly shallow

(here's a post of shallow profoundness, hidden deep.)





(we dont make them like we used to.)