Japan, Billy Collins

Japan

Today I pass the time reading 

a favorite haiku, 

saying the few words over and over. 

It feels like eating 

the same small, perfect grape

again and again. 

I walk through the house reciting it 

and leave its letters falling 

through the air of every room. 

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. 

I say it in front of a painting of the sea. 

I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf. 

I listen to myself saying it, 

then say it without listening, 

then I hear it without saying it. 

And when the dog looks up at me, 

I kneel down on the floor 

and whisper it into each of his long white ears. 

It's the one about the one-ton 

temple bell

with the moth sleeping on its surface, 

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating 

pressure of the moth 

on the surface of the iron bell. 

When I say it at the window, 

the bell is the world 

and I am the moth resting there. 

When I say it into the mirror, 

I am the heavy bell 

and the moth is life with its papery wings. 

And later, when I say it to you in the dark, 

you are the bell, 

and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you, 

and the moth has flown

from its line 

and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed. 

--- Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning

Mr. Woody Allen THE TALKS

MR. WOODY ALLEN: "THE WHOLE THING IS TRAGIC!" 

(check out the original source by clicking this link)  http://the-talks.com/interviews/woody-allen/

Mr. Allen, do you truly believe that happiness in life is impossible?
This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have since I was a little boy; it hasn’t gotten worse with age or anything. I do feel that’s it’s a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.

I think it’s safe to say that most people would disagree.
But I am not the first person to say this or even the most articulate person. It was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene O’Neill. One must have one’s delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and clearly, life becomes unbearable because it’s a pretty grim enterprise, you will admit.

I have a hard time imagining Woody Allen having such a hard life…
I have been very lucky and I have made my talent a very productive life for me, but everything else I am not good at. I am not good getting through life, even the simplest things. These things that are a child’s play for most people are a trauma for me.

Can you give me an example?
Checking in at an airport or at hotel, handling my relationships with other people, going for a walk, exchanging things in a store… I’ve been working on the same Olympus Typewriter since I was sixteen – and it still looks like new. All of my films were written on that typewriter, but until recently I couldn’t even change the color ribbon myself. There were times when I would invite people over to dinner just so they would change the ribbon. It’s a tragedy.

Do you distrust the good things in life?
Life is full of moments that are good – winning a lottery, seeing a beautiful woman, a great dinner – but the whole thing is tragic. It’s an oasis that is very pleasant. Take a film like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. This is a film of great tragedy, but there is a moment when he is sitting with the children and drinking milk and eating wild strawberries. But then that wonderful moment passes and you come back to what existence really is.

Are you equally pessimistic about love?
You are much more dependent on luck than you think. People say if you want to have a good relationship, you have to work at it. But you never hear it about anything you really like, about sailing or going to soccer games. You never say: I have to work at it. You just love it. You can’t work at a relationship; you can’t control it. You have to be lucky and go through your life. If you are not lucky you have to be prepared for some degree of suffering. That’s why most relationships are very difficult and have some degree of pain. People stay together because of inertia, they don’t have the energy. Because they are frightened of being lonely, or they have children.



Can a man love two women at the same time?
More than two. (Laughs) I think you can. That’s why romance is a very difficult and painful thing, a very hard, very complicated thing. You can be with your wife, very happily married, and then you meet some woman and you love her. But you love your wife, too. And you also love that one. Or if she’s met some man and she loves the man and she loves you. And then you meet somebody else and now there are three of you. (Laughs) Why only one person?

Things might get a bit tricky if one were to follow your advice…

It’s important to control yourself because life gets too complicated if you don’t, but the impulse is often there for people. Some say society should be more open. That doesn’t work either. I think it’s a lose-lose situation. If you pursue the other woman, it’s a losing situation and it’s not good for your relationship or your marriage. If your marriage is open and you’re allowed to, that’s no good either. There’s no way, really in the end, to be happy unless you get very lucky.


Do you ever cry?

I cry in the cinema all the time. It’s probably one of the only places I ever cry, because I have trouble crying. In Hannah and Her Sisters there was a scene where I was supposed to cry, and they tried everything, but it was impossible. They blew the stuff in my eyes and I couldn’t cry, but in the cinema I weep. It’s like magic. I see the end of Bicycle Thieves or City Lights. It’s the only place – never in the theater and almost never in life.

You used to star in almost all of your films, but in recent years you’ve been in less and less of them. Why?
Only because there is no good part. For years I played the romantic lead and then I couldn’t play it anymore because I got too old. It’s just no fun not playing the guy who gets the girl. You can imagine how frustrating it is when I do these movies with Scarlett Johansson and Naomi Watts and the other guys get them and I am the director. I am that old guy over there that is the director. I don’t like that. I like to be the one that sits opposite them in the restaurant, looks in their eyes and lies to them. So if I can’t do that it’s not much fun to play in the movies.

What’s your take on getting older?
I find it a lousy deal. There is no advantage getting older. You don’t get smarter, you don’t get wiser, you don’t get more mellow, you don’t get more kindly, nothing good happens. Your back hurts more, you get more indigestion, your eyesight isn’t as good, you need a hearing aid. It’s a bad business getting old and I would advise you not to do it if you can avoid it. It doesn’t have a romantic quality.

Will you ever stop making films?
I simply enjoy working. Where else could I develop ambition? As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don’t do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then?

Short Profile

Name: Allan Stewart Konigsberg
DOB: 1 December 1935
Place of Birth: New York, New York, USA
Occupation: Director

Jonas Jonasson's "The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden"

One of the books that were given as a birthday present this year was Jonas Jonasson’s “The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden”. I am currently taking a break from Marcel Proust’s “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” and now opting for something that’s easier to read (more like a bedside-table or a bathroom read). 

Jonas Jonasson's protagonist grew up in a shanty town of South Africa. She empties latrines for a living ever since she was 5 years old. Although borne an illiterate, fated to destitution and later on die of tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhea, pills, alcohol (or the combination of these) like the rest of the kaffirs (as the blacks are called) she shares this menial task with, Nombeko Mayeki’s inherent genius offers her the position from being a mere latrine emptier into a managerial position. She soon managed to escape town and by some freak accident, becomes a cleaning lady to Engr. Westhuizen, the top representative of nuclear weapons of South Africa. Things got crazy along the way, of course with Nombeko always saving the idiot of an engineer’s ass. 

Another story follows the lives of the Holger twins and their father, Ingmar, a fanatic of the Swedish Monarchy who later turned into a detractor after the king refused to lay eyes or even speak to him (in one of his chases). Although one bears the spitting image of the other, they can’t be confused because Holger Two seems to be more sensible than Holger One (who took after his father’s anarchist teachings and penchant for ruinous decisions). However it is Holger One, who by manners of Swedish Registry, who truly existed. Later on in the story, Holger Two met Nombeko and later on fell in love with her. Their love affair did not take up the bulk of the book's pages but instead the little incidents that intertwined their lives with the most unlikely characters: The Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Countess Virtanen, an American potter, 2 Israeli Mossads, some Chinese  swindlers and an angry young woman who shared the foolish Holger twin's beliefs. A "non-existent" atomic bomb was also involved.

Although this book wasn't nearly as exciting as his “The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of The Window and Disappeared” which I read in 2013 it held the author’s knack for piecing together a comical skit that renders a light hearted take on international politics. 

Kerouac Quote

 

 

 

 

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

 

-- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Today I woke up feeling better. The fever (and coughing) that broke out 2 days ago has subsided thanks to the amount of pills I've been popping and the mandatory 8 hours of sleep I've been getting. As always the case when I fall ill, I hankered for food like my whole life/sanity depended on it. The flu that struck gave me a monstrous appetite which is quite ill-timed knowing it's the fasting month and although every single food chain is permitted to serve food, no one is allowed to eat in full view of those who observes the fasting month. But what to do with these sudden cravings for a heavy meal (despite the debilitating symptoms)?

What I mostly hate about getting sick is how even the simplest things felt like torture and that I have to set things aside because of the nagging headache and the sniffles. 

But despite the improvement, my body is telling me to slow down. 


So, here I am  . . .  

reading, finally.

B&W