This is my 44th post. Just eight shy of 52. Considering that this is my first year blogging, trust me, I’m thinking 44 entries is a pretty neat accomplishment for someone as lazy as myself. So, yay me!
My intention is to keep up the discipline of writing once a week in 2012. Who knows? Maybe I’ll reach that magic 52 and can boast of having written regularly once a week.
This is it for me this year. I will not post (I don’t think) until next year. I will try to rest and enjoy my family during these last two weeks of 2011 and I will continue praying for a healthier and more prosperous and peaceful 2012 not only for me and mine, but also for you and for our lovely planet.
Peace my friends,
Margarita
Friday, December 16, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
#43 - My Movies - Melancholia
I saw Melancholia this week. Let me tell you it’s a strange but very interesting movie.
I’m not familiar with the director. A Danish guy, Lars von Trier, who apparently likes to stir in some controversy around his films and himself. I read that the idea for this movie came after he had a depressive episode and found that, depressed and indifferent, he actually was stronger and able to withstand more of the hard things in life.
So the movie starts with the end of the world due to some planetary catastrophe. Then the story centers on two sisters, Justine and Claire played by Kirsten Dunst (this part was initially planned for Penelope Cruz) and Charlotte Gainsbourg. We attend the wedding of Justine and Michael, a big event planned by Claire and financed by her wealthy husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). Claire wants to give her sister the perfect wedding, but soon we realize that it cannot be. Justine is actually pretty strange and ill. To start off, the bride and groom arrive to the reception two hours late. When we meet the girls’ parents we can explain to some degree the total dysfunctionality of this family: anger, resentment and unresolved conflict bubble to the surface of this family’s dynamic.
The wedding ends with a bride so disengaged from and indifferent to her wedding that she wanders off to the beautiful palatial gardens to urinate on the grass and in her wedding gown and to have sex with a stranger. The heartbroken groom finally leaves with his family.
This wedding seems a bit odd to me. Justine’s family, self-cenetered and all, is obviously aware of her mental illness, that to impose a wedding on such a frail individual seems clearly ill-advised and counterintuitive.
I guess because the story in reality deals with the impending end of the world and humanity’s tendency to not believe that our end can be almost uninmportant and meaningless. I understood how sick Justine really is, because as she says herself she “knows things,” and she knows that the planet Melancholia won’t pass by the Earth but that there will be a head-on collision with us and that we will end with it. And still, she remains in total silence and indolence, not ever once showing fear or despair, when you would think that any other human being would do something, at least share it with her loved ones, no matter how useless she knows it all is. But Justine’s listlessness is extreme and her disregard of all things human is really serious.
The acting by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg I thought was powerful and Wagner’s music is heartbreaking to the point that even your bones vibrate, especially at the end.
I’m not familiar with the director. A Danish guy, Lars von Trier, who apparently likes to stir in some controversy around his films and himself. I read that the idea for this movie came after he had a depressive episode and found that, depressed and indifferent, he actually was stronger and able to withstand more of the hard things in life.
So the movie starts with the end of the world due to some planetary catastrophe. Then the story centers on two sisters, Justine and Claire played by Kirsten Dunst (this part was initially planned for Penelope Cruz) and Charlotte Gainsbourg. We attend the wedding of Justine and Michael, a big event planned by Claire and financed by her wealthy husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). Claire wants to give her sister the perfect wedding, but soon we realize that it cannot be. Justine is actually pretty strange and ill. To start off, the bride and groom arrive to the reception two hours late. When we meet the girls’ parents we can explain to some degree the total dysfunctionality of this family: anger, resentment and unresolved conflict bubble to the surface of this family’s dynamic.
The wedding ends with a bride so disengaged from and indifferent to her wedding that she wanders off to the beautiful palatial gardens to urinate on the grass and in her wedding gown and to have sex with a stranger. The heartbroken groom finally leaves with his family.
This wedding seems a bit odd to me. Justine’s family, self-cenetered and all, is obviously aware of her mental illness, that to impose a wedding on such a frail individual seems clearly ill-advised and counterintuitive.
I guess because the story in reality deals with the impending end of the world and humanity’s tendency to not believe that our end can be almost uninmportant and meaningless. I understood how sick Justine really is, because as she says herself she “knows things,” and she knows that the planet Melancholia won’t pass by the Earth but that there will be a head-on collision with us and that we will end with it. And still, she remains in total silence and indolence, not ever once showing fear or despair, when you would think that any other human being would do something, at least share it with her loved ones, no matter how useless she knows it all is. But Justine’s listlessness is extreme and her disregard of all things human is really serious.
The acting by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg I thought was powerful and Wagner’s music is heartbreaking to the point that even your bones vibrate, especially at the end.
Friday, December 2, 2011
#42 - Post “a la Freud” or Pedaling Memories
I was busy all last week being grateful (and, trust me, I have much to be grateful for) that I didn’t write a post during the Thanksgiving break.
But me is back! With not much to write about. I’m thinking of letting myself go “a la Freud,” letting my ideas flow as in free association mode.
The other day I was thinking about the several decades of my life and how my past gets mistier year after year. I thought this when I saw a child joyfully riding his bicycle and I thought to myself, “Hey I used to know how to do that!”
I remember the last two times I’ve been on a bicycle. The last one is a bit embarrassing because I fell off the my brand new shiny blue bike (a wonderful birthday present from my husband’s son Octavio) and I was semi-drunk. I say “semi-drunk” because I achingly remember every detail of the incident, the burn on my calf, etc, so we shall say that I was somewhat tipsy. The fall happened right before I even attempted to try pedaling. I didn’t think I could fall, trusting as I was on that notion that you can’t forget something as easy as that, that it would be exactly like “riding a bike”!
But long before that in 1989 it turns I was in Toronto with my first husband, our friend Beatriz and her chef boyfriend, a French-Canadian that we shall call Pierre. That day Pierre had cooked for us. I remember how amazed I was that a salad could be so utterly delicious. Pierre said that the secret is always in the dressing, and that the one we had enjoyed was his own creation. Well, Pierre, it was exquisite!
The four us ended on an island whose name I do not remember, nor can I recall how or why we went there. All I remember is that the four of us were riding bikes. And it was exactly as the saying goes, easy “like riding a bike.” The day was hot but beautiful and oh my gosh, all that greenery. I remember picking up some pebbles from the beach and bringing them to San Antonio with me and putting them as little decorative remembrance pieces on the window sill of our apartment to remind myself of that that sunny and falsely carefree day. The little rocks have long been lost, but the memory has not been misplaced (thank goodness).
Hey! There was another bike ride before the embarrassing fall and after Toronto. Raúl, my husband, is living in Houston. Our friend Rafael and I are visiting him fo the weekend and we decide to go to Galveston. We wanted to see the sea (ha, “see the sea!” get it?). Before that I had only been to the beach once in Mexico, in the beautiful state of Colima. Raúl and Rafa are both poets and you can imagine the words and descriptions they had to share about the ocean. So there we are, walking among tourists and Raúl and I have a mega-fight and he says rejects the idea of renting a bike that can be pedaled by four, but Rafa and I rent it anyway and we pedal on the beach. I remember him encouraging me to pedal beyond my own astrength. I gave my best effort, but it was a lot of sweaty work. Meanwhile Raúl was drawing a heart on the sand with a message for me in its center: “I love you” (te amo). Awww!
But me is back! With not much to write about. I’m thinking of letting myself go “a la Freud,” letting my ideas flow as in free association mode.
The other day I was thinking about the several decades of my life and how my past gets mistier year after year. I thought this when I saw a child joyfully riding his bicycle and I thought to myself, “Hey I used to know how to do that!”
I remember the last two times I’ve been on a bicycle. The last one is a bit embarrassing because I fell off the my brand new shiny blue bike (a wonderful birthday present from my husband’s son Octavio) and I was semi-drunk. I say “semi-drunk” because I achingly remember every detail of the incident, the burn on my calf, etc, so we shall say that I was somewhat tipsy. The fall happened right before I even attempted to try pedaling. I didn’t think I could fall, trusting as I was on that notion that you can’t forget something as easy as that, that it would be exactly like “riding a bike”!
But long before that in 1989 it turns I was in Toronto with my first husband, our friend Beatriz and her chef boyfriend, a French-Canadian that we shall call Pierre. That day Pierre had cooked for us. I remember how amazed I was that a salad could be so utterly delicious. Pierre said that the secret is always in the dressing, and that the one we had enjoyed was his own creation. Well, Pierre, it was exquisite!
The four us ended on an island whose name I do not remember, nor can I recall how or why we went there. All I remember is that the four of us were riding bikes. And it was exactly as the saying goes, easy “like riding a bike.” The day was hot but beautiful and oh my gosh, all that greenery. I remember picking up some pebbles from the beach and bringing them to San Antonio with me and putting them as little decorative remembrance pieces on the window sill of our apartment to remind myself of that that sunny and falsely carefree day. The little rocks have long been lost, but the memory has not been misplaced (thank goodness).
Hey! There was another bike ride before the embarrassing fall and after Toronto. Raúl, my husband, is living in Houston. Our friend Rafael and I are visiting him fo the weekend and we decide to go to Galveston. We wanted to see the sea (ha, “see the sea!” get it?). Before that I had only been to the beach once in Mexico, in the beautiful state of Colima. Raúl and Rafa are both poets and you can imagine the words and descriptions they had to share about the ocean. So there we are, walking among tourists and Raúl and I have a mega-fight and he says rejects the idea of renting a bike that can be pedaled by four, but Rafa and I rent it anyway and we pedal on the beach. I remember him encouraging me to pedal beyond my own astrength. I gave my best effort, but it was a lot of sweaty work. Meanwhile Raúl was drawing a heart on the sand with a message for me in its center: “I love you” (te amo). Awww!
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