Dream

Every night, I dream the same dream. 

I find her. I knock on the door, but there is no answer. I open it. It opens inwards, it's not locked.

There she stands, who is not surprised to see me. She has the childish smile on her face, ready to burst into laughter, seeking some minor absurdity about me. Her long, thin arms are extended generally towards me, but also towards the sky, in her comical way of demanding a hug.

No, says a part of me, and the dream rewinds. I open the door and she stands in the same spot. Now her face is not the same, rather, it has the distant sad smile. She is still not surprised to see me. Her shoulders slouch in the way that signifies that she is tired, does not want to be touched.

Then I walk up to her, stand two feet apart. I look for words.

I go through conversations in my head. Funny, because even if I dared to speak any of it, it would be all a dream and it would be in my head anyway. It takes attempts to make an attempt in my imagination.

"Why have you left me" - This is not good, I already know the answer. Also, the answer is quite useless for me.

"Do you still love me" - This is also not good, because she does not have the answer. Also, this answer is quite useless for me, too.

"Will you come back to me" - This is terrible. She will make a sad face and give neither a nod nor a shake. I know that it will be the firmest no.

"How are you?" - This, a question that does not end in 'me', is probably heading in the right direction. Also, this would be a question since I do not have the answer and she probably does. But she never answered this question.

What question would you ask if you met the love of your life, your love long lost?

Where did it go wrong What did I do Was it something I said Will you forgive me Can you give me another chance Do you hate me Did I hurt you Was there someone else When did you stop loving me How much of what you said was lies Why does it have to be this way Did you ever love me

"Remember the day, when you came to the airport to meet me, in your green coat and make up, lips deeper red than usual, skin whiter than I remember, eyes holding back tears. 

I gave you the strongest hug I could, like I was trying to hold on to something that I knew I couldn't. And it probably hurt you but you didn't say a word.

That was the happiest I have been. 

I'm sorry."

And she looks at me, eyes already deep under tears, both in sorrow and in hatred. I regret bringing out the memories, now I have upset her.

Cannery, Desolation.

Cannery Row is a novel by John Steinbeck. Although I have not read much of Steinbeck, and his Americanness often puts me off, Cannery Row is somewhat special. I believe that is because the Cannery Row in the story is a special place. 

The novel follows no one in particular, but everyone's everyday lives in the fabled road. Situated in California, the place is where the fishing boats come in with their catch, and cans of fish are made, and hence the name. The heroes and heroines of the story are not the factory workers or their families, rather, it is the people whose presence are visible only after the workers have gone home for the day. 

They are "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches", but their lives are viewed and accounted by the author as our own. And through the story, it's difficult to feel that they are anything less than "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men". The book is not remarkable for the prose and poetry, but rather the love with which their tales are told. 

Desolation Row is a song by Bob Dylan. The song's title, lyrics and the general atmosphere has been said to be influenced by Cannery Row, and although the words are different, the feeling of the place is the same. The place is a desolation. People do not have much, and those who do are out to make the lives of those who don't more miserable.

Yet, both the Rows are home. They are home to the protagonists of the story, and because I am so invited to be their friend, family, it becomes my home.

Home is not a place, but rather the people.

Apocalypse, Africa.

I recently watched Apocalypse Now Redux. It's an iconic movie, with so much of its dialogues and music flowing into the public consciousness, it really is a surprise that I only have managed to watch it recently. Then again, I'm not a movie fan.

The movie is set in the war-time Vietnam. As widely known, the main plot follows that of the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. In my opinion, this is a mistake. Heart of Darkness was not great for its main plot. It was great for the confrontation with the unknown. The unknown was not Kurtz, but Africa. The river, the forest and its people looking at the protagonist with a vengeful aspect.

Sure enough, I'm certain that there were plenty of aspects, vengeful and worse, in Vietnam, but that misses the point. The inscrutable intention in the original is well-known in the case of Vietnam. It was how they were getting their weapons and where their traps lied that the G.I.s didn't know. The intention was fully known - they wanted to kill them.

The inscrutability of Africa was what made Heart of Darkness so fearful. Not knowing where you stand against what could be a friend or a foe, or simply an animal. Much like being in a dark cave, it fuels the irrational and insane fear. Heart of Darkness was named so, and not Heart of Horror for a reason.

What about other aspects of the film? There's the political side of it, of course. As much as it tries to stay clear of politics, one cannot avoid making political statements about Vietnam when talking about the war. There are hints, like mowing down of the innocent boat, napalm bombing of the village for surfing, accounts of the Vietcongs cutting off children's arms, and so on. Both sides are cruel, but one side is so in order to win the war, the other is simply fucking around. 

That leads to the nice bits. Interesting depiction of the madness of war. I'm not saying the madness of the war, since the madness is globally applicable to all wars. One needs to look only as far as the Second World War and the venerable Joseph Heller's Catch-22 for that. 

Indeed, the film is teeming with the madness of war - and by extension, the madness of humans, madness of everyday, the madness that is so obvious once the observer is not committing the act. 

Updike, Ashkenazy.

John Updike is from Mars, Vladimir Ashkenazy is from Ve... no, not really. They are both from this world, although Mr. U is from middle-class white America (which, it seems from his novels, a separate world of its own) and Mr. A is from Soviet Russia (although, to be fair, he is also a half-Jew and his surname is Jewish).

What do those two people share to warrant writing about them in the same entry, other than having born in the same decade (1930's), and looking like a pair of identical gray scale twins with characteristic silver white hair?



Well, not much, it seems. And probably not much really, too. But in my mind, those two greatly accomplished artists of nearly completely unrelated fields of art are inexplicably linked. Let me explain:

Ashkenazy is a pianist. I don't know the first thing about playing a piano or listening to one, but through my few years of casually listening to classical music, it seems Mr A has a rather distinct style. To put into words, he plays every note with extreme clarity and precision, it is overwhelming. For the first two bars or so of his performance, I'm in awe. His piano, it seems, has transformed from a crude approximation into the very Platonic model of the perfect sound generating machine. Unlike, say, Artur Rubenstein, who doesn't give a flying fuck about what the notes are and gets them wrong about half the time anyway.

Updike is a novelist. I don't know the first thing about writing a novel or reading one, but through my few years of casually reading to novels, it seems Mr U has a rather distinct style. To put into words, he writes every word and sentence with extraordinary beauty, it is overwhelming. For the first two pages of his novel, I'm in awe. The scene he's describing, it seems, has transformed from a dark, sordid, poor quarters of the normal little people into a scene of great beauty and grandeur. Unlike, say, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who has never sent anyone running to a dictionary.

After the first shock of beauty, and when readers and listeners alike have regained their consciousness, and have read and listened and enjoyed and then endured more than half of their respective performances, readers and listeners (reasteners?) are left to wonder: What is this guy trying to say? and if one is brave enough to stay to the end the answer comes, sometimes like a dove, sometimes like a drill against the skull - Nothing.

Mr U and Mr A alike, it seems, have spent a great deal of time and effort mastering their arts (and no doubt, they are great masters) and yet, their performances ring hollow. Under the skin of extraordinary prettiness, there is nothing.

Final words - Ashkenazy's music is far more endurable than Updike's to me personally, if only because I think literature should have a message, where music can server very well in an elevator.

Disgrace

All of the characters in the story Disgrace, are disgraced. Sometimes through extraordinary circumstances, sometimes as the result of an everyday action, sometimes just because they are human.

This story kept me thinking for a while. What did the author mean? What are the allegories? Symbolisms? Messages? What did he want to say? At first I thought it was the age-old mantra: No fate is worse than death, disgrace is a part of life, live through because life still beautiful. Nice and calming and idyllic, although the story itself is not.

But now I think again about it, I see something more in it. Every character in the story is disgraced - no, every human character is disgraced. Without their disgrace, the characters would be nothing. Ah, then, this is it: Disgrace is a unique and necessary human condition.

Because disgrace can be anything. It can be an old man trying to seduce a young girl. It can be the same old man forcing his way on the girl, it can be the girl who did not resist. It can be a rape, it can be the father of the raped girl who could not protect her. It can be having an affair, it could be physical disfigurement. It can be a mother of two who has a side-job as a high class prostitute.

Disgrace, it seems, is everywhere. All parties of an act have their shame, their disgrace, and there is no escaping from this as long as one is still human.


To be human is to live with disgrace, much like the fate of so many dogs in the story was to be hugged by a person who gives them a full and warm attention, calmed, then injected. Their fate was to be among so many of them. There is nothing that they can do, or the person who loves them the most. This is the inescapable fate.

Alternatives are also suggested in the book, however. Be an animal, or live like an animal. The racist point of view is bitter, not because it is racist and I'm a racistist (which in my humble opinion, almost but slightly less as bad), but because my heart goes to my South African friends.

Information on the book:
Author: J. M. Coetzee, a Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, a Man-Booker prize winner for Life & Times of Michael K.

Title: Disgrace
First published in 1999, written originally in English.

Greetings

This is going to be a joint blog of Sheep and me. We would like to keep it mostly to literature and films, although other forms of communication might enter here and there (Photography, music, and so on). The boundaries are there only to keep the intimately personal stuff out of this, what is proposed to be my first public blog, or publishing of any kind.

Sheep, my closest friend, has been watching movies since quite a while ago. When he started I assumed that it was going to be one of his many obsessions that lasts for two years and then fizzles, but this time it's proving its longevity. Around the same time, I started reading novels, mostly in English but sometimes in Korean. Sheep also reads, and sometimes I also watch movies.

We would like to post our 'thoughts', roughly once a week each or so. I can only call them thoughts, since they are not going to be reviews, previews or any other forms of criticism or journalism. If anything, I wish them to be a creation on their own rights.

My first post is going to be on J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace.