Meditation on Life

I've been brooding for a while now. Even with so many blessings in my life, there's been, to say the least, a lot of challenges. I've been looking at my past thinking about what went wrong and realizing that in fact it's a defeatist attitude. Maybe instead of being so harsh with myself and my mistakes, instead of looking at all the defeats I have suffered, suffering, and will suffer I can look at my life as a work in progress, that the meaning I find will change and grow as the years pass.

This prayer really touched me (apparently it is said at Jewish funerals, but I only encountered now) - I think just a few short years ago I would find it corny, not it resonates more than ever.

Birth is a beginning

Birth is a beginning, and death a destination;
But life is a journey, a going - a growing from stage to stage.

From childhood to maturity and youth to age.
From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion and then perhaps to wisdom.

From weakness to strength or strength to weakness
- and often, back again.
From health to sickness and back, we pray to health again.

From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding - from fear to faith.

From defeat to defeat to defeat - until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey,
Stage by stage - a sacred pilgrimage.

Birth is a beginning, and death a destination;
But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage
Made stage by stage - from birth to death to life everlasting.

Lots of Writers, Few Readers

Love what Gary Shteyngart says in the Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross about the dying culture of books, or more accuratety the dying culture of readers of novels and our mind unable to keep up with the amount of information being thrown at it (btw he isn't a technophobe).

Mr. SHTEYNGART: Yeah, no, it's so depressing. I feel like I'm insane to write novels. I'm like one of those, you know, those last Japanese soldiers on one of those islands who's like hiding in a cave and still shooting at the Americans, are advancing, he still hasn't heard that the emperor has surrendered. That's what I feel like all the time. I'm one of those guys.
...
But sometimes technology outpaces sort of the humanity's ability to process it. You know, I think that's where we are right now. I know that's where I am right now, because my mind has been sliced and diced in so many ways.
There's so many packets of information coming at me, especially in a city like New York, which is so dense with information no matter where you go. I mean, even our cabs have television screens and info centers built into the backseat.

You know, and it's just shocking. How is literature supposed to survive when our brain has been pummeled with information, sliced and diced with it all day long at work, if we're white-collar workers? We go home. Are we really going to open up a thick text with 350 pages and try to waddle through it? Or are we just going to turn on "Mad Men"? ...

GROSS: So what do you think of the idea of doing a trailer to sell a book? Mr.

SHTEYNGART: Well, nowadays nobody wants to read books, so anything you can do to sell book, whatever it takes to communicate to people that, you know, hey, books still exist. I mean, the trailer had nothing do with my novel, obviously, but the idea was to sort of get across, hey, Gary Shteyngart, he's OK, you know, he can make fun of himself.

Another thing that I think the trailer is sort of making fun of is that everyone is a writer now. You know, everyone's a writer. Nobody wants to read, but everybody wants to write. These MFA programs, we can't, you know, we can't turn them away. There's just millions of applicants. Everybody wants to be a writer. It's this huge culture of self-expression.

This is the hilarious trailer Shteyngart talks about, which I loved when it first came out:



Listen to the whole interview.

I also like what Shteyngart take on becoming one's parents:
"In the end, you really are them [even] with all of the things you've done to not be them."
Yup.

On Kitchens

It's been a while since I had a kitchen of my own. My mother, the master cook that she is, was very tepid on her invitations to let me use her kitchen. Plus it was a kosher kitchen and I was always afraid to use the wrong spatula with the wrong pan. It got confusing.
So it's nice to have a kitchen of my own. It's nice to be counted to be the one to put the meal on the table. In fact I have had some success already and drunk on sucess I want to try out more.

This was awesome:


Saute onions, garlic, spinach, mashrooms, and tomatoes. Then add feta. Nice and easy and delicious.

Writers Block of Sorts

I've been toying with the idea of starting a new blog. To shed the weight of this one. To start a new place to deposit my thoughts, as I find myself physically living (finally) in a new place. I still don't quite feel at home, but it's only been four days and I know it will take some time to get used to the apartment, the city, and the rthyms that both of us are now forced to share. Plus there is the rude intrusion of realty, two weeks ago I thought I was moving to NYC with a job all lined up, only to be told a week ago: that I was toiling under a delusion and that now, they cannot accomodate me working from home, where did I get that silly idea from?!(I don't know, maybe from the countless meetings we had on the matter! -P) Bitterness and financial worry aside, I think the cut off from the disfunctional company will do me good, maybe the swift kick in the pants. (BTW as I'm writing this a car hasn't stopped honking for about 10 minutes, wow, that a whole new level of asshole and preserverance (a warm welcome from the streets of Manhattan?).)
Anyway, the problem I'm having despite having a wonderful loving husband and others who love me is that I have mostly lost the lust for life. In some ways I thoought having to go through a death at your door step experience would remind me that life is short and to suck every little part of it out....instead I feel tired. Tired of almost everything and everyone. I feel like creativity of any kind has been zapped from me. I don't even think about potential death scenario happening.

Which brings me to the writers block. I have so many ideas, mostly self-centered, but some actually interesting that I want to explore and write about, and yet nothing. That lost of lust for life kind of killing off all the motivation in me. I can't even bring myself to sit down and write. The only way I can actually accomplish what I'm doing now, is by ignoring seeing the new Catherine Denueve movie (I decided to save for netflix, wasn't in the mood to deal with all that French). Logic being, that if I just decided to write without first making a plab to see the movie, I wouldn't be able to write. This line of behavior might be a problem in looking for a job.

So yeah maybe a new blog will do me a world of good. Or maybe it will remain dormant like this one.

Look Back At Dead Man

A.O. Scott reviews one of my favorite films, Dead Man.

It Gets Better

I really like the campaign "It Gets Better" of older people who are gay, lesbian, transgendered, or just want to support the people who are and prevent teen suicide. My former teacher (Mr. Johnson - the tall, black guy, smiling) happens to be in a Chrome video that features lots of different voices talking how it really does get better as you grow older. I actually think this applies not only to gay kids but to all people. Being a teenager is hard, but growing older really gives you prospective and lets you feel better about the skin you are in.



Anyhoo, I'm glad project like this can exist and give people hope and a connection when they can't find one with the people they are surrounded by.

This is the original veideo Mr. Johnson appears in:

The Motherfucker Is Dead!

Long Live US! Long Live New York!