Tasks #88

"If something should ever happen to me" No one will talk about my eventual death with me. Eyebrows furl and voices turn icy. Conversation dries up like Popsicle drippings on concrete during the summer…the comfort evaporating and sucking out easy being. When you speak about your upcoming demise to others, people move away from you. Don’t get me wrong…I haven’t been given a timeline by any outstanding authority or anything. It’s not like I’ve caught some outlandish plague from all my traveling. I don’t have cancer. But a very close friend of mine is scared right now, and her experience is a signpost for me to honor my mortality. In my line of business, I am bombarded daily with stories of woe. Lately, I have taken up the daily affirmation of naming something MISSING from my life for which I am grateful. It starts out like this… I am happy I DON’T have: a cheating husband a venereal disease a yellow sweater a job with the AGI I am happy right now that I don’t have a disease (THAT I KNOW OF). Yet. I am also very much aware that I am on borrowed time. Perhaps it is my past and recent relationships, exposure to cultures that don’t pretend that death is somehow an avoidable family gathering, or maybe I’ve inherited some death gene. What ever the reason, I know that I am going to die. Which doesn’t make me drink gallons of Jack Beam, shoot up powder into the fragile rivers of my nasal cavity, or pick up men with facial hair in bars for mediocre nightly romps. Instead, I tend to gush out heartfelt in-case-something speeches akin to diatribes acted out in lukewarm syncopation on Days of Our Lives. It makes sense that I wanted to create a letter to my loved ones if “something-should-ever-happen-to-me.” I am sending a hard copy to three people I trust just to hold onto when the event occurs…What went into this letter? A whole lot of gush. Click here if you’d like a teaser of the letter… In all honesty, writing this thing took months! Not because I tend to run from ambiguous situations (what can be less ambiguous than death?) but because my words never satiate the gathering mass of emotions continuously multiplying regarding living in this world, regarding loving you. Words insufficient. The things I don’t say as gracious as the ones I choose. Perhaps I’ll revisit this creation from time to time to pay homage, or edit in effort to accurately capture any recession or growth experiences along the way. Perhaps I’ll let it gather the wise barnacles of a time capsule wafting on an ocean floor.
What would you say…if something should ever happen…to me? To you? Simply: I tried to love

Task 77: Watch Three Foreign Films

I don’t go out to see movies all that much, maybe 7 or so a year. Going to see a movie, now costing around $10, maybe a bit shy of a ticket to a community theater, is an occasion. When I do, I usually stroll over to The Grand Cinema, a nonprofit extremely small co-op film house within a mile of my apartment. It’s even rarer to see a movie with subtitles. But, then I saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last spring and was awed. When it came to comprising my list, I wanted to open up my endorsement of modern arts by watching at least three foreign films at home. I started this task numerous times and failed. It appear I am too restless of watch foreign films at home. Alone and left to my own devices, I get up and out of my seat so many times that I miss too much, thus explaining my interest (I did make it through Cheuking Express in August). But for some reason, this weekend, I nailed out three foreign films: From France (Avenue Montaigne) Afghanistan (The Beauty School of Kabul) and Senegal (Binta and the Great Idea).

I am now hooked. The French film surprisingly bubbled. The love scenes sparkled with creativity, yet realism. I cheered for the drama queen. The Beauty school reminded me how women’s bodies can unleash healing, and simple acts, like a shampoo, can tip the scale of transformation, giving freedom, offering empowerment. And then there was little Binta…Binta and the Great Idea. The movie entails a young girl attempting to figure out how to help convince her cousin’s father to send her to school. The film weaves themes of diversity, and community through the universal hope discovered in children. Context Matters.
In a scene where Binta is coloring wide sweeping scene, she says”
I like to use the color green
But I like yellow a lot, too
But my favorite color…(and here the camera zooms on a filling in stick figure)
…is the color of skin
The words glued themselves to my core.
.
I am more in tuned with characters of foreign films, noticing their body language, the ecstasy or despair emanating in their eyes, the nonverbal unrequited interest or assertive denial. It is easier to empathize. To feel. Not to think or analyze, but purely experience it. Watching foreign films demands my entire attention, that I remain presently processing each moment.
Yep. Context matters. Where you are impacts Who you are. When is the last time you took a step out of your preferred medium?