Winter architecture of the Capitol

Reading Drive your Plough over The Bones of the Dead, which is really hitting some interesting notes - it is about an old man dead to begin with, which is hitting all the wrong notes in this time of my life, but there is also a lot about loneliness, snow, being away from people, knowing you're right, loving the animals and hating the hunters, loving the dogs, making a stand... I know the book gets even bloodier, but for now, it's pulling me back into that still-frame of my consciousness, that fictional moment of my power, when I am sitting on a train with my hand in my bag, fondling the fabric of my banner. In my half-written novel that is a very important moment, but right now for me, it is a very true moment. It is even possible it will grow into a mental palace type of a moment. And this book tastes similar, when I am reading it and the the weather is dull and grey and there are no colours, because winter. 

It's ... Well, it's nine in the morning and I've slept like the dead, crashing at yet another Maja in my life, which for the purposes of this entry we shall call LjubljanaMaja or SurferMaja, but which the General will forever call after a dry pastry that she was infamous at making. She's the hospitable type and one can tell, because her place is ... Well... Hospitality, and drapes, were probably the reason I slept so well. I seem to be able to sleep a lot better away from home as I do in my own bed, because I'm too edgy over dad. Dad had to see doctors three times yesterday, which is the cosmic opposite of going to coffee with friends three times or seeing three Renaissance paintings... It is so depressing, exhausting and strainous, it makes you want to cry. The waiting, the light, the half-baked, well meaning but soooo narrowminded doctors. I cannot but place my faith in them, because I was raised to respect authority, but every time i suggest anything, it gets dismissed and I believe it is me who is wrong. No, this was the second time I was right and at eleven in the evening, the third time he had to go in, they finally found that, yes, the catheter IS clotting up with oils and filth his body is excreting via liquids. I said that's the most viable option, considering he is much better now and he produces water just fine, and the catheter is just fine, so it must be a mechanical failure. And urine can get fairly greasy, especially after you've been sick.

An hour long breakfast later, during which I've chatted with her roommate about journalism and customers that pissed me off ... I need new woes, I find ... I am going to set out now, into the foggy, smoggy morning of the Capital. I was in a rotten mood yestereve, brought nigh to tears in class when I kept my silence for two hours and after I spoke, someone tutted behind me, muttering, oh, fuck, here she's going to start again... Usually I can ignore it or it even amuses me, but yesterday I was too tired and stressed and the fucking vendor machine ate my last coin, so I was unable to get sugar and caffeine, which I sorely needed. Really, sorely. Not in a spoilt, vain, pleasurable way, but like the hardcore drugs that they were. I opted for not buying a texbook I was supposed to buy and got myself a can of coke and wholewheat cookies with chocolate instead. That saved me. I was back on track. Even though the lecturer picked on the media earlier and I did not fight him on that front. You do not fuck with the media with me. I will defend it till I am unconscious on a bloody tile.

After class I met with LjubljanaMaja and we made a round though the old city, which was dressed in dense fog and garnished with blazing diamonds of Christmas street illumination. They really put a lot of lights up. There are also lots of stands, some of which are adorable, but many of which are just booze and expensive gift program that I can't really relate to. Six bucks hamburgers. Okay. We veered back, I got a hotdog on the all-night train-station vendor and got home, where we talked to about ten or eleven and I passed out. I slept A LOT. Dad sounded okay in the morning. The General left four messages and two missed calls, worried where I might be since the last time I checked in when I went to pee ar six, the adorable mutt. Then he went to sleep and I hate it when he sleeps, because he keeps his phone on and I can't send him photos or texts, knowing it'll wake him every time. I am literally jealous of sleep when it comes to him. If I was at home, I would wake him up after five hours and say: sleep has had you enough, I want you for myself now. That is usually followed by half an hour of crankyness, but mostly I don't care.. Darn the sleep :)

Off to have some dates now, with some big city friends, then it's back to the lectures. Last time we have sociology. About time. I'm getting bored. Eco-crime and ecology crimefighting doesn't sound like a too sexy a class, but I may be wrong.. All in all, regardless of how naive and fast-forward the lecturers at times, I am learning a lot. I mean, I wanna know more. Tell me more. Tell me everything. 

The other day the lecturer argued with me about the free will. I am a great advocate of free will, but he thought I was being naive. I responded that as a white woman, I think there is no limit to what I might achieve if i set to it. I am aware that women of color have is less easy and particularly 3rd world countries females. But he asked what if i wanted to move somewhere and I wouldn't get a job for three months?

I stopped the argument there. I did not have the heart to tell him that a) I've not had a job in a decade, nor have I particularly wanted one. I may choose to find one now, because I feel like shopping.

And b) I live an existence that transcends boundaries, jobs, cultures and obstacles - I am a creative. moreover, I am a portraitist. Wherever I go, I will find a job. It may not be a job of a brain surgeon or a college professor or a pharmaceutical company PR, because that is not what I think I would ever enjoy. I enjoy photographing people, drawing people, interviewing people... and occasional castle or a camera or a rescue dog. (Which reminds me...) It is not likely I will ever get rich on this, because that has never been my reward for the portrait. If I wanted to be rich, I imagine I'd go into stockbroking or something. As an artist, I don't think there's a city, empire, tribe or orbital station that wouldn't have me. It is scary, especially for a capitalist society, I know, to think that I actually like to work for food. Food's awesome. 

:D A pick of treats from Sanela's BD coffee, where my gift was photographing it and her treat was an apple cake slice and it was perfect.

Been two weeks since I even touched my text. I woke up today with the line:
    "Have you no heart?!"
    "Not on me right now, no."

Mockingjay and Macbeth review

Watched two heavy movies in a row, both with My Maja and Macbeth with Drej also. Though both were  flawed, I have to say I really loved them equally. They were monumental in the unusualness of their approach.

First Mockingjay, the last part of a trilogy or whatever that’s called when really you have four movies for some reason. That one surprised me. Perhaps because my expectations were really low; or perhaps because a lot of people whose opinion is always wrong said it was bad. Slow, long, no action, weird… Yes, please, give me slow, long, no action weird YoungAdults novel featuring a hot girl in a Dystopian future, where bow and arrow and a good propaganda team are a way to go and it makes you want to kill yourself.

Thing is, the emotional parts were really emotional. The scary parts were really scary. The tragic/angry parts were really tragic. I even like some of the adjustments they made from book to movie that are better in the movie. I imagine there would have been a lot more of Philip Seymour Hoffman if he hadn’t died, but I’ve been dreaming about him a lot, so that’s okay. I’ll say I prefer the movie to the book. Odd, I know. But I never really liked the books. They were written for a young audience, describing truly awful, horrible things. The very last line in the books is a horrible reference. How does anyone really recover from such an ordeal (except they do not), forced to survive? We are such strange species. Plutarch says it very well.

The movie, as it has been said, celebrates using your own mind to make decisions. Even though most of the time Katniss does things out of despair and like a true defeatist, everyone around her does not. Everyone else is really passionate (except perhaps for Haymitch, the surrogate father figure, who just sort of hovers nearby.) Jena Malone is awesome as the crazed, vindictive banshee, Julianne Moore as the Evil Queen, Peeta, clawing his way through his insanity; poor Gale and his manly idiocy.. J-Law is flawlessly beautiful thorough the entirety of her journey, her hair always perfectly washed and not a scar on her face – in the book she’s almost completely deformed by now – the only emotional conveyance done by her chin. She’s like a spectral zombie, going mindlessly from one scene to the next, long reduced to a symbol, no blood left, no will to live tomorrow. Even the world around her has turned to shades of metallic. I thought that was really well done.

I also loved seeing the Tokyo anti-flood drainage cavern. That shit’s amazing!

And the most terrible thing of it all – one that will haunt me for a very long time and am glad I’ve never thought of that on my own – that tar thing, those victims in the net or plastered to the yard …  That was genuinely beyond awful. I could never imagine anyone I cared about dying such a death, though luckily those were just extras and the heroes moved quickly on.

There was a line in a book that wasn’t in the movie that I appreciated: during the round table in the end, where Coin proposes the last Hunger Games, Katniss wonders if this was exactly how it was like 76 years ago – some tired, broken, angry people voting on a rotten way to make someone pay for rivalry.

 

Macbeth was almost identical in the way that it was done: the minimalistic framing in a barren wasteland, ghost sliding though a terrible story that couldn’t possibly end well for anybody, least of all the victors. Once the three of us, which I call the ‘hot strict teacher’, the ‘stillwater runs deep’ and ‘the village idiot’ and my cocoa sat down, I said: I hope there’s a happy ending! … and the two of them gave me the most startled of looks. :D Hihi.

I’ll have to brush on my Shakespeare and sieve through the source material, because my biggest boggle with this one was a missing midriff, a chapter missing between the good guy Macbeth and the loon. Also, I know that we should all be thoroughly familiar with everything the Bard man has ever written, but some of the character portrayal was done very poorly. The witches, for example. I always assumed there had to be three: the mother, the maiden and the Hag. In the end there were five already. Why? And what motivation did they have to stir shit up? All they did was mess with people, but their motivation is never explored. Was it for sport? Was it they hated doing it but had to? Was it a test and they hoped it would end differently? It’s never even touched upon and I have no idea. I always assumed that those stories were based on actual historic events, alas. It’s all great fiction. Or bad fiction with an excellent character study, if you are a really cynical student of humankind.

Macbeth is the role of a good soldier with ambition of greatness and a slight mental illness. He does good soldiering for a good king and is well rewarded and well respected. He is like all smart men, though: he cannot see a rest in this design: he cannot stop thinking he would either be a better king or he deserves it more for reasons he cannot think of just now, but surely some idea will present itself at some point. He has a fiery, ambitious wife, who also seems to really hate the fact they are majestic people, but stuck in a barren wasteland and surely there is more to life. After fucking in a makeshift local flavor church, they slaughter the guest king and nobody really questions anything much. As if nobody could put two and two together at a time. Or maybe it’s just illustrated, not so much narrated.

Then there’s a piece missing. Other than riding proudly to the castle and the coronation, there is nothing to show that being a king might be fun, although the sash IS pretty. (In fact all of the costumes in this movie are amazing. Except the high white collars of the noblewomen. I wasn’t sure about those.) Even the sound of the costumes is astonishing. The sound of the Queen’s jewelry in one scene was as elemental as the sparks in another scene - a long coastal shot in the dark of people standing very still – and you just know, from the very first spark you see and hope it was just a firefly, that the pyres have been lit. Though at least we’re spared the screams.

Right off the coronation, Macbeth is going nuts already, sitting on the floor, thinking how he’s actually done all he’s done for someone else’s kids. Kids or lack thereof is really strong here, but I don’t know why. Like someone thought it should be, but not why. He already makes enemies of his most loyal friends and has them reduced to ghosts. He’s already making most sense, conversationally and emotionally, when he’s communing with ghosts and apparitions. It’s mostly downhill from there – the wife dies for no apparent reason other than a broken heart and everyone else wants to see Macbeth killed, including himself. So Macduff comes and does that. I wonder if in the end they actually left his body to rot in the field. It’s what I would do.

There’s a line I missed and will look up, because it sounded really lovely – the first part of the prophecies about Birnam wood coming to the, whatitsname Hill. Which happens when Macduff burns it and soot flies.

All in all, even with all the carnage, it’s an incredibly well shot movie, every scene a wonder to behold. Especially the scenes which are so poorly lit that you can’t make but faintest shapes out of. I’ve mentioned some retarded critic stating that it was filmed so awfully low-budget that some scenes happen in a friggin’ tent and most other in a desert that is highlands. Clearly that critic’s never seen a movie before. Scottish weather itself played a role. I believe the best part of this film, other than the way they talked, was how like a dream, like a stage you watch from the very last row it was. Terrible characters doing terrible things and coming to terrible fates… You don’t get movies like that often enough. Or you do and they make a mess. Pompous minimalism is a very difficult thing to achieve tastefully.

Watching Marvel's Jessica Jones. Other than the fact she sleeps in perfect makeup and uses the wrong camera for night spying, I'm 20 minutes in, nothing's happened yet and it's awesome. Just the sort of noir I'm feeling lately. Kind of makes me miss New York, but you cunnat missa place you've nevah been.

P.S. Good poster design

 

It just occurred to me why a pullover is called a pullover. Tch.

Good lecture to an end

Been to the last of my favorite lectures - the criminal psychology, something that I've enjoyed immensely. Not just because the lecturer is pretty and knows very well how to lecture - the way she talks I manage to type fully formed sentences in my notes. I'm a good typist, but sometimes they lecture too quickly and the words are so smart and long I skip vowels or their forms and adjectives entirely. But mostly, it's a subject matter that gets to me, because it's full of stories and things I can relate to. There was a lecture about security agency management, which was also fun and good, but I didn't see any of myself in that area. Pathology of the mind, however, well, that's just right up my alley, innit?

I can now name all the stages of stress/trauma that I went through last week, plus all their consequences in timely order :D  health issues are still ongoing *cough*cough*sneeze*sneeze*

There were several chapters that hit home. Not so much trauma and stress of police force employees, as we are taught to manage such organizations, but also the history of psychological profiling, how it develops, how it can fuck up the pursuit, how it still has a lot to learn and how you can really make a difference, knowing certain theoretical aspects of an aproach.

Example. Last chapter was the Forensic Interview with Children. From ages 3 up, to teenagehood, there is actually a way to engage a child in a witness report. If you know what you are doing. If you don't, you can not only fuck up the interview, the testimony, the clues, the conviction, but also the kid. I remember there was a movie about a famous case in which interviewing children went terribly, terribly wrong. It's not that kids are bad witnesses, they're just very different witnesses. It's not that they lie or want to bullshit, it's that they are afraid of displeasing you and cannot understand abstracts. So, if you ask a kid: When that mister touched you, were you wearing short pants or long pants? And they will really want to answer you, because you are an adult, and so the answer... but he never touched me... -will not even come into consideration. Small kids also like to poke insides of things with their fingers, so when they put fingers into holes of dolls it's not necessarily to indicate intercourse - also, because they don't even fully comprehend that the doll represents them. And so forth. It's a long list of very logical, careful rules you have to follow and if you know what you're doing, kids make excellent witnesses. But we only know that now, after a long trial-and-error period, which may not even be over yet. Saves us from bad psychiatrists. They can be awfully sure of themselves and nothing you argue will make them see they're wrong in their approach.