Bothered

I had a chance encounter about two weeks ago that has left me feeling bothered.  I'm ill-equipped to understand what I have come into contact with.  I don't feel totally comfortable writing about it, but I want to.

I met Robert Kroetsch, and there were ideas floating around, he was writing...

I heard a few days later that he was killed in an accident.

What is this experience telling me?  Is it initiating me into something?

Mostly it is just devastating.  It is so strange to have been in his creative space just before he died, why then?

Crow Jane

I heard someone dedicate a song to Skip James once, 'This ones for you Skip, wherever you are.'

That 'wherever you are' implies so much.  You don't need to know what they meant exactly.  It makes Skip James seem mythical.

The last show

Gunnar Fischer

Gunnar Fischer died this week, Bergman's cinematographer prior to Sven Nyqvist.  He lived to be a hundred.

Like its always out the window

The Devil, Probably

I've seen this film twice now, it is equally profound and disturbing.  Bresson has found a way to anticipate issues to the point of negating certain arguments about them.  Like Tarkovsky said, he is afraid of nothing, that includes complete engagement with the futility of life.  I'm not sure how he reaches inside so totally while all the while constructing his films so that they are often difficult to access.

Between Diary of a Country Priest, Au Hasard Balthazar, Pickpocket, A Man Escaped and The Devil Probably, it seems like Bresson had a handle on things.

Free Dirt

Afloat

Earlier this week I finished reading this unusual and great little novel by Guy De Maupassant.  It follows a casual yachting trip from the diary of the traveller.

The writing shifts constantly between societal critiques and gorgeous sensory descriptions of the voyage and travels of the character.  There is a great deal of food for thought in Afloat, there are some universally fascinating insights as well as the building of a character who is mysterious and interesting.  De Maupassant divulges very little personal information about his character, mostly you get to know the man through his opinions (which are sometimes equally agreeable and disagreeable) and the few facts that are given to the reader don't seem to be essential.  It is a wonderful presentation.

Here is one of my favorite passages:

It's true that sometimes I feel such a horror of living that I long to die, so intensely do I suffer from the relentless monotony of every landscape, of people's faces and their thoughts.  I find the mediocrity of the universe appalling, revolting, I'm disgusted by the paltriness of everything, overwhelmed by the utter worthlessness of the human race.  And at other times, I take a delight in everything, like an animal.  If my restless, tormented, hyperactive mind soars full of hope toward things that are beyond our grasp and having realized the futility of its efforts, falls back into utter contempt of everything, my body hurls itself like an animal into the intoxicating pleasures that life has to offer, I love the sky like a bird, forests like a prowling wolf, rocky crags like a leaping chamois, the long grass to roll in or gallop over like a horse, and clear water to swim in like a fish.  Quivering inside me, I can feel all sorts of animal instincts, all the obscure desires of the lower species of creatures.  I love the earth as they do and not like you men, I love it without admiring it or turning it into poetry.  I don't feel uplifted, I just love it like a brute beast; it's a deep, despicable, holy love for everything that lives and grows, everything you can see, for it all brings peace to my mind while distracting my eyes and my heart, yes, everything:  days, nights, rivers, seas, storms, forests, the dawn, the sight of women and their flesh.