Faith or "I am master of my domain"?

Does the thought of not being in control of your own life bother you sometimes? What if we do the things we do because of a pre-designed scheme? And the most annoying of them all...what if a person, just like us, same wrights, same intellectual capabilities, same species, is controlling our life?
I'm really pissed off when the thought of not being queen of my domain creeps up on me. But if I think about it a little bit, there are some occurrences that seem to have a seed in my memory, right before the actual event takes place...deja vu or a game of the mind?...And what if you happen to stumble across the narrator of your own life one day? What then? Wouldn't that be Stranger Than Fiction? ;)

Choose to forget?

When we are kids, everything seems new and exciting, everything has the potential to entertain us: a funny shaped cloud, a big greenish caterpillar with blue spikes, a small rock thrown from a slingshot, jumping into muddy puddles, collecting pebbles...as we grow up we tend to enjoy the things around us less and less, probably because we get used to reusing/re-seeing/retouching/rehearing/re-smelling the same things over and over. A kid would always get happy while seeing how big the moon is, but an adult would seldom enjoy the night sky queen and take a moment to think about how beautiful reality can be sometimes (the not-in-your-face-reality).

Would forgetting things for a while (so that we can discover them as new) bring us the enjoyment we had as children? Should we choose to forget sometimes some things in order to really feel them, not just react as with a conditioned reflex?

On the other hand, forgetting things can be quite frustrating forgetting whether or not you locked the door on your way out, forgetting your messenger password, forgetting to feed the dog, forgetting to meet with a friend, forgetting your boyfriend's/girlfriend's favourite colour, forgetting to reply to a message etc. etc. etc..
What would it be like to remember new things and people for only 10 minutes and then forget them? What would you do to connect yourself to the things that you instantly forget, but that you also need?
Get the answer from MEMENTO.

Card Eating ATM

The stupidity of it all...There are many individuals that just cannot act as normal people (or at least decent) in an awkward situation. Today I went to a BCR ATM to get some money because the University bureaucracy inflicted by none other than the almighty secretary made me pay 10RON for a grade history sheet needed for my Embassy interview. The secretary told me, like I was supposed to have the information tattooed from birth on my retina, that I had to run to three faculty members in order to get my grade sheet released (Romania is truly the country of "walk with the paper") and on top of that, she was going to stay only 30 minutes more (the programme was from 13:30 'till 14:00 in the same day, not 24 and 1/2 hours of work, no, only a half an hour... wow, I don't know how they do it, so many back-aching minutes flipping magazines and hair dye catalogues).

So..I had only 30 minutes to pay my tax and drop the papers in the secretary's lap. But of course that, the pay office was in another building and I had no money...

I was in front of the BCR ATM, took my card out, put it in the hole, then, suddenly the message "Temporary out of order" appeared on the screen, I pressed Cancel and after a few anxious moments, the ATM spat up 3/4 of my card :((((...yes, it bit my card. When I thought things couldn't possibly go worse, a man with glasses came shouting in my face "Can you read? Can you read?"...I answered "Yes" of course...The man was a BCR employee who started working at the back of the ATM the moment I put my card in it...he was blaming me for the fact that in broad daylight, with a person already using the ATM when I got there, I had the nerve not to ask the ATM if someone was working in it at that particular moment. The irony of it all, I was blamed for using the ATM the exact moment before it went out of order, without even a warning I might add.

Usually, there are two workers that do this kind of operation in broad daylight (I repeat), the one behind the ATM and the one in front of it, who is suppose to say "Hey stupid, in just a second, this here ATM machine is gonna slice your card if you stick it in now."

No money (I can get the money from my account, but I have to sign a request that needs to be approved by the Chief of the BCR office and that will take more then a while), no card (actually there is a card, 3 quarters of it), no paid tax, no way of solving the grade history sheet problem before Wednesday (because the 1st of May is on Tuesday), the sheet is supposed to be in the Embassy file by Wednesday afternoon, because on Friday morning I have my visa interview.

Ergo...Who's to blame for it all?...the bureaucracy?...no, because people create bureaucracy and implement it as well...the secretary who's never there when you need her and when you do catch her she's about to leave?...no, because I would leave to if I had her job and her salary...Am I to blame?...probably, because I'm running out of culprits here.

Hope you have a great end of the week...do yourselves a favour and watch out for card eating ATMs or shouting bank employees.

Best wishes,
Lumi

PS: The interview is for my USA visa. I'll be in Edgewood City near Lake Tahoe this summer, on a work and travel programme for students...wish me luck...because, as you might have noticed, I really need a little bit more good luck than I already have :).

Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around...

The JT excuse...

Pure jaded morning in slippery sheets

I've never noticed how shhh-vibrant the city is at 05:30 AM 'till this morning. The bus was full of quiet people, the streets were crawling with early-to-the-job-individuals...nobody was talking...except for yours truly and Aida. The pure-polluted morning made me remember, I don't know why, the Jaded Video from Aerosmith, the end of it actually, when the pretty dark-haired-green-eyed-disoriented girl opens a trapdoor and enters a great forest, flooded by the morning rays...I felt just like that.

Then I thought how things are used and reused (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle from Captain Planet, for those who used to or still watch it), even the props. In Justin Timberlake's latest car-crashing video, he has a scene where he sings for the audience (cliche for many music videos) and the background is amazingly similar to the background used in Jaded (but the latter is more artistically motivated, whereas in JT's video it's just so that Scarlett Johansson would have a reason to dress in the '20s/2007 chic style).

After the two backgrounds collided in my mind, a third similar one resonated in my head, former Puff Daddy's, present P Diddy's video featuring the lovely Jenifer Lopez's ASSets had a decor just like in Jaded...Circus, Circus (and I don't mean the Las Vegas location where Tu Pack was shot).

Great ideas come hardly, good ideas come slightly easier, bad ideas are always on our mind, we swirl in a pool of jaded mornings, we try to hide our eyes in slippery sheets, but it always seems that dogs wake me up in the morning and the idiot on the 5th floor that plays basketball in his room wakes me up in the afternoon.

Life is rapidly turning into a nebula for me and my home into a menagerie...Jeremiah has grown a lot and he even snaps his beak at people - be careful and don't piss off your turtle by exaggerating the head-caress period - and he has a company now, a doggy called Cookie. This dog is the reason why I have reevaluated my respect for mothers in general and for my own sweet mother in particular. I had to stay up a few nights and feed Cookie once every two hours, imagine to have to do that for a few hard-passing months with a small human-being...I don't know how mothers do it.

I woke up this morning after approx 9 minutes of sleep, I never felt so untired in my life, it's amazing how our mind can fool our body ;).

Sorry...really

Wouldn't it be so easy if we knew when to shut up, when to quit acting stupid, when to let our guard down, when to appreciate when someone changes so that we feel more comfortable, when to work, when to have fun, when to live, when to sleep...when to say "I'm sorry"...
Sadly, we don't know when, we do what we feel like doing and then endure the consequences.
Sometimes I think that my brain goes on vacation exactly when I need it the most. Stupidity (yet again this subject comes into focus) is a real threat for the human race...some of the smartest people I know, tend to do the stupidest of things...why is that? Why do we tend to ignore simple points in a meeting that drive it onto a slippery slope, but, still, continue on that path...afterwards we want to bang our head on the wall on the "In the mood for love" soundtrack (for those who know ;) ).

So...
I regret making you mad,
I'm sorry if I made you sad,
I know you had a sucky day
and didn't need me anyway.
Still knowing that...I made you worry,
about some things your brain
really needn't carry...
All I can say...I'm truly sorry.

Dead Poets Society

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

(William Henry Davies - "Leisure")


Like Dexter said...I feel my mind slowly slipping away. A hurricane of thoughts is stirring in my brain and the pain is physically experienced...no sleep, no food, no peace...I need a break...Rebreanu was right...time has no more patience. It's a fact that the Earth day is shrinking, we literally have less and less time. Is the Universe trying to tell us something, or is this an irrevocable sentence?...Maybe I shouldn't worry about how much time I have left and enjoy what the present time is offering me, but...well, I rarely act under the auspices of carpe diem and usually think about what has been and what is to come.
Who is the carpe diem type? Are you? Is the one next to you?
No...don't tell me, I don't need anyone's answer but my own :), you don't need anyone's answer, you don't need my answer, so I won't tell it...but I will give you the fortunate privilege of knowing that Dead Poets Society is a must...See it! Enjoy it!...and if you have seen it, see it again!

Fight for an answer

We get born, we eat, we shit, we fuck, we fall in love (if we're lucky), we think (if those around us are lucky) and we die...somewhere in between you got to ask yourself...Why? and What makes me as different as I pretend to be? Our ego is in a tight alliance with our mind...sad, because, the more we grasp intellectually the less we gain spiritually, the more we know the farther from the so-called happiness we run...sad, sad, sad.
The only people that are able to be happy in this life are the children, the idiots and the mad. Mircea Eliade said that only a mad man can survive mediocrity...I agree, because in the opinion of the almost-every-time-wrong majority geniuses, heroes and saints (the ones that really do something and the ones that really differ from the rest) were/are/and will be considered mad.
So...Why are we here?...Just pick and answer, if it satisfies you, than it's the right answer...
What makes me as different as I pretend to be?...Well, I guess my answer does...if I don't here one exactly the same...and if I do...well...I'll make a club...a Fight Club.

Oasis

Do you ever feel like you cannot take any more crap from anyone, that you suffocate more with each word that comes out of your conversation partner's mouth, that you cannot stand one more "Hi!How you've been?" or "What do you want to do after you graduate?" question? You're lucky if you don't periodically experience the excruciating, my-neurons-are-going-into-seizure-and-I'll-scream-if-I-here-one-more-life-related-question feeling that lately seems to cross my path very often. I was an angry ball ready to explode right before Easter, I couldn't hear one more word form anybody, I just wasn't capable of listening to those around me, who, sadly, happened to be my own beloved family whom, by the way, I hadn't seen for at least a month before this sudden self-arrival-at-anger...yes anger.
Sometimes, for no clear reason, just out of the blue, you get angry...this wasn't the case, because I knew exactly why I was so angry (surely, if you got to this part, you think that I probably had some philosophical/existential/psychological issues to be angry for...far from the truth)...I was angry with myself for being stupid for several days in a row, in the two weeks prior to Easter.
Stupidity, oh cruel and many times unavoidable stupidity... Beware! We can all fall into the allurement, of the almighty goddess of stupidity, but you're better of laughing about the fool's moment than tormenting yourself about it.
After the anger, after the regret, after a few sleepless nights, I finally found my mind's oasis and it only took me one trip to the library and a few bucks. The miraculous peace bringer was the late Petre Tutea, a man that spent 13 years in prison because he committed one crime: he said what he thought during the Security period, during Communism.
Reading his 322 words of wisdom I realised that anything can be accepted and reasonably dealt with if you assume what you are and analyse it without judgement...after all, being judgemental is just a privilege of the intelligent, because they have the necessary wit-weapons to defend their prejudice in front of any crowd...
...but the fact is: we are many times too cocky to handle, even for us.

Maybe tomorrow...

...wait and see, you never know how people and places can surprise you and maybe you'll learn something that will change your life forever or at least for enough time to make you realise the wrongs in it :)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Love is patient, Love is kind,
It does not envy, It does not boast,
It is not proud, It is not rude...

Love...don't you love it?!

Love is patient, Love is kind,
It does not envy, It does not boast,
It is not proud, It is not rude,
It is not self-seeking,It is not easily angered,
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil,but rejoices with the truth.
Love always protects, always trusts,always hopes, always perseveres.
Love bears all things, believes all things,hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
L o v e N e v e r F a i l s.

Corinthians 13 : 4 - 8

Biologically, love is defined as a mammalian drive, much like hunger or thirst.
Love is essentially an abstract concept, easier to experience than to explain, but everybody can define love as they please and feel; your definition doesn't have to ring a bell in general, it has to strike a fine cord in your cortex and your "heart". Actually you don't have to have a philosophical, psychological or scientific definition, you don't even have to be able to verbalize it, you just need to feel it and that's all that will matter to you. When you love you know it "balls to brains"...nobody else needs to know (probably except the one you explicitly and truthfully love), it suffices that you do.
For those of you who are lucky enough to be in love or were lucky to love or aspire to love one day, delight your eyes and love-bone and intrigue your thoughts with Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind.

The make-up in ones mind

If your thinking about mascara, eye-shadow...make-up in general, you're actually right. I'm not talking about taking a decision, I'm talking about covering intentions, expressions, thoughts, feelings and actions with a thick layer of human-shell-make-up, made especially for each person by each person. Lies - lots and lots of lies, deception - self made and sold to others, expectations - great expectations and the aim - the sole aim, it can be an aim for the evening or an aim for a life...all these can be achieved or simply lap-fallen by applying situation-self-generated-make-up.
Isn't it beautiful?! We have our very own make-up factory right in our mind, if only the female masses new this, the make-up companies would abruptly fall into deep bankruptcy :). The masses may not 100% be aware of such a self-made benefit, but there are quite a few who do know and they use it a lot, sometimes to trigger affection, other times for financial treats or prestige, but many times they just like to play. Life is truly a game, we play when we want and if it's possible, with whom we want. We're cats on the prowl, but when our guard is down, oh so scared and unprepared is the mouse tail we carry. To conclude this senseless-to-those-of-pure-purity post, you can find a lot of mind-make-up in Dangerous Liaisons.

Closer

...we crave, we want, we take...if we can

Seductive simplicity

Wouldn't it all be so simple if we could say things and really mean then , if we could take decisions without regretting them afterwards, if we could be honest one with the other, if we could enjoy other people's happiness, if we could learn not to be selfish when it comes to the faith of other persons, if we could let go when we know we should? Sometimes the simplest of things provide the most insightful discoveries.
We are actually a little afraid of simplicity, although we state that we sometimes crave for it...we are afraid because it can bring the unexpected and frightful "new" in our life, and we're not looking for the frightful "new", we're looking for the almighty "comfort"...and not just physical comfort, but mental comfort and emotional comfort. When life brings us face to face with the "different", the "unfamiliar" and the "unexpected" we are afraid to let go of the previously carefully gathered comfort.
Simplicity doesn't come easily, it is clearly more facile to complicate things than to simplify them, because we are unadmittedly afraid of the seductive and hard achievable simplicity.

Hurts to be a real human

Pain...it is a fact that what the mind feels recoils on the body...if we weren't so primitive, if we'd already reached the sublime wisdom, we wouldn't probably need this problematic and feeble multi-"tissued" shell that we call a body. The body suffers when the mind suffers, the mind suffers if the body suffers, it's a vicious circle that we are imprisoned in. Today is, as you might have already noticed, a painful day for my mind and especially for my body. If you happen to play nocturnal paintball, do yourself a favour and watch out for the ground-dug gutters.
Sometimes the mind doesn't notice things, like an eventually broken rib, or a ripped knee tissue and that really works in our favour...sometimes. If you were bitten by a shark in the leg, you wouldn't feel the magnitude of the bite in the first seconds, because your body is designed for survival and the neglect of the instant excruciating pain would give you enough time to escape.
You are probably wondering where does all this go to? If I haven't already made my point for you...the actual point is...we work as machines, we think as machines (sometimes), but we feel as we feel...when humans are so wrapped in this "machinistic" world we live in and when they start neglecting feeling we all enter the dangerous process of "dehumanisation"...Do we truly want that? Seek a little help in Equilibrium.

To surreal or not to surreal...that is the...issue.(Pi Trailer - Darren Aronofsky)

Let's start with the basics:
Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

The fact is, if you look closely and carefully, every smart and intriguing film that has made you really think a little bit about your life's meaning, about the connectivity of it all, about why the Earth has three types of rotations (yes three), about why your name is Luminita , about so many things, that you probably didn't even notice until a certain scene or a certain frame, has had some surrealistic elements in it. What is in fact surrealism?...It is escape, the escape of the imprisoned idea or thought that you didn't even know you had, it is a sublime visual element that makes you wonder; the beauty about surrealism, as the above written definitions prove, is that it allows you to gracefully run on the fields of no-sense-can-come-out-of-this and return to reality with a new life aim or meaning. Isn't it amazing?!Surrealism is the main excuse for madness and madness is the fuel of surrealism, I love them both. The power of ideas has changed and will continue to change the world every single day, we are mice in the maze of ideas and surrealism is sometimes the hologram of the cheese. See PI!