Out of comfort zone

Some time ago I saw The Clouds of Sils Maria and the film made a big impression on me. I liked Kristen Stewart, her very contemporary looks with sadness and mystique mixed in. Now, comes another film with the same actress and the reviews say that this is her best role to date. Mind you, she is only 27, so there will be more films with the label “Kristen Stewart the best ever!!”. At least I think she has got it in her. I will also follow the film director of both of the films Olivier Assayas.

                                 

Before I found out what the film is all about I decided to see not so much the film as Kristen Stewart. It was in the post hospital time and I postponed the movie going for a short while. During this time, the film lost its popularity and was screened only very late finishing after 11:00 pm.  Actually, the film was not popular at all, maybe because it was advertised as a horror film, even if it should have been more accurately described as a thriller. Neither of the descriptions enthused me to see it, but I wanted to see the young actress in her best role. While I hesitated if I should go to a horror movie so late in the day, the film stopped to be screened in my local cinema. I was determined, though, and made a brave decision to step out of my comfort zone and see the film no matter what. Of course, I am mocking myself and my set ways. As the result, I had a fun day. I travelled to Paddington to see the film, then walked to Woollahra for lunch at my favourite Polish restaurant. I did the fair bit of walking making my new smart pedometer happy. It actually complemented me on my walking achievements. My good Fitbit Alta. I think we may become friends as it talks to me nicely inviting for a stroll.

I was a bit apprehensive when the film started. The first scenes were meant to scare the viewer. Maureen, who is a personal shopper and a spiritist medium, goes to the house of her dead twin brother,Lewis, to make contact with him. One makes contacts with people on the other side in darkness, of course. I started to breathe deeply to settle my nerves, it was really scary, but everything about the scary scenes was very stylish. The whole film was stylish and I loved this aspect of it.

There are few streams in the film cleverly linked to form something like a beautiful psychological collage. The major stream is Maureen trying to get in contact with her dead brother. Then there is the personal shopper stream with Maureen buying the top fashion items for her client, the famous fashionista Kyra. Those scenes may be more for women interested in high fashion. However, I think that they may be universally appreciated for their mood and aesthetic appeal. Another stream, the trip from Paris to London on a Euro Star train builds incredible atmosphere of fear. Smart phone texting is the tool used to scare us. It does, and how! The clicking of writing the messages is better than any other soundtrack. The double question marks also work well in building the suspense. Maureen exchanges messages with an anonymous. Is it her brother, somebody meaning harm, or her other self?

Motorbike rides through Paris are great and Kristen Stewart looks fantastic in the helmet, moving through crowded streets with high speed and confidence. Energising scenes, one moves more energetically and elegantly remembering those pictures and the soundtrack.

                                      

I love the finesse of the film and the subtle links between the film elements. Like the background song by Marlene Dietrich – The Carpenter Song, DasHobellied. The song is about a carpenter whose plane is like destiny levelling all lives with the same indifference not considering importance and status. At some stage of the film we find out that Lewis, Maureen brother was a carpenter and that this profession, considered peaceful, was supportive of his heart condition. Another scene the girlfriend of Lewis lovingly smoothing a wooden element with the plane confronting us with our mortality.  Such is this film. 

Social media is another element of the film collage. There is Skype, Internet searches, text messaging, You Tube. All ways to communicate with others across the world. But do they help us to connect with others or only exchange messages?  I live in such a world myself. There is an element of loneliness in spite of those very advanced ways of making communication easy. We communicate and exchange ideas with people we do not know and never will meet. Does it matter? Perhaps not. My experience is that we may live and communicate face to face for many years with somebody never really knowing the person. We only know our internal image, we create a person the way we like it to be. So, what is the difference between anonymous and real? I perhaps went too far in my explorations, so I stop here.

The last scene of the film gives a clear answer to Maureen’s questions. The answer is given be a superpower, her brother, herself?

I need to see the film another time to discover elements I missed the first time. It will not be soon, maybe when I get myself a Netflix and a smart TV?  

WD40 for the soul

                                                          

Yes, I am harping on the comment which was most likely made with good intentions. Sorry about it, but it is too good to pass.  Apparently, my soul is in danger of corrosion as I look backward too much. I do not want this to happen, my soul to corrode, I mean, so I started to think about how I could protect myself from it. I started to look for WD40 to save my soul. Turning to google for suggestions it gave me some religious answers, but I do not think that the Anonymous leaving the comment, meant I should turn in this direction. I am myself not inclined to go there. So, I am a bit at a loss. Not looking backwards was given to me as a clue, another clue was The Intern, a film with De Niro.

Hmm…Looking backwards is something I do not want to stop as I am just writing a story of my first love and I am enjoying the process. I am also doing some self-analysis as I go and I, self-centred me, always liked the process. This time it is even quite enlightening, so I will not stop. At least not for a while. This does not stop me to look forward. I am prepared to pay more attention to the future especially that my trip to Poland is around the corner, if I am lucky that is. Polish and Irish have a lot in common, it seems, so maybe I will experience the luck of the Polish? I am planning to go! I want to go! There are also some things to look forward to like renovating the bathrooms. For that one needs to be a little masochistic so I hesitate, especially after my troublesome experience with the kitchen renovations.

Improving my bridge is another good, looking forward thing especially for a learner type of people I belong to. There is a possibility of some achievements there. This is another of my values I cannot shake off. Even if I try, it is still somewhere dormant in me, so I resign to be an aspiring bridge achiever.

For my soul to flourish I need love and friendship. This is a tricky area as it needs others to play fair with you. With life experience, I lost my rose colour glasses and see things more clearly or, should I say, less naively. But the disappointments do not hurt so much as they used to and my first more accurate impressions protect me a little better than they used to.  I have not given up on new friendships, but I do not expect that much depth or commitment as I did in the past. Even if it is not ideal, I still look forward to semi-friendships and I find them. So, what do you say, Anonymous, is there anything else I could do for my soul here?

Creativity is also good for the soul and I create a bit. I write my posts. I take out the love objects from my heart vitrine, I look and them, think about them, recall my memories and write about them. I knit a sweater for myself and intend to finish this tapestry I started some years ago. From time to time I create a special meal.

My idea of bliss - friends, conversation, little wine and good food

                                                

I pay a lot of attention to beauty, another healthy food for the soul, pure WD40. I go to exhibitions, art galleries whenever I can. I would do much more of it if I lived in Europe, but when I am there I will catch up, maybe skipping Vienna 😉. I flaneur as well. Maybe I should read poetry? Never liked it much, but I know this would be good for me. New gentle resolution?

Pleasure… I definitely have to have pleasure in my life. Here is one sore point for me and I am not sure how to solve it. Anonymous, could you help? I really like intellectual discussions and I have problems with finding partners who would be interested in the same things as me. I have been often accused of complicating things and this is exactly what I am missing, discussions with a person who would not mind some complications to talk or write about. I remember somebody saying “why would one like to simplify things when one can so beautifully complicate them”. Was it Hasek in The Good Soldier Svejk? Do you remember, Lech?

There are many little things that give me pleasure, little prosecco, a flower, cleaning up some mess in my home, giving to others, sharing meals with friends, reading, writing, listening to Polish radio and its political news. This is a doubtful pleasure, maybe just the opposite to a pleasure, but I seem to miss it a lot when I do not have internet. Let’s call it my favourite vice. My soul needs that.

I do not think, Anonymous, that you should worry about my soul any more. I refer to you few times here, but this is only an issue of form of this post. You may say, I used your comment to my purposes. Your comment triggered of some thoughts and it was a good opportunity for me to do a self-check. I am satisfied with the results.  So, thank you.

All quite openly, publicly and legally

I am trying hard not to stereotype people, events or countries. But I have emotions and for now it is difficult not to make some generalisations triggered off by this special, to me, book The Hare with Amber Eyes. The thoughts and emotions are about Austria and the Austrians. 

My knowledge about the country was never deep. Now, I discovered few more things, but I still know very little about it. For many years, it has been a country of Strauss and waltzes, Sacher torte, Saltzburger Nockerl, Mozart and Vienna the town from where my engagement and wedding rings came from. It was difficult not to be sentimental about the whole Austria and loved it.

                              

                       

I knew about Anschluss and I thought, poor Austrians, they suffered so. I thought that it was some common denominator between Poland and Austria. Not really. Hardy anybody in Poland welcomed Nazis.  Many Austrians, however, did welcome them with open arms and voluntarily enlisted in Hitler army and organisations.

Was Ted, one of my Austrian colleagues from IBM, one of them? I met this older, nervy person in my first days in Australia. His behaviour was strange, but for me at that time so many things were new and seemed strange. I noticed his shaking hands and shifty gaze. It took a while before he decided to unburden himself and confess that he was flying over Poland in bomber planes dropping those bombes that destroyed Polish towns and killed Polish people. He was conscripted by force, of course, but was force really applied? This I will never know, but now I ponder over Ted’s decision and motivations. It must have been rather difficult for him to meet a Pole so many years after the horrible events. He must have been a very young person, but my compassion for him diminished with my increasing knowledge of the times and Austrian eagerness to join their oppressors.

                                                              

                                  

There were many Jews in Austria, influential, wealthy people. People of the banks and lovers of fine arts. Their homes were full of museum pieces. They appreciated beauty of their possessions and they had means to acquire them. When in March 1938Anschluss of Austria happened, there were still many Jews in Europe. They were people who could not believe in reality of anti-Jewish proclamations of Hitler. Such is the power of hope that humanity will prevail. Most of the ones who could not believe that the world will change that much finished their life in concentration camps.

All Jewish possessions in Vienna had to be taken care of. Germans are a very methodical and practical people (forgive my generalisation). In my mind, this is actually a positive characteristic, but this time it was applied in a frightening way. In Vienna after the Anschluss both Germans and Austrians approached the issue of the valuable Jewish possessions openly, publicly and legally. The registers were created methodically dividing the items according to their fiscal and museum value into groups: Hitler’s personal, German Reich, Austria and the least valuable ones for sale at public auctions at Dorotheum. It was all legal, so if any of the original owners would survive a holocaust and saw his old possessions in a home of a respectable Austrian he would know that his host is a rightful owner of say, a portrait of the Jewish grandmother of the guest. So is the Austrian state the rightful owner of many Jewish treasures. Let’s take The Woman inGold. The film told us the story about a very determined lawyer and a woman with a lot of chutzpah to recover the family heirloom from the very reluctant Austrian State to return to the rightful owner what was really taken from them by force. How many such things Austria calls their own and proudly displays in Kunsthistorishes Museum, Leopold Museum, Albertina or Museum of Applied Arts and others?

Suddenly my desire to go to Vienna and visit its museums and art galleries diminished considerably. 

Moische, you get yourself a goat

In Poland, there many Jewish jokes. I have been always against them as I take it as a sign of anti-Semitism. And here I am going to write about a typical Jewish joke which so much applies to my life right now. It goes like this: 

Moische is very unhappy with his home situation. His place is crowded beyond his capability to cope with it. There is his wife there, his in-laws, his five children, the dog and two cats, ten chickens and a little pig in a very small place. Moische is so depressed and almost hysterical about it all that he needs some help. Only the Rabbi can help.  Off he goes to see the Rabbi and cries out:

Oh, Oh, Rabbi. I can not cope with my life anymore. Please help me. In my very small house there is my wife, my in-laws, my five children, the dog and two cats, ten chickens and a little pig. I cannot live like that anymore. The children cry, my in-laws shout at each other, my wife is always angry with me, the animals smell bad and make a mess. Please, please tell me what I should do or otherwise I will have to do myself in.

The Rabbi thought deeply for a while, scratched his head and after a while announced:

                                              

Moische, you get yourself a goat.

Moische was very surprised and could not understand how getting the situation worth could get his life better. However, in Jewish communities Rabbis enjoy great respect and their verdicts are applied without much questioning.

                                                    

So, Moische gets himself a goat and squeezes it into his very crowded house. The  goat is not happy about the situation either and it bleats loudly in complaint. It makes even bigger mess around herself than other animals in the house. Moische is on a brink of a nervous breakdown. He cannot sleep a wink the whole night and wakes up with his face swollen from crying. His frustrated wife beats him up for good morning to top up his misery.  Things cannot be any worse. He runs again to the Rabbi with his new complaint.

Oh, oh Rabbi. I have never been so unhappy in my life. Please help me. In my very small house there is my wife, my in-laws, my five children, the dog and two cats, ten chickens, a little pig and now the GOAT. I cannot live like that. The children cry, my in-laws shout at each other, my wife is always angry with me and today she beat me up, the animals smell bad and make a mess and the goat is the worse off all of them. Please, please tell me what I should do or I will kill myself.

Rabbi again thought for a moment and pronounced:

Moische, you get rid of the goat.

And Moische runs home, takes the goat by its horns and gives it to the neighbour.

Returning home, the house suddenly feels like an oasis of peace. Moische takes a big breath, he feels relieved and happy. Life is good. He is very grateful to the Rabbi for his insightful advice.

Coming back from the hospital to the same situation that I was moderately satisfied with before I had to call the ambulance, I suddenly feel light, optimistic and full of plans for the future. My life is good again now that I got rid of my goat.

Sometimes Jewish wisdom is better than my stoic reading.

The Hare with Amber Eyes

I have come back home on Monday, as per my hopes rather than expectations and realised that coming back to my normal form is going to take same time. I always liked to take it slow to study, reflect, organise few things. This is what I have been doing with some pleasure. Have I reorganised my filing cabinet? No, not yet, but my fridge is in perfect condition now. I even got some fresh food into it. I am learning to be an older person not in the best of forms but I hope it will change for the better again.

The netsuke which is the subject of the book

                                           

As I mentioned in my previous post, The Hare with Amber Eyes made a big impression on me. Still does and it has inspired me to start writing something longer than my posts. A book? Maybe, but what is important to me is that I started writing and I know what I want to write about. Writing for myself, even if I may publish some of it on a blog hoping for a feedback.

I got inspired by the inscription in the book that suddenly took all my literary interests:

Even when one is no longer attached to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them; because it was always for reasons which other people didn’t  grasp…Well, now that I am a little too weary to live with other people, these old feelings, so personal and individual, that I had in the past, seem to me – it’s the mania of all collectors – very precious. I open my heart to myself like a sort of vitrine, and examine one by one all those love affairs of which the world can know nothing. And of this collection to which I ‘m now more attached than to my others, I say to myself, rather like Mazarin said of his books, but in fact without the least distress, that it will be very tiresome to have to leave it all.         

Charles Swann

Marcel Proust , Cities of the Plain

I have been reading In the Research of Lost Time for many years and even if I have not finished it yet, the last time I stopped reading it was few years ago and I was in the middle of the part seven. Even if I have not formally completed the book I have read most of it and some parts more than once. I think I will always continue reading it. It does not seem to be a book I am ever going to tick off as read and forget about it. It will always hold fascination for me.

The Hare with Amber Eyes is about a netsuke collection initially purchased by Charles Ephrussi a Jewish-French art critic, historian and collector who was an inspiration for Marcel Proust’s character of Charles Swann. The collection was passed in the family and the book tells the story of the collection and the times from middle of the XIXth century to the current times. The Ephrussi were a Russian Jewish banking and oil dynasty extremely influential and rich till the Hitler times. They lived and operated within two centres one in Paris and one in Vienna. The family were known for their connoisseurship, intellectual interests, and their huge collections of art.

Ephrussi palace at Rue Monceau, I must have passed it many times all those years ago 

                                                

Reading the first part of the book about Charles Ephrussi’s life many memories of my own time in Paris came back with a considerable force. Ephrussis lived in a palace at Rue Monceau and the Monceau park is mentioned many times in the book. This was the park I walked to quite often to stroll or sit read for a while. Even if I did not know the word then, I was doing a lot of flaneuring in Paris. They were such good times…

That is how I remember the park

Jews always created strong and mainly negative feelings among many nations. I often wondered why this particular group of people distinguishes itself in such a way that the big part of the world could not accept or even tolerate them. The book partly answers the question saying that this may be their superiority on many fronts that is the cause of envy, rejection and attacks. My thoughts are not clear yet, but I always have been on the side of Jews and ashamed of Polish anti-Semitism. I think that I need to revise this Polish guilt complex as the whole world is anti-Semitic at times.

This is a great book to read while I am recovering from my hospital experience and adjusting to the new health situation. A little bit like the old times when I was a girl who each year suffered long lasting colds staying in bed for a couple of weeks to cure a head cold usually followed by a bronchitis. I liked the recovery time as it was my time and I used it mainly for reading. I also liked the attention of my usually busy mother who spent more time with a sick daughter than the healthy one. It payed off to be sick those days. Not so much now so I better move through this stage quickly.