yeah, yeah, wut, wut?

in the quaint, familiar fashion of an update, i provide a quick recap of some of the latest events/revelatory smackdowns to recently surface, provided i am aware and coherent enough upon discovery to make the stuff actually stick.

1) i've discovered a really cool new shampoo that comes in a tube. and it's by L'Oreal. Voila.
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2) I shaved my legs after like two months of major vibrissa. How's that for an aphrodisiac, uh!
3) I'm dreading holiday travel like it's the Bubonic plague- the thought of me walking through one more airport checkpoint makes me want to play voluntary Russian Roulette.
4) Turns out that salmon in vacuum tight sealed bags stays fresh waaay beyond the cited expiration date.

5) Note to self: I may have to stop watching The Biggest Loser with a behemoth burrito in my lap.
6) Turns out I have 34 unused, prepaid personal training sessions left-over from a health & workout stint from last year's heyday.
7) I realize i've got to get off my @$$ if i'm going to put them to use.

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ohhhhhh, yeah, bay-bay

8) Documentaries on netflix are my new mojo. North Korea, check. Man on Wire, check. The Case for Faith, in proceedings.

9) I hate holiday melodrama. Shopping makes me sick [although I manage to peruse the endless bevvy of online holiday shops. Latest faves: westelm.com, for home decor. asos.com, for the kinda stuff only the fashioney brits can dream up, and findgifts.com, for uncoventional whats-its that make your mouth go agape at pure brilliance in a click of a button (you mean i can link up a USB drink warmer/chiller to my COMPUTER!!???)].

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10) i'm on a facebook strike. besides the loss of general appeal, i've decided not to occupy an alternate cyber-reality. hyperbole and argument aside, it feels good to idle my attention away on other things that really matter. like netflix, of course. ;)

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conundrum conundrum, oh what is your function?

i'm trying to approach this blog like a journalist, when inspiration is lacking. the kind of journalist who's on an endless siege for truth and a damn good story. the truth is, i love blogging and the sweet comfort it brings.. knowing and seeing the own stirrings of your imagination, what unfolds and spills onto a page... even as i write this now, i can never predict the next line, the next thought... there's something so unfettered in it, a wild lotus that just spawns from a crack in the sidewalk, untamed, unpredicted yet ever bold and beautiful...

random things capture my fancy these days... funny things that happen at work, like the way the tongues go lolly-gagging when MJ comes on the radio, these pre-pubescent little people already showing the signs of the old cronies to come, in all their raunchy glory. if i gave you a nickel for every time i saw the kids thrusting their pelvis [in the lunch-line, during playworks, in time to their morning practice of their ABC's- "U is the tugboat, uh (thrust in), yoo (thrust out), uh (thrust in) yoo (thrust out)!"], you'd have the next lotto winner beat. that, and the crazy happenstances of a day. kids fake barfing to get out of math class, the list of 'crazies' who go streaking down hallways just to post a scene and all the other not-easily forgotten meltdowns... you've gotta love the Raheems who leave you tangible souvenirs like the mitt sized bruises on your ribs (nothing says "i've done my job" like a true battle scar, albeit left behind by a swarthy, pint-sized adolescent) and the Ja'Rons, who go a'scavenging on voracious food hunts through people's backpacks, only to throw up the the box of applejacks he consumed earlier that morning all over your linoleum floor.

such moments make life ever so fun. and interesting. although, admittedly, we want to wrang our necks on nooses or plot ways of jabbing said perpetrator in the gut while claiming full innocence- "Oh, [insert name] I didn't mean to pummel you in the gut right there. Why dear, you've got to stop thrashing so!" They (the wise greats, to be exact) didn't say it'd be easy... but they sure as hell meant it when they said it would be WORTH IT. :)

Watched the film adaptation of Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and am still breathing hard, letting the contents unfold within me... The story chronicles the Soviet military occupation of Prague during the 1960's and the lives of the philandering surgeon Tomas and his ingenuous wife, Tereza, whose meek docility unravels throughout the film as she must stand up to a love which carries a burden as heavy as the airiness it permeates. Their lives ever increasingly endangered by the afflictions of war and a deadening fear looming still throughout Czechoslovakia, the couple must navigate the fragile waters of their relationship amidst a politically turblent climate and a string of sordid affairs with Tomas' ever increasing bounty of lovers.
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The film is at once beautiful as it is terrible, calamitous and conversely, tender, with Tereza's wide-eyed innocence surrendering a deeper and quieter strength as she beseeches Tomas, "How can one make love without being in love?" To Tereza, there is nothing "light" about love or its sexual expression. Despite the staunchness of her sentiments, her inordinate earthiness carries the film and lends an ironic lightness and quickness of feeling- she is the redeemer, the light in the darkness. The fleeting quality of the film echoes Kundera's explorations of life, most in its vaporous brevity as life passes so swiftly, without a second return. How can one afford to attribute any meaning or weight to life if they live it only once, unable to reflect on its passage or return to take a different path? Without the ability to compare lives, Kundera argues, we cannot find meaning, finding in its place only an unbearable weightlessness.

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While the book and it's accompanying film incite penetrating philosophical thought and contemplation, more so, the movie sheds light on life's host of multitudinal paths, each governed by the irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, "a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight." Happiness can only come about with repetition; the Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return, says Kundera.

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Kundera writes ever poignantly (and truthfully):

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The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? — Milan Kundera