Chronicles of Sicky

No Sunday philosophy blog this week. Instead I watched enough movies to look like the donkey in Un Chien Andalou. Yes, there's a movie screen for viewing in my household. Aaron asked for one for Xmas. Thank Goddess we don't have normal TV. Poor Amy put up with me being a snotty, coughy, layabout. Amazingly enough she thinks I'm cute when I'm loopy sick. We had a lot of fun snuggling & being goofy.

Missed work for being sick for the first time in two years. Grinding the day out is my modus operandi when I'm sick as a dog who ate chocolate, but this time I was a complete mess. This thing's been hanging around for too long. Finally, the bugaboo wanted to act like a nasal infection. I wasn't going for that. Went to get some homeopathic nasal spray, went on a strict no dairy diet, drank Yogi teas made for cold season, ate really well, & (after years of existing on my want list) a Neti pot now rests on a shelf in my abode with a bottle of grapefruit seed extract.

Two best movies I saw which I haven't seen before: Spirited Away & Grizzly Man. Miyazaki has long been one of my favorite filmmakers. Spirited Away has always evaded me. I'm not much of a film pursuer anymore unless I know a certain film is going to move me in the right way or be a surprise. It was in the arthous during a tumultuous time in my life, the library had a waiting list two miles long, & then the videostores have been out of it a couple of times. I search out movies like I do any story, I'm a mood-feeler. Always been too empathic for my own good altho my emotional maturity level's finally catching up. This empathic ability gleams on my face for some people, lots of stories are told in my direction. Even without saying the words there is an implicit acceptance in my presence that one can say whatever they need to, or maybe I just like silences & eye contact too much. After Rachael I tend to drop my eyes a lot more, we must all take appropriate evasive action for self-protection (esp. in big cities) tho some choose the inappropriate for morbid curiousity & self-imolation. As Heraclitus says, "Wisdom is to speak the truth & act in keeping with its nature." Spirited Away is the mystical type of film that should be cherished wherein the dark side of nature finds harmony in the willfulness of human consciousness evolving to adapt to wildly different needs. The human quest is not the straight & narrow, but a veritable twisty maze of mountain paths & internal struggles sloped though seasons & weathersystems of mood & place. There is no end. World without end. Reality is not a fixed quantity to be summed up in some unified theory but something that flowers everywhere all the time, changing past & future in all the minutiae of eternity. Before this sounds like hogwash, I would like to commend Spinoza & Einstein for spending so much time on determinism. Profound work. Even Einstein knew its limitations. He proclaimed his belief in God as the pursuit of the mystery that lies outside of human understanding. The complexes of consciousness & the animate nature of matter are not mere blips but the flowering of something so big & complex that can burgeon & burst into an infinity of differences that are not merely predicated on a gigantic formula of stimuli & response. The enigma is in consciousness itself. The gradation of choice & degree of choice is whimsical because creative & that artistic willfulness that arises again & again whisks away so much of the tide of expectation that Apollo seems to dim in the light of Dionysus. Natural laws apply but bend under this will. Beware, if you dream harder, you may be spirited away.

Grizzly Man was a little more troubling. Werner Herzog is a talented filmmaker but I've always tended towards his friend Errol Morris. Herzog put together a moving & subtle biopic using his own cutting of Treadwell's film, interviews of Treadwell's friends & family, & his own succinct commentary. This connection between a strong/weak dead man who never met his vastly different biographer is moving in the compassion & fire for understanding. Personally, Treadwell's freakouts reminded me a bit too much of my most emotionally troubled times when my voice sounded weak like that. His hackneyed new-agey spirit contrasted with his solid insights reminds me far too much of me during that time in my life. How thankful I am for renewal even if the changes inside seem to be more inhibited where love is concerned. My 'kind warrior' can be quite a bastard utilizing the sharp tool of tough love. Moments arise where I cease to care about what people want me to say, instead I say what I feel needs to be said. Less decorum, more directness. Precision & clarity towardslend weight to the ambiguous net, while the wishy-washiness of a too tidy vision that excludes all-too-apparent relationships in a dulling chorus of delusion makes a partial truth wreak of absurdity. Felt weird watching it with Amy, later that night she said she has an 'irrational draw' towards me by which she meant she might love me too much. When she drifts out of sleep enough for a glint of consciousness she sings my praises in little phrases replete with varying tones. I find in this unnerving & wonder just how much steel I'll have to melt to properly accept such kindness. My work is meant as a means for people to obliterate such barriers in themselves, whether they know they exist or not but I have question reflux now when the romantic rears its head. Do I love her? Without reservation, yes. Do I love her in the right way? Will I love her in the right way? Not quite as sure. I do know this, I can make a girl happy & I do this with healthy portions of tenderness. I make Amy happy & this is a joy. I too, am happy but more reserved. I've seen the primordial waters asking for my skin, I mete out my own portions with a great deal of care now. I don't expect myself to be tender as veal under the rubric of some halo but I leave so much of what I am capable of on the wayside as I seek the strength of a complete vision. Indeed, the poet's work has always competed with girls' requested attentions from that first kiss. As for the complete vision: what that is, I'll be damned if I know. But then we're all damned to the bliss of loss & gain being the same thing in the distant end which is no end at all.

Not bad for a loop-loop-loopy looper.

Back to Hamlet: Poem Unlimited. I can't wait until I can drink the toddy in my fridge with some Dagoba Hot Chocolate mix. Thanks for not commenting on the kleenax that was shoved into my nostril.