I have these little snapshots of moments, faces, silly things, and snippets from this and that, flickering in my mind from the past week: The sound of a rainstick, the image of timid vulvas in black and white by the fire, “Just dip the pen into the candle flame!”, Sachiko’s quest for a backflip and Jay Gatsby’s radiant, understanding smile, “Her voice is full of money…”, an eternity-long taxi drive into the night, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, green gummies… and the voice of my sister calling my name, “Be careful, Sama,” like she knew it—I’m having a 30-going-on-13 minute! 😉
This last full moon (May 31) in Sagittarius was aggressively buzzing and restless. I had this feral excitement and wanted to be on an adventure all the time, so I made an adventure out of finding the blowdryer in the labyrinth of my friend’s house. On the lower side, I had a couple of migraine attacks in the evenings.
On Sunday I finished reading The Great Gatsby. It was a book I took to Cassis last summer, but I was too busy being in the moment that I couldn’t fully wrap my head around what was going on in East Egg. Coming back to it, it was brilliant. I love this part at the very end of the novel where Nick sees, in his fantastic dreams, the glamorous landscape of West Egg turn into a surreal, haunting night scene painted by El Greco.
And indeed, Daisy’s voice is full of money… Gatsby tells Nick this when he’s struggling to find the exact word to describe her voice. Another thing I loved while reading was Fitzgerald’s choice of Nick as a first-person narrator to tell the story; it makes the story 10 times better. We aren’t just watching Gatsby; we are watching Nick watch Gatsby. And after all, isn’t The Great Gatsby actually a story about Nick’s growing disillusionment with a world that once appeared so alluring and exciting to him?
On Tuesday (last night), I watched The Taste of Tea 🍵. It had the flavour of a magical movie in which the ensemble cast of out-of-this-world characters have nothing else to do but sit, enjoy the moment, and get lost in their own words. Directed by Katsuhito Ishii, the film brilliantly blends the mundane rural Japanese life with something whimsical and surreal. Some scenes unfold like vignettes or overheard conversations in a ramen shop, a convenience store, or on late-night trains home, which gradually dissolves any concern for a plot line (if there ever was one). At the same time, the bizarre elements never outshine the laid-back, feel-good atmosphere of the film. My second-favourite character was Akira, the grandfather, who spent all his time striking bizarre poses and singing for some imaginary animation he seems to be inventing. And my most favourite character? Sachiko—because she feels like a version of me in those 30 going on 13 moments, when I end up trying to exorcise my own giant doppelgänger, just like her.
A random thought that nearly threw me off my (stationary) bike:
It’s disturbingly absurd how they’ve all developed the exact same choreographed pantomime, as if run through a mimeograph. Are we supposed to develop Misophonia? I’m talking about all the internet girls unpacking products by awakening the container with a triple click-clack of their nails.