Odds & Ends

In today’s New York Times was a little article on Chinese independent filmmakers, springing of the screening of one at the New York Film Festival, Ghost Town by Zhao Dayong.   In it was a little quote which struck a chord in me, and wrote still another Letter to the Editor Sure Not to Be Published:

Sirs:
As a long-time (45+ years) American “independent”  filmmaker, this quote from an article in the NY Times, rang a dissonant bell:

““I feel very frustrated,” Mr. Zhao said. “I’m a Chinese filmmaker, and of course my audience should be the Chinese people, especially since my films are about ordinary working Chinese people.” He added, “That would be more valuable than winning an international film festival.”

As an American – and hardly the only one – I could easily say the same thing, though the politics are different, the effect is the same. In our country the Glorious Market Economy mantra is the shibboleth which dictates what is to be seen or not, as effectively as the Chinese Communist  Party does there.  The end result is the same.  I’ve won my bit of international festival la dee da, but the films remain mostly unseen.  A long list of my peers could say the same.

Sincerely
Jon Jost

The long list could include quite a number of accessible “realists” like Lance Hammer, Eagle Pennell, on back to John Cassavetes or even before.  It could include more experimental real Americans like James Benning.  It could include me.  We don’t need a heavy-handed Chinese Communist Party censorship board to quash us, we have the wonderful make-the-maximum-buck-whatever-the-cost free-wheeling American capitalist system to do the job.  You aren’t interested in making the most money, then go f..k yourself.  This applies to artisans making the things, to distributors to exhibitors, who, if they aren’t aiming for the lowest-common-denominator maxi-dollar deal, are in for an early demise.  Ask Dan Ladely out in Nebraska at the Ross Cinema, under the gun of budget cuts, or ask the myriad small distributors who’ve bitten the dust in the last decade.  Or the theaters that closed.

By way of a minimal compensation for this grave distortion in our communal values, the MacArthur Foundation offers up 25 half-million buck grants each year, to a variety of people, including artists and scientists and writers and others most of whom you probably never heard of before.  Hopefully the big bucks don’t warp them, and they keep on truckin’ doing whatever they were doing.  Given the choices I’d guess that’d be the case.

And then another brief item in the New York Times, conflicting with another a few days ago which gave a number about 100 less, is this

Names of the Dead

Published: September 28, 2009

The Department of Defense has identified 840 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations. It confirmed the death of the following American on Monday:

GRAHAM, Kevin J., 27, Specialist, Army; Benton, Ky.; Second Infantry Division.

Our guys in Afghanistan winning hearts and minds

Long way from Kansas or Kentucky…  Pressured by his generals, armchair strategists, blow-hard “patriots” and snookered circumstances, Obama is weighing the scales on this one – to stay, to leave, to stay and leave or…

Meanwhile our little orb keeps telling us a few things, probably things we’d rather not be hearing:

Ice loss in AntarcticSydney Opera House this Spring (now)Roughing it at Balad Base, IraqOriginal Mock-up model for Disneyland

And to put it all in a little perspective

On the other hand, somethings never change, though since the experiment about internet search mechanisms was done, CE gets a lot more hits, and increasingly of this kind – more porn poetry from the search engines:

sucking on your own boobs
great french boobs
big boobs
porn postings
bigtites
pics of the big boobed blue bird
big boobs hd pics
cut off penis
erected
helicopter +boobs
mean wife with big boobs
big boobs no hips
big boobs
beautiful boobs
korean big boobs
limp penis
map of boobs
big bobs arabian women
big boobs amateur
cuts off penis
big boobs
teachers with big boobs
erigierter penis
penis in shoe
penis symbol
big boobs
big boob women
philippines girls boobs photo
big boobs ugly
boobs & cars
guys suking boobs
child erected penis
penis erigiert
arab boobs
big heavy boobs
boobs food
cock boot
yoko ono boobs
big boob star
skinny people big boobs
big boops
big mother fucking boobs
banks boobs
3d penis model
chicago big boobs
pretty penis shapes

Moving time

The house is a bit of chaos, piled with boxes, the litter of yet another move.  I long ago lost track of how many places I’ve lived, so this is all quite familiar.  I’m rather expert on packing things in boxes.    Next week it’ll all get shoved in a truck and driven 10 or so miles to another place, a little two story storage shed of a sort, where we’ll spend the next year.  New place will be bigger by maybe almost 50%, is more centrally located in city so the punishing thought of an hour each way to do more or less anything will be cut in half, and it is cheaper.  Or in Korean fashion, almost free:  here you can put down a fat deposit, returnable on departure, and have no rent.  Just what they do with the money to make this a paying proposition for the landlord, I don’t know.   But it is normal here.   So all these boxes will be moved along, and the next day Marcella and I will get to the airport and fly to London where we have 9 days to see friends, go to museums, plays, and such, and then on to Galway, Ireland.  There we show some films – Marcella’s first feature, Landing in the Morning Calm, and then a film we did together, a documentary portrait of Steve Lack entitled Rant, and then the little throw-away short, Mr Right.

Landing in the Morning Calm, by Marcella Di Palo Jost

Rant

Mr Right

The occasion for the screenings is the Galway Film Fleadh, a festival.  A friend of mine in Ireland, Joe Comerford, tried for some years to get me invited, and this year they finally did so.  I confess I did a little of the final bit myself, more or less inviting Marcella and myself.  We’ll be doing a 5 day workshop too, with, if all goes well, a public screening on the last day of the festival of the things made.   So it should be a busy time.  Afterward we’ll take a week to see the Irish west coast, and I hope to do a bit of shooting with the new Excam.  Landscapes I think, but we’ll see what we see.  Taking a little tripod, and some cheaper storage chips that I got after some web-research: 16 gig chips for $100 rather than Sony’s proprietary ones for $500 for 8 gigs.  After Ireland we fly to Bologna to visit Marcella’s sister in Rimini, and some other relatives near Bologna.  I’ll make sure to go to Ravenna, to which I’ve never been, to see the mosaics.  And perhaps to Rome to shoot a quick film, though I think better to pass on that for now.  Then down to Matera in Basilicata, where we’ll nose around the region, while Marcella visits parents.    I return to Seoul end of August, and Marcella will stay on another month to be with family a bit.

Marcella’s film was casually pieced together, initially without a real intention to make a proper film, just shooting with a cluster of Americans living in Seoul, using a little Sony HDR HC9, with its on-board mikes.  After a bit this began to form into a film, in which Marcella and her friend Amber Hill, who plays a lead role, collaborated in developing a minimal bit of story, and in the span from October to March, a film emerged.    I think it came out quite well, an interesting glimpse into the lives of these 20-somethings out in the larger world while still cocooned inside their youthful incestuous smaller one.  Luckily a number of them are musically talented, which Marcella put to good use.  Landing has been sent to a number of festivals, and we’ll see how many take it.

Landing in the Morning Calm

Rant was shot in two bursts, back in 2006-07, on a whim.  I’d met Steve Lack originally when making All the Vermeers in New York, in which he was the lead actor.  We got along well, and on my visits to New York afterward I’d try to see him.  At some point we rather casually thought to make a portrait, and on the next visit, we – Marcella and I – started to shoot – just goofing around without too much forethought aside from my decision to shoot most of it in a slow shutter mode, to have a “painterly” kind of imagery which I thought would be fitting to his work.   Marcella edited the first chunk, and we decided we needed more to fill it out, and on another visit to the East Coast we spent 5 days hanging around with Steve, going upstate to his house and studio near Saratoga, and got another sizable chunk.   Steve digitized pictures of his paintings, we got his son Asher’s first album, Reichenbach Falls, with his band Ravens and Chimes (very nice music) and Marcella set down again to wrestle it into form.  About a year ago it got pretty much finished, running just over 60 minutes.  But somehow it didn’t quite work, being a little too soft.  We sat on it a while, and then I took a look at some material Marcella hadn’t included (or, as it turns out, even looked at), and without changing much in her edit, I added a few things that seemed to give the film a needed bit of bite.  Now runs 87 minutes.   It was pretty much a 50/50 collaboration between Marcella and me, in all senses.  I shot most of it, Marcella did a bit of camera too, she edited mostly, and I added a bit.  It’s our film.  And of course, Steve’s.

Rant

Mr Right was shot last year with my students at Yonsei, a little sketch of the lives of these students, revolving mostly around the matter of love, getting married, under the pressures of Korean cultural norms.   It screened at the Rotterdam festival this year in the context of an omnibus work including 2 other 30 minutes shorts done by my students, titled Love in the Shadows.

Mr Right

However, out in the larger world, while we may imagine moving time, it is much more that time moves us.  Currently playing out in the world’s attention is the drama in Iran, seemingly heading toward some kind of conclusion.  Listening to the night-time chants of Allah Akbar, echoing from the rooftops and windows of the city, there is a sense of the organic communal life where hidden in anonymity, the many become one.  Those in power surely must find this sound haunting and deeply threatening:

Just as the populace finds these men threatening.

basij militia, the police force of the political powers of Iran

Off stage, at least to much of the world, another confrontation is occurring, one which, however seemingly distant, is directly enmeshed in each of us:  as with the conflicts in the Nigerian delta over oil extraction, this one, in Peru, has to do with the re-ordering of indigenous cultures – or of wiping them out – in the interests of corporate powers extracting raw materials to support our “modern lifestyle.”   This is the price:

On a more “personal” level, this past week a cousin of mine died, Cis Porter-Chambers.  She was my age, give or take a year, and had lived what I suppose was a thwarted life.  She wanted to be a writer.  She became a mother, had her children abducted by her husband, and then was estranged from them (in a scenario a bit normal for those – like the mother of my daughter Clara – who seize their children like objects, keeping the other parent from contact, and then indoctrinate them as they will).  For the past years Cissie struggled to stay afloat, and then a year or so ago was hospitalized with colon cancer, had a good piece removed, and then last week was hospitalized again with infection which overwhelmed her.   She had found an English teaching job at a community college which she liked and had begun to think of writing, started a blog.  And life is sometimes cruel.

Paintings by Steve Lack

And now back to the boxes and the myriad last minute things of setting off for a trip.

Post Paradise

Back to Seoul, following some fun adventures in bus stations, buses, Rawa Island, Singapore and airports.  Excuse the relative absence while on the road, but there was little time for scribbling here.  Meantime the world continued to deteriorate, or at least the official version did.  The stockmarket is heading to the 5000 level I thought it would land at, though of course the prognosticators of the industry did not want to concede such a fall.  2/3rds the value lopped in a matter of a year.  In computerese, fraud in/fraud out.   So the charade is about done, the fake wealth exposed, and the crooks too.  As usual the grand public is a handful of steps behind, but shortly we may expect that the general call for heads to roll will reverberate and the real criminals will begin to be hounded.

Soon to be ex-Premier of defunct Liberal Democrats (Orwell-speak) in Japan

On the way to 5000 or lower

It wasn’t that long ago that suggestions that our culture was terminally corrupted would be met with silence or with an admonition that we weren’t some deviant 3rd world den of sleaze.  Today, outside some really uptight Republican deep inside exactly such shit and hence in total denial, you’d not get much argument.  Yep, we’re in the pits.  Yesterday the Dow dropped another 250, about to break the 6000 level and heading to the 5000 level which I thought a long time ago would be the bottom.  I.e., the “market” levels off at 1/3rd its alleged value of a year ago, more or less.  Meaning 2/3rds our “wealth” was a fraud.  Ask Madoff, or better yet, ask his “clients.”

Ironically, while the world – thanks to “globalization” – is in a collaborative economic tailspin (the socio-political echo shortly to follow), in my own life, having made a gamble on such things, and in fact having imagined the world would collapse in such a manner in my own life-time, and Social Security etc. would not be at hand when the time came, things seem to look  OK.  Yonsei here is eagerly courting my presence another year, and it seems other options are similarly opening up.  My retirement, after a fashion, comes in the form of a job.  Though if things collapse as fully as I imagine possible, these jobs my go up in the air in short order, in which case quelle surprise!

Shortly classes recommence, and the not-too-difficult work cycle kicks in.  2 half days a week.  In this term one of those classes is to make a feature film – me and them.  Undecided how to tackle it, but we hope we can make something good, or perhaps two somethings – theirs and mine.   By spring I expect the fiscal avalanche to be more visible, and perhaps these spoiled souls will be stirred by tangible problems more severe than boy-girl and the like.  I understand that President Lee here continues his mis-steps, and having come in as the bizman who would resolve all the Korean economic plans, he now presides over his part of the globalized fiscal freeze.  So much for magic wands.  His ratings are in the outhouse now, so perhaps as homeless hit the street and the next wave of the close-down arrives, there’ll be more demos all about.   About time.  Perhaps a better topic for a film than last spring’s lovelorn losers in Love in the Shadows. Of which, following a tepid audience response in Rotterdam according to Sangwoo and Sihyun, they are re-editing their parts to make it a bit more brisk, and we are awaiting word from other festivals – Sydney, Jeonju, Singapore.  I just sent off Parable to the Cannes festival – a first for me to even try to roll the dice on chic Cannes.  I did so as they said they can screen digitally, so while I am doubtful they’ll take it, they just might.   At worst a foot in the door for something next year.  Though if it gets in I know a few people who will be thrilled to pieces – Steve and Rachael and Ryan.

[March 3 2009: Check Howard Kunstler on this.]

For a thoughtful contemplation on the little sphere seen here, see this comment by Oliver Morton from this day’s New York Times.  It’s worth your time to read and think about.

Meantime here is another note, also from the NY Times, demonstrating how much fame can do for you, and though I completely agree with the sentiment I wonder if you or I had submitted it to them for publication, just what would have happened: straight to the cylindrical evict device I would bet.

Yoko Ono

Well, for those into such things (I am decidedly not) Merry Christmas and in a week Happy Gregorian Calendar New Year!

A little filmmaker note here at the end: while the film made with my students is off to Rotterdam (Love in the Shadows - new name for it), the other day I got a reject for my and Marcella’s two films – seemingly owing to a little screw-up on their part in which DVDs sent well in time were sent back to USA for a local to review, and then belatedly my contact saw them a bit too late to shoe-horn into the schedule.  Or so he implied.  I wrote and said in sending them all I felt I’d been competing against myself, though I’d already decided if it was only one film that could go, and he liked the Love one, but also one of the others, I’d ask that the student one went first.  I’ve been there many times, and it’d be good for them.

So my contact, whom I consider a friend, sent me this:

Dear Jon,

You were always competing against yourself. Most filmmakers make 1 film in 3 years and you can make 3 in 1 year.

And festivals are like supermarkets; they want different brands on every shelf.

Sorry about this. I understand, but I am happy with Love in the Shade, it is nice and

special.

Thinking about going to Africa…

I saw Sangwoo and Sihyun for lunch today, and they’re both plotting to go and happy and excited about it.  I am for them, and jaded as usual for me.

MORTAL COILS (poems)

MORTAL COILS

“It seems a mischievous spirit has finally cast a spell over me. Now it (the spell) moves changing form, they slither within my heart conjuring massive structures built as if with beams of restless air. These bewitching edifice of knowledge…these “ORIENTING Fields”, these that ground your being…this dark bewilderment ….The background fields through which you make sense, like a thought, a lightening particle that uncoils into a language, like desire they arise only to collapse and arise anew flickering of cinematic light in the breathing fog of the attendees, like cultural projections. Like the very mischief existing only in the mind of a Demon, whose only purpose is to mislead, misinform, deceive, delude, whose very existence is a deception, a trick, so does my heart runs hither thither by spaces conjured by its own mischief.”

These cycle of poems were written in 1996/97 Mumbai
It was a time of tremendous crisis. I was young, freshly married, and my wife was expecting and the studio I worked for closed down so I was also virtually jobless.
Sometimes I wonder, If I hadn’t discovered poetry, I would have suffered a certain breakdown. Poetry sustained me through this dark patch.

I often call this phase of my life as the “Birth Cycle” as it was almost a second birth for me, a second life.
So here are the collection from 96/97 called the birth cycle.
Please report any typo error as I had to transcribe everything from hand written text and I am a clumsy typist.

I will post by typing one by one out of 20, which are further divided into three.
The First of the three is made up of 9 chapters and is called “Mortal Coils”
The second one also has nine chapters and is called “The Wanderings”
The third one is made up of just 2 chapters and is called “Desires”
Even though they belong to the same time, they are not related in any order or theme.

The last one is incomplete, basically things improved and the flood of poetry stopped. and it so happened that I wrote nothing for next 10 years.
Thanks for your patience and do leave your comments.
Regards
Rajiv Mudgal

This is just a selection. You can read the whole here or download it here

“After long spells of tormented cry, my soul only seeks you,
your bosom and its warmth, your subtle liquid eyes, those lips in
whose quivering the life in me quickens, in your arms refreshed,
in your breath rejuvenated invigorated by your love and by your
touch only to arise like the mighty and majestic Soma from its
own ashes, arising transformed, transmuted into lives final self
fulfillment, its yawning glory, its deepest promise.

In my dreams have I conjured you in many forms, in my
longings have I sought you in many sighs, In my verse I have
evoked you, In my songs have I sung you, still you elude me like a
distinct song heard by the passing pilgrimage on the other side of
the valley, or like the chants of some forgotten temple….

By many nights I have awakened feeling your presence by
my side. In lone hours I have watched the moon reflect in the
river searching in its shimmer your eluding sight.

At times in my throbbing heart I felt the surety of your
existence.”

“My love my joy I know not what seeks me within you with
such passions that I have no control nor any understanding as to
why and how, nor an inkling of how to end this sway of passions
that push my being, that stretch my nerves to their utmost
despair.

Possessed like some dark heavy cloud willed by some
unknown force ready to discharge it pyrotechnic with awesome
thunder, such awesome forces are let loose within me to rip open
my heart and let go a bizarre frenzy which pushes my being into
unrestrained epileptic convolutions.
Thus they gather within my being and dig their nails in my back,
behind my neck, to lift me up and throw me into some forgotten
abyss of fire.
Thus my body erupts with Hysterical intensity and my soul is
pushed forth like a pregnant women ready to release [life] and
the terrible spasms that eject….., such terrible spasms engulfs
me, push me towards you.

These were not desired, but desiring it-self, emerging from
deaths steely sleep to full wakefulness, uncoiling itself, unfolding
itself, pushing, pushed, ejected, ejaculated, erupted, auto
emerging, thus am I pushed into thy presence, like some mirific
power, unknown, beginning-less, self evolving, self enabling,
emerging, propelled by its own movement, thrown thrust[ed]
away like some self fulfilling destiny, whose only purpose is to be.
This to be now self possesses my soul like an eagle gnawing his
own flesh from his inside, to tear itself out of itself, thus I am
thrown, ejected, surfacing awake to be fulfilled in a nothing less
than a total and full comprehension of your mirific stance,
surfacing only to be completely shattered by your veiled
presence, to die in its own self-fulfilment, such do I evolve,
emerge waking self possessed by its own force, silent slow, sure in
its rhythmic self destruction, possessed by a will that is so certain
and so merciless that it knows only one reality, affirms only one
Will, seeks only one certainty, seeking its end in your love as my
death in you.”

“Pain arises out of the tired heart where are you, waiting the life in
me has gone dry.

Black clouds like heavy winds turning and twisting,
sweeping down only to torment the soul, these mighty clouds race
through my being searching within it feverishly dark reasons
whose presence I never knew…existed.

Now they move, seek and churn within my heart with
empty motive, while I watch them play their fiendish games in
silent agony waiting it to cease, wanting it to rest, to sleep, to die,
but it mocks my hope with its chameleon like activity and to tease
me they disappear like a flight of swifts dissolving to arise again
anew from some unknown void, as if from here and now from
there and still nowhere is its origin to be found…
How much to terminate.

Sweeping, sizing my body like a hawk, it gnaws the heart
as my restless awareness simply watches, then busying oneself
with trivial things, afraid of the acute sensitivity which has come
paralyzing me as its victim this my own Will haunts me now
dances in a growing swirl of wisps that searches in its sways
means to its own end as I attempt to loose myself in faithful
activity hoping it will cease in a situation that has become
interminable.
And some how these means have now become its own end.”

Little note

Just a note to say posted new item on www.jonjost.wordpress.com.  In case you are interested while you watch the US economy (finally – I’d been saying it’d do so for some time now) crumple up inside its contradictions and fraudulence.  Seems the fiscal situation is finally coming to some kind of end game.

Emblematically, a few images:

Our Great Leader surveys his kingdom, and the swift young men of London make a killing (along with Damien Hirst).

Meantime I’d be interested in any first-hand accounts of how what’s happening in the US economy is hitting anyone here – mortgages, credit-card debt, loss of job, etc.

See Blue Saigon

Just a note to say posted item on Viet Nam travels, ruminations, etc. a www.jonjost.wordpress.com in case you are interested.

Why does religion refuses to go away

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." – Seneca the Younger

In the Name of Religion People and God

You open the newspaper and the first thing you read today is “Woman burnt, raped, 12 churches razed during Orissa bandh” and you wonder, as to why wont religion go away.

Well we may have some answers in regards to this perplexing question. To start with, It is now confirmed (by neurogenetics) that religion like sex is hard-wired into us by evolution and so here to stay. (though there are good reasons for doing that and one can trust evolution) But with the rapidly changing times, there seems to be something amiss from its essential know-how.

When Marx mused and voiced that deadly fact, that religion is like opium, he was not altogether wrong, but on spot, except that he relied too much on the Hegelian sociological make-up rather than the human body itself. Infact advances in the body (neurobiology) has progressed only recently after the collapse of freud-ual block that hindered progress by locking all research to its own underlying understanding of ‘its’ psyche.(I am using ‘its psyche as there is no such thing as a general psyche, but always specific psyches, for example, a Muslim psyche, a Hindu psyche,) The conclusions surprisingly seems not-too-different than what the Buddhist or Hindu yogic text have been saying all along.

Another aspect of religion is that it operates on and from the primordial level of self-experience, which simply means that it generates experience. Which means that there is no way to get into its working via empirical methods or analytics; which is obvious from the fact that a Christian dreams about Christian Icons and Hindu dreams of his and all this arises from the abysmal depths of seething self orienting fields of ones ownmost consciousness or sense making. Roughly translated, this means that all mediation, meditation, and self-reflection into ones own deep and profound religious experience is like the thread of Ariadne which (contrary to the Greek myth) only takes one inside but never takes one out of the Labyrinth, cause the Labyrinth (in the present case and as always) vanishes into the matrix of our own cunning (which is evolutionary bound much like the celebrated idea of vasna), and this evolutionary smartness has today become our Minotaur. Which means in the majority of cases one is only ‘interested in finding out ways to confirm, authenticate, fortify the answers we already have’; that is, what ever the authorities have said and written (and these often change from religion to region, and often with absurd twists.) Though there have been attempts by psychoanalytical schools to separate, filter, categorise and furnish a common base in the form of ‘the varieties of religious experience’, but the fact remains that there is none (knowing the nature of the psyche and that any two can hardly be one, and as every experience re-generates/squeezes itself out of the whole history without which there would be no experience at all, and as we would have no way to know/tell/experience what is this that arises) there are no transcendental common ground as the pseudo-mystics would have us believe.
It is also true that the lack of sameness does make humans extremely insecure, and there lies the root of all our neurotic fanaticism. We have a hard time trying to be what we are not and there arises a point where things just start to crack; thus people are often found seeking pro-actively those very states and situations that simply mirror and bounce their psyches: -for example, my religion, my nation, my language, (Amchi Mumbai) the list can go on and on.

Also religion grounds itself through emotive seizures that are deeply locked in metaphorical self-ligature and this could be the missing link. Metaphors abstracts humans from every other thing, and in this sense it makes us unique in the whole universe; But this abstraction happens ‘Only’ in, within and through the linguistic space that happens to originally ground all our knowing and seeing, that the deep and access enabling loka that names and marks our selves as ‘Self’. -lingering in its womb lies the kernel out of which arises all fundamental self-reflections and the very human self-consciousness ‘itself’, and thus, the loss of metaphors is the loss of self and the self is all-round us with its artefacts that it has put there in and within whose company it becomes itself, feels familiar and secure, and thus what ever disturbs the self disturbs the individual as a whole… So in this sense the pope, mullah and the pundit all three need to sit together and think a bit deeper than they would usually allow themselves to indulge. And as there are no ‘value neutral’ universal ground, guide and rules on which one can stand and decide -judge as to with is right: It becomes quite knotty here. (cause how else are we to make sense as to who we are, and to what and where lies our cahoots) and as all decisions are locked internally, ‘in, within and through the linguistic space that grounds all our knowing and guides all seeing from the outset,’ we enter the realms of the ouroboros (The Tantric symbol of snake eating its own tale… and contrary to Jung’s mystifications, it actually and originally meant, that there is no value free, original and universal ground on which man can stand, and that there are no ways out of the horizons that give rise to our Self and there is no outside of this inside, as all outside is ultimately nothing other than the flourishing of  the linguistic and metaphoric powers that  guide all our thinking and feeling and mark all seeing-showing from the outset.)

So…as, its turns out, (when it comes to religion, race, self etc.) it becomes a problem of deep language, and the deep histories that breathe it, pronounces it, emerge, make manifest, make present, to spread and transform and convert everything into its own image till the whole world is filled with lookalikes….and when everything has been reduced to a monology of self-sameness, then…then… then what?

May be a little Yoga may help here, Pranayama does not mean just controlling ones breath, but in a deeper and original sense getting inside, regulating, controlling, disciplining, meditating on and upon the deep histories that breathes us, pronounces us emerge, make manifest, make present.
I have tried to explore this side of reality in the funny little story “Bhalu’s Apprenticehood (A battle against Sleep)”

So is there an end to religion, do we require a new body-world, a new brain. After all the body is the world and the brain is the body, none of the three can be separated and isolated out of the other, and this is the hardest part to grasp.

Existence, life, world and being like Brahman is something which is fundamentally a-casual, open and given unconditionally to all and everyone, where one is by ones very givenness (Darshan) open in and having access to the sacred by simply ‘being’ there as that very opening of the openness; But this very opening of the openness, the openness of the Self is now divided, segmented, conditioned, controlled, and thus destroyed by religion -because what divides, conditions controls, destroys what is essentially unconditional, undivided, given, open and a-casual.

Coming back to us and our ways, I am sure there is nothing wrong with us Hindus, except we are no different from our ‘other’ (in-spite of all our sadhus, saints and great books of wisdom.) I am sure the current events and violence would make us Proud. And pride is a strange word, and everyone in his own humble and meek way is proud of his/her culture, its literature, its promise of transcendence and deliverance into sukha from the earthly bondage, its misery and corruption, its pain and dukha, and above all, an access to the divine and godly, and also its sacred etcetera, etcetera, but what is strange and uncanny about all this massive baggage of accumulated (sacred and wise sayings) is the fundamental mystery underlying this sense of ‘A Proud [...]‘ etcetera etcetera. That is; in-spite of it all, we/they have no way to fundamentally transform ourselves, except all this only ends up producing some strange and contrived distortions in our psychic-make-up by fragmenting what is essentially Whole and Holy.

Fundamentally we Hindus today seems to have nothing truly spiritual to fall back upon, thus there is this clinging, holding tight to ones bosom; -like a infantile to his milk-bottle we tightly cling to our books, authorities, which means past, the dead, the ghostly spirits and in the panic and inflation of this falleness we experience ones being as ‘A Proud Hindu’, a proud Christian, a proud Muslim a proud maoist, so on and so forth. (which is essentially a symptom of the lack, a lack of any direct access into the sacred and the spiritual which gets reduced to the infantile “My Papa is the greatest”) Thus we are condemned to live in the past, with ghosts “Bhoots” and their bhava[vis] “Bhavaish-futural projections” that is in and within the spirits of the dead and the ‘non-existing’: -that is find oneself not in ‘being’ but in ‘non-being’ or ‘avidya’”.
Nevertheless it is quite normal and ordinary to blame the other (though there is and always are some underlying causes), nevertheless It is something we always end up doing individually and collectively. Our evolutionary advantage today seems to have become our greatest nemesis -Our Karmic surplus that contains the seeds of its own downfall.

note: (By holy I mean Whole or that which cannot be contained , owned, or divided)

Bhava[Avesa] = from Sanskrit ‘vis‘, to enter into, that is to enter into a state of violent emotion or emotional frenzy, loose one mind into…

Dateline, Hue (Viet Nam)

Jon here.  A little update on travels and such.  Yesterday after a long air flight delay (9 am departure shifted to 3 pm) we arrived in Hue, former long ago imperial capitol of Viet Nam.  From the air we passed over areas of the once DMZ, a landscape of bomb-crater pockmarks, which looked like the signs of some kind of mineral extraction.  Ride in on bus from airport showed numerous religious sites, burial grounds, temples.  Hue is a small place now, much quieter that Ha Noi.  We took a walk into old section, a dense communal setting of narrow alleyways, and a mix of homes opening out into the little passageways, or homes the living rooms of which are 2 seat tea houses, or selling beer from fridges.   We stopped to have a dinner in a small restaurant but they refused to serve us, a bit of hostility showing.  Later found a place clearly used by expats and the like, with english language sign out of very funky place, saying owner is deaf and mute, all communication by signing.  Went in, food was good, as was beer, about $8 for two.  4 Aussies of my age or close sat at next table gorging and boozing.   Walked back to hotel in rain, with rickshaws pulling by periodically asking if we wanted a ride.

Today is sunny and we’ll go maybe on motorbike, touring Royal sites, etc.  Or we’ll walk.

In Ha Noi, we wrapped up the workshop with a look at what the students had done, which in fact came out better than I’d expected, with a few very nice things – one experimental kind of thing, which would manage OK in some festivals for such films.  It was clear at least one little group had picked up on some of the things we’d tried to pass along.  The rest wandered from good to dubious.  Then a ceremonial wrap up with long-winded thanks and such from the Film Department folks, and then from me a short word or two.  Followed with passing out little certificates, lots of photos, and then the participants took us out to a restaurant of a funky kind located on West Lake, up on a rooftop.  At first dragonflies buzzed about, and as the sun settled, out came the bats, either making short work of the dragonflies, or else the insects know when to duck and cover.  And then a massive thunder and lightening storm rolled in, and the hundred white swan pedal boats on the lake scooted to home-base, and our group all scooted downstairs for cover.  A wonderful show of distant lightning came, but the threatened rain did not.

Tomorrow on to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), which is we are told bigger and more hectic than is Ha Noi, though some Italians Marcella talked to in a Buddhist temple who were practicing some kind of sword using exercise said they preferred Saigon to Ha Noi.  We’ll have 3 plus days to enjoy before we decamp for Seoul.

It for now.

Note:  whatever the problem was in Ha Noi, I don’t know the origins, but apparently at least here WordPress is not censored and I’m posting this one myself.

Moving on

The last days have been a mess of moving down-market, from our Yonsei paid 15 floor fancy-ass apartment (everyone who entered it exclaimed how nice and how big it was, for Seoul) located near downtown, and into a cramped little 3 room place in Hwagok, a residential area of middling economic level about 40 minutes from downtown by metro.  We packed everything up, and some moving guy came and did the manhandling in and out for $150 on a steamy hot day.  Started at 7am, got moved into new place by 10.  Unpack and try to figure out how to cram it all into our limited space – we’re going to have to do a major weed-out of earthly possessions.  Today, second day of new home, it’s almost sorted, but lots of loose ends which will have to await our return from Vietnam, for whence we depart tomorrow morning.  There a day in Hanoi, then a few in a beach area not far from Hanoi, and come Monday start a 6 day workshop for the Vietnam Film Department.  Should be interesting.  I’ll try at the same time to shoot some kind of film, probably an essay-poem of some sort on the meaning of “Vietnam” in this life, in their lives, and in many American’s lives.  A meaning which reverberates today under a new sound, “Iraq”.  And I read a fleet of America’s Shockingest and Awingest is at this moment steaming toward the Persian Gulf, prepping to flex George’s apparently drunken inclinations in time to swerve America’s elections (off a cliff).

Anyway we’re off in some hours, and I’ll try to find time and mental something to post some thoughts from Hanoi, Hue and Ho Chi Minh City.