Ahhh when some human being, an artist, an actor, whoever, says : “I wouldn’t be there without…”. A teacher, who SAW the possibilities hidden in a toady lazy kid. Thanks to a word. An advice. A book. This person gave the impulse.
This makes me thoughtful. How to keep the awareness to be there and say the right thing to a person who desperately needs it? What is the impulse and how do you find it? What do you trigger here?
It’s rarely in actions, I’m pretty sure. It’s in words. The teacher verbalizes what he/she foresees. Or not. Foreseeing but unsaying what he/she guesses. Impulsing in the forms of seeds. But with words, right?
Words as levers. I like that!
Spoiler to Sophie’s Choice here : don’t read this if you want to read the book one day.
Sophie is a Polish immigrant who comes to the USA just after the war. When she arrived to Auschwitz a few years before, she’s been forced to choose between her two kids : one will be gassed, the other sent to a children camp.
Of course, the idea of the choice is unimaginably terrible, but the scene, in the book, is worse : the nazi who decides to let her “choose” appears just after his lunch. He’s a bit drunk and has… “a sprinkling of boiled-rice grains on the lapel of the SS tunic”.
There’s something like a horrific one more layer here. Why is it worse to be mistreated by someone who doesn’t care that much? Why are we wounded by a lack of empathy? What kind of tropism is to mistreat someone… casually?
One day, in Paris, I was with a person who was absolutely happy to see me suffer after a break up. She became silent, never explained anything, silence treatmenting me, exhilarated to create confusion in my head, hilarious on the phone describing my despair. I was paralyzed, glued in something… I think it’s been the only time in my life I’ve witnessed this dark joy.
Bloggers have maybe realized that they have to write & share about what they know/found. Words again. If you read me here, you know I’m obsessed with them…
What kind of place is a blog? Who listens?
It’s been all fascinating to discover these two different American women the same week. Both of them let me in an awe. I never heard their name before. And, oh, it’s the first and last time I talk about politics here…
I discovered Ann Coulter recently, randomly, on Twitter, and I now follow her, fascinated like by a spider – to see how far she can go. “Hate-Monger”, they call her. Or “bilious”. And in fact, I never thought a person like that could exist.
The democratic political game is normal and I understand a country needs to have some Democrats moments and then some Republican moments. But Ann Coulter is something I can’t understand. I read some of her tweets or retweets, wondering how could someone be so attention seeking, ignorant, full of hate, fiddlesticky and, oh… there are some YouTube movies you can watch, just type her name and “supremely” or “complete”.
I see the spider, obsessed by religion and purity, wanting to “clean” her country from the 11 millions illegal Mexican immigrants (oh really, how would you do that, Ann?) and daily asking for “The Wall” on the border (40% of illegals come by plane with a visa and stay). Outrageous to sell books, right? I watched her first movie on Facebook like “How is this possible?”. She is almost… barking.
Not so long ago she tweeted that “Sharks are doing the jobs Europeans just don’t wanna do” after this incident in the sea “Migrants are eaten by SHARKS during rescue operation in the Mediterranean after their boats sank, claiming 31 lives” ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5120909/Migrants-eaten-SHARKS-rescue-operation.html ).
The only dial I could watch here is this : to ask GOP lovers what they think about this woman. But I know none. I wonder if, for people who preferred Bush to Obama, from where it is becoming “too much”…
Happily I watched a good documentary about Katharine Hepburn, and heard about Deborah Nadoolman Landis (on the left on the picture), a film and theater costume designer I never heard about before. She’s now also and historian and a professor at UCLA. She designed costumes for Michael Jackson in Thriller, the Blues Brothers, and… Indiana Jones. Yep, she wrote books too!
I loved her smile, her finesse, her genuine sparkling happiness to talk about Katharine Hepburn. I read things about her on Twitter too. All about her grace, her enthusiasm and generosity in teaching.
Deboray at IMDB : http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0618966/
Facets of America…
Fidget spinners have been fascinating to watch : it was over as soon as it began. So when kids needed them it was constantly out of stock, and as soon as stores were full of spinners, they had to cut prices : NOBODY wanted to buy such shitty things for that much money.
There are a few motifs, patterns, I like to call “tools”. It is one of the reasons why my articles are to brief. It’s not about theories, but about little structures.
A single wisdom underlies, though, any idea of “What do I do?”, thanks to Marcus Aurelius, who says that we can divide the world in two camps :
Where we have a power to act, and where we have not.
Then, worry about the first territory only.
In a way, we can consider the second camp (“I know it’s here, and what it’s doing, and I can do nothing about it”) like the WEATHER. The whole society, or war, or idiots around us : there’s little we can do about it. If I want to act, I watch the levers I have within reach, and move thy ass, gallivanter!
Choose your field : job, couple, creativity… It’s just a little analysis game.
There are some states, in life, where your camp, your levers, all is just INSIDE you. You are powerless on anything you have around (for example if you’re a lonely prisoner in a cage). Then, all you can do is to work inside yourself…
Then…
Signals. At intervals. Intermittently. Hoping they’ll be seen. You need a mate to talk about things, right?
Thanks for reading! Bonne journée !
Thanks, Beth, for the picture!
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a french toolbox 