Soaking

My daughter cried this morning, when we checked the weather forecast. She literally broke out in tears.

It has been raining, non-stop, for five days now. Five days! And the temperature has gone from the mid-sixties down to the low fifties, even the forties. And the icing on the cake: It's supposed to continue raining all next week!

Jeez.

As they would say about a cold spring where I come from: Winter came early that year.

Splish-splash.

And then there was Neil Jordan's

So I finally got around to seeing Neil Jordan's version of the End of the Affair. While the 1955 version moved me, this one disturbed me. So I really do not know what I think of it.

It has talent galore, from Ralph Fiennes to Julianne Moore to Stephen Rea to Michael Nyman, whose Gattaca score helped make that film change my mind about a lot of things. The directing is also strong, so is the editing, etc. It is truly a well crafted film. And it has heart. And that is probably why I am so disturbed by it.

I sometime feel like my progression, my growth, as a human being, has been like a building rising from the ground, based on foundations that contradict each other, or at least seem to do so: Man's dominance over Nature, himself, and even his destiny vs. a higher being, a greater force, a god, God. That certain answers are to be found to any real problems vs. the ever-lingering uncertainty, about virtually anything and everything. The goodness of any living person vs. the horrible monstrocities that mankind continually spawns. Or, in short: good, evil, faith, atheism, certainty, doubt, hope, despair, anything is possible, and love conquers all. Off of these pillars, towers have risen, and I have tried to console them, bridge them, merge them into one coherent being, to make me whole, at peace, and not absorbed in internal conflicts and contradictions. Which is only natural, I guess. Trying to clear the lines. To get the shades of gray to fit into the black and white boxes. But every time I try to build a bridge across these divides, I just end up making the towers taller, and thus perhaps even shakier, not stronger. That is, I clarify and qualify my opinions. And then I fluctuate between them. One day I might be convinced that there can not be a higher being involved with the running of this mad, mad, mad world, at least not an intelligent or a compassionate one. And the next day I find that there has to be. One day I am unfazed by the ugliness of our times, certain that the good in men must prevail. The next day I am sure that this will all crash and burn, and that we are all going to hell. If one exists, that is.

I have said it before. I feel like I live my life in flames. That I am in a constant state of blazing, fiery flux of emotions, beliefs, and opinions. This fluidity may be confined to a rather limited set, but it is constant, and it is scorching. As opposed to the cool, somewhat simple, generally moderately conservative view of life that the majority of people seems to have adopted at my age. Conversely, my conflagrant consideration of the world does not seem to subside with age. I have found no conclusions, no rest, and find no end in sight. I remain searching, weary of the fact that I may never be able to find a dispassionate disposition in life.

All of which brings me back to Greene, and Jordan's adaptation of his End of the Affair. His protagonist is certainly darker than the anemic one in the 1955 version. He is angry, hateful, even vile. Somehow, I think he is closer to Greene's character, which he allegedly based on himself. He so detests the God that took his love from him that he makes him real, with his hate. Which surely is an argument. You may not like God, but if you dislike him enough, that means that you must belief he exists. Therefore, you may curse him for letting terrible things befall good people, you may hate him for allowing the innocent to be hurt, but that does not exclude you from believing in him. In fact, it might serve as an indication that you truly do believe that he exists, in some form. And then you could rationalize the second part of the equation, i.e. the apparent ill-will of God manifested in the ugliness he allows to fester, with the logical conclusion that if there really is a higher being of that caliber at work, he must be a order of magnitude more sophisticated being than you, and his reasons therefore too complicated for your puny brain to grasp.

But my gripe with God is a different one. I am like Thomas, who said he would not believe Jesus had risen from the dead unless he would "see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side". I am faced with this dilemma: I have faculties that allow me to discern what I believe to be true from false. These include among others: reason, deduction, my senses, and even my belief. But my leaps of faith are small and weak, and seldom prevail without corroborating evidence. And these tools of mine do not include a way to accept as true the existence of God. I cannot console myself to thinking of his existence as a fact. However, my stance is fluctuating, and I have found my corroborating evidence. Every time I look into my little girl's eyes, I can not help but be humbled. To see in this soul mirror something so complex, and yet so flawless. Someone of me, but still distincly a separate person. Somebody made from virtually nothing, but into this perfect being. A being so helpless, but one that at the same time rules my world. So I am left with wondering how can I not believe in God, a wonderful, kind, all-powerful entity? Even if he can also sometimes tear so inexplicably grimly at my heart.

Well, that settles it. Now I have to read the book.

Haiku

You should never struggle with poetry. The results will suffer.

This morning, I was trying to clobber together a haiku, and wondering whether tulips would pass for decent kigo. So I googled and surfed, and found some amazing haiku. Just then, I stumbled upon this gem, which actually described the scene perfectly:

Alone, on the web,
drops of sensitivity
embrace an eyelash.

Me and my girl

After taking her to the daycare, I lingered a bit. And took this picture of us. Is she not a spitting image of me? No, I don't think so either. "She looks like her mother, luckily", is what I ususally tell people, and they will smile and chuckle. But actually, she just looks like herself. More and more each day.

Home—for now

In response to repeated pleadings of some the more vocal part of you readers, here is a picture of my fast-growing girl. She is sitting in the driveway in front of our temporary home. She does seem to like living here, although this morning she got more frightened than I have ever seen her before. Right in that spot where this picture was taken.

She saw a clown. A real-life one. He came jogging joyfully towards her, waving a small, purple duster. My daughter reacted as if he was lunging at her with a sword. She arched her self as far back as she could in my arms, and let out this primeval scream that chilled me to the bone. And stopped the poor clown dead in his tracks. I couldn't really see that well through his heavy make-up, but he was visibly shaken. He stood there for a brief moment, and the sadness flowed into his eyes.

And then he slowly walked into the house.

Affairs

Speaking of affairs, last night I saw The original film adaptation of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. I have to way that I do not care for Van Johnson that much. Didn't like him in The Caine Mutiny. Didn't like him here. He is such an archetypical worried-look-on-his-face-in-a-trenchcoat-in-the-rain-in-a-black-and-white-movie kind of actor, that his acting does not ring true. It's hollow, somehow. Too predictable.

Deborah Kerr, however...

I could watch her in anything, I guess. She is just so, ephemeral. Somehow. So intangible. You never quite know where you have her. But yet so real. Down to Earth. Totally believable. Here, she is playing the adulterous wife. In a film made in 1955. Doesn't get much more taboo than that. And does she come off as an evil, two-dimensional character? Someone who doesn't evoke the least bit of compassion? No, absolutely not. You feel for her right from the start. In a way. She manages to make it all so real: The vulnerability for what happens; the torment over that it is wrong in all respects; how she still can't help giving in to her emotions; the guilt; the passion; the hope. All of it. This is one of those gifted actresses who shows you so much, mainly by doing so little. It is that understated performance which saves this otherwise unremarkable adaptation. Well, that and Peter Cushing's neat and proper little British civil servant. I wonder what it must have been like to grow up in a time and country where most people acted that way. Every day. Makes the average present day social interaction seem almost barbaric.

I look forward to my next batch of Netflix movies. In it, there is a 1999 adaptation of the same book. With Ralph Fiennes. And Julianne Moore. And that guy from the Crying Game that looks a bit like Geoffrey Rush.

1955 and 1999. A world apart.

To fight with your friend

Sharing without reserve is perhaps the sign of a true friendship. When you feel real emotions for someone, his opinions and ideas, and you stop holding these feelings back for the sake of courtesy or because you do not feel you know that someone well enough. When you don't just laugh and cry with that person, but you share the whole spectrum of feelings, in earnest. Perhaps then you really know.

I got into a fight today. Not a physical one, and not a serious one. But an important one. My friend and I were fighting over something quite trivial, something that can probably be put down to a difference in taste. But what I think actually happened was that after a few years of getting to know me, and listening to my incessant insistence that my taste in this particular matter had more merit to it, my friend finally let go a little and pointed out the arrogance of such behavior. He said he was frankly tired of it. Which is really quite understandable. But it was not clear to me until we had fought over it. And I had had a little time to realize that he was right.

This is how this little tussle made me realize that I have a friend in this man. A real one. And here is how I know that I return the favor, that I truly am a friend of his: I felt I could not let it sit that way. It wasn't like an angry exchange of words you have with a stranger, which you can just shrug off. No. I needed to put it right. Set it straight. I needed us to be okay again. So after he had gone, I went after him. And he graciously gave me his time. Let down his defenses. Listened. And allowed me to repair the damage. Well, it was more like a little dent, really. A fender-bender is probably the appropriate term. But he let me make a fuss and thus feel better about the affair.

Which I guess is what friends will do for each other.