Thoughts sparked by: "Husbands and Wives"

I dismiss Bhagat Singh without much deep consideration.

I don't think Sex,Lies and Videotape should be considered a classic.

Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives" is one awesome film.

In this post I shall proceed to connect these three seemingly disparate statements. To do that first the reader must know where I am coming from:

I worry I will go through life and learn little from it. I wanted to say 'everyone worries that they will go through life and learn little from it'. But why hide behind numbers ? Why pretend my concern is universal when it is not.

Yes this is my dominant, principal concern in a world shaken by famine, genocide, financial turmoil and the prospect of arthritis.
The world does not concern me as much as my limited understanding of it does. Worse still is the realization that there are wrought-iron bounds to my understanding - not much different from a physical disability. This realization has been afforded to me by the heralded teacher that is life, on various occasions with varying degrees of politeness.

Sometimes I make light of it saying: the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from it. That's very palliative.

Steven Soderbergh was 25 when we wrote Sex,Lies...what the deuce could he have known for the Library of Congress to deem his work "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Historically ! Really, really ! Matter of fact, I liked his latest: 'The Informant' much more than 'Sex Lies..'. That's just an observation though, am not imposing a condition that a later work has to be better. Because creation is not a perfection translation of understanding.

As a solipsist perpetually making text edits to the first edition of the hitherto unwritten autobiography, I look back a lot. Sometimes I find a time when I knew more -wider and deeper - than what little I know today. That is disturbing. And this isn't like not knowing today what the Bolzano Weierstrauss theorem is. Those things reasonably evaporate with disuse. This is the generalia, intimate understanding with 'truth' variety, where, with the progression of time, there should only be an elevated understanding.

To have that foundation shaken is unsettling. Opinions changing with time is one thing, but the basis for changes becoming less sound with the progression of time, is another thing altogether. Apart from making one lose respect for one's own opinions it makes it virtually impossible to take that of others' seriously. Surely not that of a 23 year old holding court about society, theology, politics etc. When one is reluctant to engage in discourse, one starts deeming oneself to be as a nonparticipant obsever, as times floats past. That too not out of a presumed sagacity but because every other mode of behavior has been rendered impossible. Is this rude to the rest of the world ? Only if the rest of the world was of the opinion of that it was unchanging.

When one can't throw oneself behind ideas, much less can one throw oneself behind people. Forcing oneself to make dips into 'reality' doesn't work either, when one is like the bird from the Chandogya Upanishad which constantly watches its twin eat the fruit. Anyway, one rests assured, existence is seldom led by rationality unlike the struggling folks in Husbands and Wives.The everyday is meant to be clogged by rituals and people, so that contemplation is suitably secluded to the harmless otherwordly corners.

Even this is not well expressed enough, so I will default to a quotation:

"..this is what is was meant to live. To go on living. To do with passion and determination, absurd, senseless things for which it was impossible to find justification and which continually placed the person who did them in a state of slavery, of hypocrisy.." (Two Adolescents, Alberto Moravia)

The sun shines bright this Sunday afternoon.

PS: podcasted the same for the benefit of தமிழ்கூறும் நல்லுலகு

Husbands and Wives...