Tonight I saw again a film that was in my top five during my youth, Wings of Desire. I hadn’t however seen it for years, out of fear that time and experience would discredit it in my not-so-young-anymore eyes.
Partly wanting to see Berlin as it was before, more than 20 years ago (already!), I played the DVD tonight.
It’s still one of the films that appeal to the sensitivities of my generation. Or it could be just me.
Quite unexpectedly, this being my eighth autumn here, it has been rainy for the last week or so: a true foretaste of autumn. On our way to Aerosol to see eV in her new flat with the spectacular tropical view, what will all the palm trees and the beach, the weather was tropical too: balmy, then windy, then pouring down on us, then humid again, then with gusts of wind and dark clouds racing against the wind (!) — with silent flashes of faraway lightning never ceasing. The memory of the summer still lingers on, is still a topic to talk about — especially in the face of a tough season ahead.
eV’s film collection (in VHS and DVD format) is also impressive. I wish I had more appetite for watching films. But appetite is not in great quantities: tonight I skipped two potentially interesting gigs. However, Rite of Passage, a psychedelic rock band, were truly good last Friday. I also liked the crowds they attracted.
AW, a colleague, was taught at school by Haruki Murakami’s father.
Although one of those “irrational and disturbed” characters I have written about earlier came back with a vengeance before the weekend, it seems that I have developed some defences against them, by now. It is a matter of priorities, I presume, and of my determination to work hard and to generally get things done this autumn. I can’t afford stressing out anymore, can I?
Overstressed, overworked, underindulged and tired Glau visited for the weekend in order to relax — although in constant contact with her office. The slice of our life she was served here was quite fun and impressive to her. She went to restaurants and bars, she stayed in a relaxing flat, she saw us living next to a faultline of sorts, she went to beaches (she however had fantasies of bombing Big Resort with hand grenades), she met cool and exciting people who care for us: eV, Dancer and — naturally — What’s-his-Name, the distinguished member of the Russian nobility. She also told us what we have been suspecting all along: Outpost lifestyle is alarmingly and disturbingly close to Compatridos’ ideal lifestyle by now.
During the summer that nominally finished hours ago, I read Miller’s A canticle for Leibowitz. It is an impressive book in multiple ways. It is also a (sci-fi) writers’ sci-fi book: published in 1959, it seems to have had parts of it lifted by people as diverse as DeLillo, Kubrick (in his Doctor Strangelove), the folks that gave you Mad Max and — surely — Neal Stephenson (in Anathem, more precisely) and Mary Doria Russell (in her underappreciated Sparrow).
This leaves me now with just the two Gore Vidal’s books, a mere four years on.
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