Blinding sound, deafening sight
My reaction to movies such as Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s ‘Sunshine’ reveals so much about me, I think: I liked it a lot. It was a sad, uncompromising movie about life and sacrifice. And it’s a science fiction film.
What sound does the sun make when its light hits any surface? It’s an explosion of brightness and one expects deafening sound, but there isn’t any. There’s just immense heat and silence, but the sight is more than enough to make you go blind: it’s a blinding kind of sound; a deafening kind of sight.
What I like best about is how unhysterical it is. All the acting is understated, the dialogue plain and straightforward, and the plot unremarkable but serious. It’s about eight scientists heading towards the dying sun to send a nuclear payload the size of Manhattan and create a chain reaction that would jumpstart the said star. It’s a simple story well told and well showed. I demand nothing from it.
Right now I am thinking of my father whose favorite color was yellow and whose favorite flower was the sunflower. He would’ve liked the movie and its simplicity, the starkness of it and how the characters were able to see themselves in relation to the rest of the world, to humanity. Life means nothing if it meant millions of others losing others when you could do something about it. It was pretty zen-ny.
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The self-confessed killer of Julia Campbell has surrendered himself.
He tells of an accidental killing that absolutely makes no sense. He supposedly bludgeoned Julia with a rock when she bumped into him. He thought she was somebody else, some neighbor he had a beef with, so he hit her with a rock he found by the wayside.
This doesn’t make the least sense. It’s like one of those Twilight Zone episodes wherein terribly bad things in small but lethal doses happen and the aftermath is catastrophic especially when one realizes that they could’ve been avoided if in the 10 seconds just before the event happen one stopped and took a moment to breathe deeply.
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Frequently Kim accuses me of being an escapist. He thinks its because I read too much fiction, and so reality often makes so ill that I retreat or get hyper with disappointment or anger or just general pissedoffedness.
I tend to avoid people I don’t like or don’t know much because I can’t pretend that I like them. I suck at civility, and often my silence is mistaken for standoffishness when actually its plain awkwardness and even shyness. As I grow older I find myself turning more and more into a hermit crab. Am crabby,too. Oh I don’t know. It’s the painkillers wearing off, hah!
Actually, if I could, I’d simply hand out pieces of paper with my apologies written on them. Be like T.S. Garp when he mangled his tongue in that horrible car accident where his youngest son Walt died and his eldest Duncan lost his left eye.
"I am sorry for being unsociable, but I sincerely wish you well." Or
"I can’t smile right now but it doesn’t mean I dislike you: it’s just not a good time right now."
What I really want to hand out is this: "Let’s all try to be good. I’m doing my darnest."
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We’re supposed to vote for 12 candidates in May, but am having trouble completing my list. Most of my relatives are turning to me and asking me for my list because I’m supposed to be the ‘political one’ in the family. Anyways, this is my top six: Koko Pimentel, Alan Peter Cayetano, Loren Legarda, Manny Villar and Joker Arroyo. I’ll probably vote for Chiz Escudero and Sonia Roco, but am not sure about the rest. I cant bring myself to support Ralph Recto because he’s the main author of the EVAT and it drives me nuts that he keeps on extolling its supposed virtues.
I know that Bayan Muna et all endorses Recto, but jeez, all I can think off is all the press releases I’ve written against the EVAT and its impact on the income and livelihood of the poor. Hindi ko malunok ang partikular na endorsement na iyan, so, well, I won’t vote for the man.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Hi!
My name is Jessika!