Bring Back The Dead G(r)eeks

Plato's Academy

According to philosophy there is a designated approach to thinking about the world, with defined objectives and methods to understanding reality. Thinking itself is as old as humanity, some even say, it's older than anything else that exists in the materialized world. I must say I'm not that fixated on the meta aspect of it, but we can safely assume that it's as least as old as the old Greeks.

Methodic thinking is the cradle of everything we are, and everything we have accomplished as a species.
Isn't it a bit weird that the important questions we ask ourselves have already been asked by our Greek forefathers? They found answers according to their timeline and state of knowledge, but they knew very little compared to what we know today.

Yet somehow there is this incredible boldness in what a Thales of Miletus or an Anaximander thought about the world, what it was made of. Thales thought water to be the basic element of all things and the Earth itself to be a disc floating on water like a raft, Anaximander coined the term "matter" in a much broader sense, thinking that no specific element but matter itself was the basis for everything that exists.

The Greek table of elements

They knew nothing about atoms, but they had a theory - much like the experimental physicists do today, trying to "split" the world of atoms in subatomic degrees. Unlike today, the philosophers of ancient Greece were all scientists, mathematicians and physicists trying to back up their worldview with science. Today there is this partition wall between science and philosophy - the latter doesn't produce any usable results, numbers and figures on its own, thus has sadly degenerated into a theoretical exercise at universities alone.


Ideally, a modern scientist should be detached from all things ideological, especially his own hopes or expectations for finding an answer. This is so completely un-Greek!

Did Socrates' beard attract groupies?

Today's scientists can be philosophers only in their spare time. That strikes me as both strange and a bit ungrateful, because philosophy is responsible for us asking those questions, as it teaches us how to find out things about the world.
Yet it appears that over time, science accumulated the tools of the trade and ran with them. It's OK, I don't have a beef with science - although it evolved based on the (Borg) principles of assimiliation and compliance. Sometimes though, I wish there was a way to summoning the spirit of the Greeks back into our daily lives. Not only for the sake of knowledge, but for wisdom's sake - to remind us of the timeless relevance there is in understanding the world and its workings. Because sometimes we tend to forget why we want to know things, unlike the Greeks; their whole culture revolved around that aspect. It was a proud trait to think, a useful and esteemed quality to be able to speak one's mind in debate. I imagine that Plato's students got lots of tail for being the think-stars of their time. (Nowadays philo students are laughed at for being too lazy to do something useful-)


What is more useful than thinking? It's the value of wanting to know something, stating a theory out of curiosity; and even the celebration of finding out that they were wrong that made them reach for the stars - which, according to ancient Greek astronomy, consisted of fire, caught in bowls.

Strife is the father of all things, sundering itself, coalesces with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre. - Heraclitus

Six Sentence Sunday: Storms In Quiet Places

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Hey lovely Sixers, here we are again, sharing our wonderful Sunday tradition. This week it's part #11 of The Days Adrift - and ->this is what happened last time. We are back in the boat with Brita, Tams and that other girl telling her story. :) Feel free to share your thoughts with me, I do appreciate all of your comments.


There is...something. I can see it now, a shape emerges, approaching the keel from deep within the white wafts. It is lengthy and even and..."Outpost!!! Outpost!! Outpost!!!" Brita jumps up and down on the bow, the bottles roll on the floor in disarray. It is a small landing stage...I can't believe it. 
Tams collapses onto the bench right in front of me, she quivers like a branchlet shaken by storm.

Six Sentence Sunday: Hell-bent On Giving Up

Hey there lovely Sunday Sixers, here we are again! Whew, the weeks fly by quickly, and as I'm mentally preparing for Nanowrimo I feel like I have to do some preliminary work for my Sunday Six excerpts. So this week, it's another double-six snippet from The Days Adrift, part #10. Feel free to comment, critique and share your thoughts! :)
->This is what happened last week.


"Don't throw it all out," I say, a tad insulted, "we may still need some of those things." Like an excavator, Tams grabs the lot of empty bottles and all of our shoes - the good shoes. 
A single sneaker falls off of her arms. "Stop it!" but she seems to be in some sort of frenzy. "We need shoes, you twerp." 
She pauses and stares at me, that scary glare in her eyes, the one telling me that she's hell-bent on giving up.
"Guys!" 
As she leans over the rail, I yank her arm from behind, hard. She stumbles, loses her balance and falls back with a thump. 
"Guys!!!" Brita yells, her voice is cutting capers. She gestures dramatically. Tams lies on top of my legs, amidst scattered shoes and bottles. Brita's incessant screech has become a hoarsely squeal; it pierces right through my ears.
What in the world is she pointing at?

Miss Highsmith's Toxic Talent: Eleven reviewed

Obsessive, acute and unsettling. There are only so many words as to describe Patricia Highsmith's ductus and the characters she has created over a lifetime of writing. Her relationship with her characters, however, has always been tender and affectionate. Ever since The Talented Mr. Ripley I've only come across a handful of writers who love their characters as much as she did; unconditionally, and particularly the ones that are broken - the ones that she broke.

There is a large variety of damaged characters in Eleven, one of her earlier works and the first published collection of short stories from the year 1970. This book is a true find for me, as I think that with each story, she establishes herself as a creator of dense and gripping story arcs. After reading this book, I find myself with a new appreciation for the art and craft of the short story narrative, and especially the one Highsmith provides, in only ten to twenty-five pages for each of those eleven stories.

'Victor heard the elevator door open, his mother's quick footsteps in the hall, and he flipped his book shut. He shoved it under the sofa pillow out of sight and winced as he heard it slip between sofa and wall to the floor with a thud. Her key was in the lock. 'Hello, Vee-ector-r!' she cried, raising one arm in the air.'

These are the first few lines of The Terrapin, the chilling tale of a young boy, who suffers years of mental abuse by his mother until he finally breaks free and revolts.

Personal revolt seems to be a common denominator in Highsmith's stories, in different sizes, shapes and forms that is, let it be the invasion of personal privacy by a man who, while waiting for a letter from his love interest starts to read his neighbor's mail in The Birds Poised To Fly, or the upheaval of a married woman against her husband in When The Fleet Was In At Mobile. There is a deep apprehensive quality about these tales, one that is palpable between the actual story lines. The plot is like a stretched leg, a trap Highsmith lays for her characters to stumble across in order for them to stand out dysfunctional and broken, against a storybook world they never quite fit in.

Lucille is a paramount example, in The Heroine, the tale of a nanny about to start her first day of work in an (up until now) immaculate household. The story begins with the job interview, which she is very anxious about. We soon find out why, and other anxious qualities seem to emerge, deeply unsettling ones.


 

'But there went her eyes too wide again, as if to deny her words. Her eyes looked much like her mother's when they opened like that, and her mother was part of what she must forget. She must overcome that habit of stretching her eyes. It made her look surprised and uncertain, too, which was not at all the way to look around children.'









At this point we already know that there is something terribly wrong with this girl, and we strongly hope that the parents find out before it's too late.
They won't - but as much as these stories revolve around upheaval, in the end Highsmith's characters always do find some sort of relief - and may it just be the certain knowledge that they are doomed, like Tom Ripley, alive and positively rich, but ravaged by paranoia, or Geraldine in When The Fleet Was In At Mobile, when she sees the policemen coming towards her:

'Then her scream came as if it had been waiting just for that. She heard it reach the farthest corners of the park, and though they yanked her with them around the table, she took another breath and let it go again, let it shatter all the leaves and shatter her body (...) Then his face and the lights and the park went out, though she knew as well as she knew she still screamed that her eyes were open under her hands.'

Buy it - read it, you won't regret it. Eleven on Amazon

Six Sentence Sunday: Grave Goods

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Huzzah Sunday Sixers! Today it's back to the usual length and format of the Six Sentence Sunday snippets. And this week also, I'll crack open Chapter 4 of The Days Adrift, my story about three girl-fugitives at sea, running from the turmoil of war and the crime they committed. This is what happened ->last time. Let's move on forward to part #9. Feel free to share your thoughts, any thoughts! :)


4.

"You're doing a great job, girl," Tams says, leaning over the keel to rinse one of the empty water bottles. 
"Do you think we will make it?" It does sound incredibly small and stupid, now that I say it out loud. Tams looks at me bleakly, in calm defeat. No, of course not.  
She grabs the bloodstained hammer from under the plastic cover, dumps it in the water and watches as it sinks into the abyss; already cleaning up for the ship burial, aren't we?

Sunshine Blogger Award 2012

Thank you, M.L. Falconer for honoring me with the Sunshine Award.
Ahem, I want to thank everyone who was in this movie with me..oh..wait..wrong ceremony.
I am very glad to have met Mel during the weekly Six Sentence Sunday blog fest. He is a wonderful human being with a myriad of talents and interests, such as being a world-class hiker as well as an audiophile with his own audio book production. Mel is a truly passionate writer who fully commits to his works, which is something I really admire. Aww, I'm happy just to think that I live in times like these. Without the internet, Mel and I would never have met, especially not while hiking. I never hike, much less across the Atlantic!

The Sunshine Blogger Award is a great opportunity to get to know fellow writers and bloggers without actually having to peek through their bedroom windows with a pair of binoculars. So, shoo, people!

 The rules for the award ceremony are fairly simple:

• Thank the person who gave you the award
• Answer 8 questions
• Pass the award on to 8 sunshine-worthy bloggers

I think I'll be going the Lucky Seven route again regarding the tagging. It means that this post serves as an automatic tagging mechanism to anyone who wants to participate. These challenges should be fun and done on a voluntary basis. Peeps, consider yourselves tagged, if you like.

My favorite Christmas/Holiday movie? That's easy, it's Three Wishes For Cinderella! I have watched this fairy-tale once a year at Christmas ever since I was a little girl. I liked it so much that I remember one year, when my dad hogged the TV all day because of Winter Olympics, I ran over to my neighbor, a kindly old lady, who let me watch it in her living room and even made me some hot chocolate. Ahh, the times without VCR and only one TV in every household...
Would I still do the same thing today? Probably!
It's a magical movie, with snowy woods and a Cinderella who doesn't just fall into the prince's arms, but climbs trees, shoots crossbows and has to be chased quite a bit.

My favorite Flower? I really like to look at Calla lilies, I think they are very elegant, almost unreal looking, and I love how the colors of the blossom and the stem blend into one another. I would never go out and buy flowers to put in vase though, and I don't care much for a flowery present either. It's nice to know that right at this moment, somewhere in Africa, the lilies are at full bloom - and bring joy to someone who just passes them by. At least that's what I like to think..

My favorite non-alcoholic beverage? That changes quite a lot. At the moment I like rooibos soft drinks, especially during and after workout sessions. A few months ago, I used to religiously drink apple spritzer. Before that it was coke and fizzy. Juice. And loooong before that...well, mother's milk, what else. ;)

My passion? Apart from all the writerly things that is? Playing video games! I have an Xbox, a PS3, a Wii, and a high-end PC not to miss any good titles coming out for those platforms. I simply love role playing games, and even talking about game mechanics and reviewing games is so much fun. I have been playing RPGs and MMORPGs for over 10 years. I love to stroll through luscious woods, climb up to the top of mountains - and fight and ogre or two on my way down. The ideas I come up with while roaming the Skyrim landscape... it's like being on vacation!

Skyrim nights

Dodo the dog and me, in TERA

My favorite time of year? ..is now, September and October. I love the warm days and cool nights of the Indian Summer. Everything about this time of year is great. I was born in September, so it must be true, tee-hee. But other than that, there are colorful leaves and there is bright wheat, kites flying, gingerbread and hazelnuts. Not to forget about pumpkins and delicious pumpkin soup.

My favorite time of day? Early mornings, the time of day when it's still quiet, but the day's rumblings are about to begin..also for me, it is the most productive time of day.

My favorite physical activity? Yikes! Well, if nothing else I like doing cardio, but only the short cardio workouts. Hubby calls it the hot chick silly dance. Well, what can I say, Turbofire is high intensity interval training, with at least 20 to 30 minutes every day...other than that...yikes!

My favorite vacation? The spontaneous one. Catching a train to god-knows-where. Deciding on the spur of the moment where and in which town to get off. Don't book a room in advance. Don't buy a map. Get your tiny bag with no more than two days worth of clothes, point in a random direction and go, just go.

Movie Review Mashup

It's that time of year again. The days are closing in, and when it's warm and cozy inside, I'm feeling only half as guilty for spending time in front of the TV. The thing with pay TV is that I am actually fortunate to watch both recent movies as well as the older ones, the classics, if you will. Amongst them there are surprising finds I have never seen before, much less with the original audio track. It's expensive, but with pay TV, I don't have to suffer through horrible dubbing experiments by bored and underpaid German actors. Sorry guys, but you spoil foreign-language movies for me.

While browsing the TNT-program, I discovered a movie called Dog Day Afternoon (1975, directed by Sidney Lumet), starring a very young and fresh-faced Al Pacino, playing the charming New Yorker Sonny, who, in his attempt to get cash for his boyfriend's sex change operation robs a bank - but of course, things don't go as planned. When do they ever! This movie was inspired by an article in Life magazine, "The Boys in the Bank", following the true story of bank robber John Wojtowicz and his accomplice Salvatore Naturile. I actually didn't expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did. I guess it's due to its timeless production value as well as Pacino's performance.

Another lovely, not so recent movie I stumbled across is The Wedding Singer (1998, directed by Frank Coraci). I had actually heard about this movie from several friends, but at the time it ran in the cinemas I was way too busy shedding tears over the sinking of a certain ship. Back then, the prospect of the '80s inspired romantic comedy didn't attract me as much as Leo and Kate, smooching in a steamed-up car. But times change, and now the '80s look all fresh, shiny and glorious to me. Adam Sandler plays the main character Robby Hart, a professional wedding singer. I admit, I'm usually not a big fan of Sandler movies, especially ones from the super-uninspired post Mr. Deeds phase. But this one is different, cut back and unobtrusive in its humor, abstaining from the usual caveman club jokes, and Sandler is just puppy dog cute with his perm and badly cut suit. And, well, Drew Barrymore, what's not to love about her?

Pretty adorable couple: Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler

The most recent movie I saw is called The Tree of Life (2011), a visually stunning epos directed by Terrence Malick about three brothers and the complicated relationship they have with their dad (played by Brad Pitt). I loved the cinematography, the ambient sounds and poetic visuals. The movie doesn't have dialogue and the scenes are largely unscripted, which gives it a natural, earthy flow. Brad Pitt really annoyed me though. He is quite naturally wooden, and apparently even more so when let loose. But not "tree" (of life) wooden, that would have actually been a cool allegory, no, wooden like Pinocchio, hanging from a string.
The movie was showered with all kinds of awards, because it deals with some existential questions and depicts heavy spiritual symbolism. I didn't quite get the point it wants to make, but the whole time I felt there was something important going on, something I should know about, but just couldn't wrap my mind around. Much like life itself it left me in the dark about the meaning of it all. I'd recommend watching this film for writerly input, as I felt the visual language was deeply inspiring.

And so it begins. Dinosaurs in The Tree of Life

*The good thing: all those movies are available on Blu-ray, at least on Amazon. If you have an especially lazy weekend afternoon coming up, I'd recommend every one of these flicks.