Understanding Werner Herzog
...Something about his narration, his voice, bothers me. But the content is gold. And a whole list of films to see...
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Every day, I am Robert Di Nero in Brazil, tripped up by paperwork and bills, vanishing, slowly vanishing, every day trusting in an indeterminate future, these things, they reassure me.
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- Category: Film
Books
In the end, out of 8 boxes of books (another 24 to go) - 6 are rejected. Of the 2 they took, comprising 4 heaps of thin, more contemporary books, perhaps 70 books all told, $35.00 paid.
But I need to change the way I look at it, revise my thinking, I have the books inside, and it's - while a write off in every economic sense - it's still a lot easier to carry around $35.00 and buy the next book than it is carry around 8 boxes in the possibility I may one day want to reread one.
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- Category: Rejected
Juvenalia
More boxes of notes, pictures, ideas, writing, ephemera, souvenirs. Juvenalia. I read, and unlike other batches I'm not so surprised at occasional insight or brilliance, it's all garbage. Rip-it-up, rip-it-up.
I am surprised by the newspaper clippings. Interesting, yellowed, fading, from before the internet, when the entire media wasn't controlled by 1 or 2 giant outlets, and I'm pleased by the remembrance of newspapers worth reading. These I can pass on.
Time now to start in on the books...
The last 3 days, they've been a tear, I've been going through everything, sorting, piling, counting, inventorying, taking - to the e-cycle (e waste, old computers, cell-phones), to the thrift shop, to the garbage, to buyers from Kijiji...
Now to the books. The first pass, 80% gone - there's something sacred about books - this, this, it's a castration of sorts, but not, they are eaten, somewhere inside me now, and even if I can't remember they're there. I make a list, take pictures of the teetering stacks that are going, there will be a few trips I'm sure. The first pass, 80% of the books go, I could let them all go, 1 pass, just let them go, but - I need a map of where I've been. And maybe I'll need to stop here again.
I take them to "Fair's Fair" - the only used bookstore in town, a couple dozen boxes, the only used bookstore in a city of a million people. What does that say? My God...
And they don't do cash for books on weekdays, only weekends, and so they'll all hang in the car until Friday. Meanwhile I review the authors, make lists to ensure I don't pass this way again, I've read them all, I don't need credit on books, I've in my possession a hundred, easily, yet to read, and Calgary, well, it's not such a literate town, I've searched here time and again, they've nothing I need, nothing I haven't read...
3 days of busy, today - less productive, my regimes, early in the morning - meditation, etc: I've lapsed, but I'm far enough along that I repent it. The car is filled with books, I can't get to the locker, not properly, not fill the car, but - now - it's just the living room, half of which is a mess, and I've only a month to go - if I can make it - before my life is under control. 2 months and I'll be a Zen God. So hold my breath, rip-it-up, empty the trash, everything will be fine.
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- Category: Miscellany
I've worked in more of these places than I can count...
But it's good to seeing they're starting to shut down: https://www.eater.com/2019/3/4/18241461/metoo-movement-impact-restaurant-business-mario-batali
It's not just the "Me Too" movement, it's the whole industry - "Hospitality" provides some of the most inhospitable working conditions on earth. What is frightening is how media chooses to glamorize the likes of Gordon Ramsay and create the stereotype of the forgivable culinary genius who can do and say as he pleases because his food tastes so darned good...
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- Category: Rants
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