SO I usually don’t have high standards when it comes to movies. I have an uncanny ability to lose myself in plot, kick back, and just be with the movie. But there are certain movies that I like more than others, and, Donnie Darko is one of them. The reasons for the higher than normal attraction are many, too many to lay out here but they span from its representation of sacrifice to the silliness of the following scene when Donnie was talking to his shrink while under the spell of hypnosis:

Donnie : My parents didn’t get me what I wanted for Christmas.
Dr. Lilian Thurman : What did you want?
Donnie : Hungry Hungry Hippos.
Dr. Lilian Thurman : And how did you feel, being denied these hungry, hungry hippos?
Donnie : Regret.

Sometimes one scene, one phrase, like when Donnie Darko says ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos” that just seals the deal for me–> I decide I really like the movie.

Like many folks of my age, background, and politics, I tend to like the genre of “hipster” darkish underground movie that eventually reach a state of cult classic, like Harold and Maude, Garden State and Donnie Darko. I have to qualms of admitting that my like for these movies indexes the type of person I imagine myself to be and you call can fill in the blanks as to what that may be.

That aside, one of the things I like about them is that through a very powerful trope common to many blockbuster flicks, i.e. the transformative power of romantic love (all of these are uber-romantic, even Harold and Maude), they get to a much broader scope of love, that transcends individual/sexual need and fullfillment and in the words of Thomas Merton to represent love as “an intesification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life. We do not live merely to vegetate through our days until we die.” And to awaken to this intesifcation, is to bear one’s heart, mind, and eyes to the fact of tragedy and pain. It comes with the package, so to speak.

But one thing that has frankly deply annoyed me about the new instantiations of flicks that tend to embody certain Harold and Maudesque qualities (although the Sci-Fi element of DD stands on its own for sure… Hmm side-track –> notice that all of the men in these three flicks were in some capacity deemed as a little nutso? I also find it significant in H and M that meds were never an option. Sending him to the military was considered before meds! Can you imagine that today? Impossible but that is a whole other subject… ) is that they have the balance between yin and yang all off. I better restate that as a whole sentence:
But one thing that has frankly deply annoyed me about the new instantiations of flicks that tend to embody certain Harold and Maudesque qualities balance is that they have the balance between yin and yang all off

Simply put in the newer breed there is too much yang and too little yin. The female characters in all of these movies bring the males to some greater understanding of love, that leads them out of a paralyizing cacoon. And Maude, despite being a nearly 80 year old chix0r, stood fully on her own as a compelling character. And perhaps it is just a function of her age, but I think it goes beyond that. She had a dynamic force that simply is not there with the female counterparts in GS and Donnie Darko. The female characters are anemic, which I don’t think is a function of bad acting, but of the role given to them in the screenplay. They are some lesser vessel, brining the males to a higher place, and then at the end we sort of throw out the vessel to focus our gaze on the hero-male.

And this yang ying dealio, I don’t think it is simply or at all about gender balance. It is more about the fact that the form is not true to the conent. The relationship between the two characters is one in which one realizes oneself in the other and vice-versa. There should be some sort of symmetry there (even if they occupy different roles and positions at different times), in which both characters are fundamentally transformed in ways that are interesting for the audience. For all I care it could be between man and humanoid-duck but there seems to be something un-even in which one character gets all the plot-glory (even while he for examples sacrifices himself to saved his beloved and the rest of the world, ok, so DD is a super-hero but still…), and the other is short changed, in the processes shortchanging the viewer.

I think it is harder for sure to capture the transformation into love, in which nuance is given to two characters instead of one. But if it is a relation being explored, I think that the challenge is there to be met… But in the meantime I will still enjoy my Hungry Hungry Hippos…

Taken from an energetic standpoint alone, pain is a very potent and powerful entity. It is a strange beast that I am sure animates people to produce works of sublime beauty, a foil by which to save oneself from the drowning always at the crossroads of pain. And of course a good many people at some point decide that the pain is unbearable, ending their life by the force of their own hands.

At least once a week, my mother tells me she would rather die than lead the life she does. And much of the time, I am not sure what to respond and my reaction ranges from erecting more protective layers, to silently agreeing that maybe such suffering is not worth it, to trying to skillfully change the subject to keep her mind off her pain and end the torture of hearing such talk from someone who you love. It is frankly some of the most painful words I have heard in my life and yet, I know as my mother’s health declines, there is more in store. The tip of the iceberg is starting to reveal its larger mass.

Years ago in college, I immersed my self in the study of religion concentrating on Buddhism. Since then I only occasionally have stepped foot in a church or temple or have given my sight and mind to Buddhist scripture. While in SF, there was a little more connection through the mere fact of osmosis. It seems like everyone and his cousin as a spare yoga mat in their car and is involved in at least one of the

Often when I am very tired, life seems even more odd and strange, wicked and wonderful than it probably is. And today it was one of those days when everything seemed to be hang by a delicate string, but that string, no matter how thin, is one that transmits some small bits of wonder, that strike as such only because you really need more sleep. But I happily will take those small bits of wonder even if an artifact of some otherwise troublesome insomnia.

So, for example, today, as a way to keep myself awake I decided I was so tired, I must wear my bright orange sweater and this satorial decision elicited two considerably positive responses (one from a student after class, the other from a Hyde Park south sider while walking home). It seemed to make both of them incredibly happy and I was equally happy that a sweater of a certain color could induce such an effect.

Earlier in the day I also had a long conversation with someone about LISP, one of the geekier computer languages. Apparently this woman’s b-friend was a Lisp-Lover, and free software developer and it was just cool to talk shop with a fellow anthropologist about the arcane world of geeklandia that she knew from her partner. So when I came home only to find out that my friend seth had recommended I listen to a humorous song about LISP I was very excited.

So the sato is starting to roam to another blog, DGI. Slightly (hmm, maybe significantly) more upscale than here, the posts there, unlike here, will follow my research escapades, sticking closely to the academic side of my brain.

It snowed again last night, the white powder changing the topography of the city. With snow, comes a short period of silence a retreat from the normal bundles of noise and action of cities, a calm that unfortunately lasts only a short while, the noise of the snow plows and salt come out, transforming the white into limp gray.

But even then, the city shines in new ways. The watery blue of lake Michigan vanishes, replaced by vast whiteness that invites an awed gaze. One night of snow changes the look and feel of vast city, it bring with it a new topography.

The current topography of my life is populated by small piles, mounds of stuff, errands, emotions, emails, bills, laundry that in the last few weeks I have not been able to fully address and thus flatten out of my life. It has been three weeks since I have returned from Puerto Rico with my mother, a month that felt like it far exceeded 30 days of experience, instead feeling more like two or three months of experience because of all the emotion that comes from the intensity of watching someone suffer, struggling to get through the mundane acts of everyday life.

But despite the intensity of it, I had to give so much of my energy to the basics of getting (her) stuff done that I filed away the rawness of experience into some small pocket of my self, deposited away for later reflection. There was no way I could deal with her piles, her life, and process my own reaction to what is a life under decay, unraveling, her fiery independence muted by visual and mental degradation. More than anything, I wonder how I can express my gratitude I feel toward her, a gratitude that comes from the realization that has grown from the experience of taking care of her, which has made me see, in the fullest sense of seeing, how she spent so many of her minutes, hours, that have added up to years and years, caring for me, making my life possible, minimizing my suffering when I was in pain and just looking out for me in ways that I were completely imperceptible to me at the time. Her suffering has awakened something inside of me which is a new found gratitude but one that is tinged by pain difficult to describe because it is inseparable from the sadness I feel over watching her slip away.

In the past I would have fired off a letter to her letting her know how I feel about things, life, us, etc. I spent years writing her and she too would respond with letters, which does not quite capture the magnitude of her first set of writings to me. After I left home, my mom’s first letter was more like a small multi-volume encyclopedia peppered with her thoughts about.. most everything. When I received it, I was 17, living in a small fishing village in Venezuela, on a ship undergoing massive repairs. Life was laborious, dusty, tiring, and just overall grungy but the freedom of life among sea people in a small village was still nothing but exhilarating. About 2 months into my time in Venezuela, I get a DHL package from my mom with about 50 days worth of letters. Apparently, she was writing me a letter, sometimes pages in length, everyday. This left me in shock, a rumble that reverberated through my body, undermining my weakest link, my neck. So after reading the voluminous tract, while my neck healed, I spent three more days on my back mulling over all sorts of things I had not really known about my mom, her life, her inner world. I guess my absence created a space by which she could tell me things that could not be so easily uttered via the spoken word, at least not to your daughter and especially when you had never had ‘that type’ of sort of friendship-like relationship before. We continued to use the medium of letter to build our thoughts and sentiments, crafting one sentence upon sentence, words chosen deliberatively, to express ourselves, in new ways to each other.

Now she can’t read and I seem to lack the ability to tell her the things that I want to. And I know that she also has trouble expressing the depth of what she feels but at this stage, words don’t seem as important as a certain type of presence, which is calming for me and I am sure for her. And that is what makes being so far away so hard. The phone does not cut it and when she tells me some bad piece of news, I can’t seem to offer some distracting piece of information or humor to make her, me, feel better. I feel somewhat stuck and numb and empty, talking to a metal object, hearing a voice I knew well, and telling me in tone and content that things are very tough on the other end. Well, in time, I am sure we will once again be together. In the meantime, I guess I will get back to those little piles of stuff, flattening them out, creating a clear silent space that maybe will be like the calm of the snow.

So the install is done and most of the files have been transported via a nfity tool Unison-gtk. It is pretty remarkable all is up and running because in times past it took at least a couple of weeks to get everything just right and even then, well, it was never just right.

The fabled 10 step Ubuntu install is totally true. It requires only the mildest of attention and thought. Unfortunately after the intall the first time around many of the GNOME applications were acting totally quirky: like it took over 10 minutes for open office to open. Now that may have been common in the past and with my computer but clearly something was wrong. So we had to reinstall and then everything worked all right. With Ubuntu, it coud identify sound card/video card, drives etc. However, some of the programs still needed tweaking to make things like sound in them work. As Andreas pointed out, the unofficial Ubuntu guide is also quite helpful for trouble shooting & getting those non-free packages like Acroreader etc.

I am not crazy about GNOME, the default window manager, but KDE is not currently supported by UBUNTU so I will have to get used to it for a while and then change back if I still feel the same way.

Anyway, this is definitely a step in the right direction… It will be fun to see what happens with Linux when the install is 15 minutes and additional tweaking is only 15 minutes more.

Oh and the computer is sweetly sauve. I love IBM keyboards and I just can’t believe that the computer can be so tiny yet still have an almost full sized keyboard. I say almost because the backspace is tiny and needs to getting used to. Otherwise it is classic scissor style keyboard that has this satisfying feel to it.

So I ordered a computer two weeks ago and it finally shipped on Friday. But somehow in Louisville, KY, which is relatively close to me, it was sent back to its original place of shipment for “customs clearance:” Shanghai, China. So even though there is you know, email, faxes, telephones, by which one could verify the status of the package, it went back to Shanghai where it was magically cleared and then made its way back to the US via Anchorage, then KY, and now is making its way back to the US, in Rockford, IL. All of this information is thanks to UPS tracking system which seems to work better than their mail shipment system.

So I never thought that I would have steady Internet-acess in PR but as it turns out there is an open wireless connection in my mom’s “jardin.” It is a little weird to be surfing as the birds chirp, the coqui’s sing, and the bees try to drink your delicious morning cafe. But I am not complaining. It probably, along with short stints in the ocean, has helped me retain my sanity being that running errands in PR is totally maddening. But all of the major errands are now complete, with some the minor ones still loomming as they always will.

In the meantime I am doing a little work for my course next quarter and I ran into the site that ck help start and build connexions and I was reminded at how wonderful of a place it is. For example, something as simple as A Primer in Modern Intellectual Property Law which not only has great content (check out the side links) but aesthetically, it is arranged very well. Pleasing to the eye and easy to find information.

As of late as I run otherwise mind numbing errands and do domestic work, the question of aesthetics has been on my mind. Aesthetics has probably been the dominant issue in my mom’s life. The arrangement of a room, of even the ceramics on a table mattered like nothing else. She would spend hours fixing stuff so that is appearance was truly perfect. It was an obsession that worked well because our surroundings were always really nice. She had an uncanny ability to achieve what she called “la harmonia.”

About 4 years ago I came home for an extended period of time because I was sick and not getting better in the states. I found that my mom had stripped down her house to the bare minimum. She had one cup, and about 2 of everything else: 2 forks, 2 plates, 2 towels, etc. Evertything else was packed up, out of the way.

At the time I chalked it up to my mom’s general eccentricities, attributing it to some new found zen state of her aesthetic development. Little did I know at the time that this was the first serious sign of her illness, already she was having trouble differentiating things so she was simplifying her life so that the clutter of things would not get in her mental way. It is strange to think that her general obsession in life was an underlying neurological condition that eventually fully exploded around 4 years ago and has become steadily worse.

While here I have filled the kitchen with food and I generally take care of all the cooking and cleaning so she does not have to worry about the ordinary clutter I bring with me. Before I leave however, I will pack up everything extra and leave her with the bare essentials: a couple of utensils, plates etc. The fridge will be emptied out and her house will be transformed again to zen simplicity out of sheer necessity.

It has been a year since I have been in PR and honestly not much has changed. The roads are in total dissray, construction the norm on about half of the roadways. Congestion is rampant and though the new urban train is nearly done, I have a feeling that it will only get worse.

Unfortunately things have changed also. My mother, I can’t say, is any better. She has worsened although it may be do to moving into a new place. She is easily disoriented since she perceives the world as another world and has to relearn a place through feeling and touch.

I have been working hard to unpack the boxes and move the furniture so her house is once again liveable (she recently moved places and unfortunately she was quite used to the other place but it was an investment apt and had to be sold). I am not sure how much longer she can live without help but she is being really stubborn about admitting that she needs some help. She has always been the most stubborn person I know and I have a feeling that this quality of hers will only grow and magnify to become her defining personality trait.

At first she said she refuses to pay someone to help so I found a program through the Alzheimers association of PR where they send a volunteer over 3 days a week for 4 hours to help cook and to provide company. At first my mom dug the idea, now any mention of it and she breaks out in a string of insults about most everything, letting me know that she DOES NOT want any help. It is far from amusing and all I hope is that the main social worker at the Alzheimers association whose got mad upaya (not to be confused with papaya) will be able to convince my mom that having someone help her is not such a bad thing after all.

Since I found things so upside down here, I changed my tix to stay till the end of the month. There was no way I could finish all the errands and do all of the house stuff by the 22nd. I am trying to get some of my own work done but honestly PR has never inspired me to concentrate especially with my mom whose brain is a sea of confusion. It kinda rubs off on me because it is hard to have to be the eyes and brain for someone else all the while trying to get things done in PR which can be confusing in and of itself.

Anyway, the first week was the most hellish, now I am coasting, still not the most comfortable ride but I can manage the turbulance much better. I hope to get to my blog a little more especially since I have found out there is an open wireless connection in my mom’s backyard.

The massive trail of deadlines are over… I really give big props to folks who can churn out articles on demand. Maybe not props, I just downright envy them and want to steal their props. I am just not a pressure cooker writer. Too much of my thinking comes out via writing and thus slow simmering and re-writes are nearly always a must for me.

Next quarter I will be doing less writing and more teaching as I am instructing my own course on hackers, ethics and politics. I will post the syllabus once I do a little rearranging but here are some of the books and articles we will be reading. We won’t cover all of them as some are remnants from a similar course I taught in the summer of 2001 but it is good to have them all there, one click away.

I feel like my battery is dead and am looking forward to the break. My computer also “feels” like it is dying as it sponteanously shuts off. Disconcerting as it is, the idea of a new computer that is more portable than my own is really exciting. Any good suggestsions for a laptop that is under $ 1500, has a batterly life of at least 3.5 hrs, and weighs under 5 pounds?

Otherwise I can finally take a small breather. Last night I went to see Rabbit Proof Fence which is about as heart-tearing and grueling of a movie as you can get. Based on a true story, it is about three aborigine girls who trek by themselves over 9000 miles in Australia to return home after being forcibly removed by the morally righteous Australian state. Nothing like a story of wrethched colonialism to warm your heart before heading home to see your own ailing mom who you have not seen in a year….

The story is remarkable and remarkably unique. The government gave themselves the right under the good ol law to remove “half-caste” kids from their mothers. Just like that and worse until 1970. These kids are called the Lost Generation. The well worn banner of burden was the justifying trope of what was nothing short of ongoing violence even if blood was rarely shed. Pain, after all, comes in many guises.

It is hard to relate only because it seems quite unfathomable, the pain so boundless. Even with my mother’s still here, just the fact that she is no longer my mother in the way she once was, is painful enough. Her ageing is expected to some degree whereas having your children snatched away is just out of the moral order of things.

When you are a child , you are quite dependent on others. But as kids we lack consciousness of this so that this dependence brings with it only warmth and comfort. Later on, after years and years of being independent or a caretaker, you eventually become dependent again but this time you have a consciousness about it, as well as a wealth of experience that tells you in fact you should be autonomous. It sets things up for quite a bit of psychological havoc, a lot of grief, and tragedy especially in Western liberal societies in which we internalize the cult of the individual. And worse is that we (at least the standard, out of the package, middle class solution), are mal-equipped to deal with the elderly. A mobile, fast paced society does not work well for the slow and the aged. So we parcel them off, sequester them in rationalized institutions of care where it is easier on the family but is that really any source of comfort for us or them?

Who knows, I could be wrong and hope I am. For all I know those old age homes are a bundle of joyus fun, where folks get to play pool, drink beer, and hang out with friends….