Goodbye Anno Equus

This was, in the end, a blog with a built-in expiration date.  It began on January 31st, 2014 (the official first day of the equine year) and ends on this last official day.  

Onward with the Year of the Goat.

I think it's smart to have solid deadlines in place.  Shows like Breaking Bad and The Wire had the right idea.  One must capture a certain amount of synergy, and know when to conclude things at the right time.  Nothing lasts forever, and the avowed goal for this blog was simple enough: provide a space for me to write about everything and anything within the confines of this Chinese zodiacal year.  I have done that, 30 times.

Tanks (Of Metal and Man ... and Children)

I am ... and always have been ... fascinated with tanks.

I mean the large, rumbly, dangerous kind, not the underground water storage units.  

I'd like to argue that tanks have a certain mechanical beauty if you can ignore their intended purpose for long enough, and these manufactured monsters intrigue me in the way that I guess one becomes fascinated and comes to study the malignant, ugly forces of nature - the disasters, the wars, and crimes of man.      

Movie Poster for White Tiger
courtesy of Letterboxd

There are particular reasons why I'm pondering metal war machines this weekend.  One was last night's viewing of "White Tiger," a Russian movie about a mystical German tank on the Eastern front (for the Russians, really, the Western front).  

"White Tiger" was at its heart, an engaging portrait of the ongoing quest of one Russian man vs. a rampaging metal German ghost (with shades of Moby Dick), with a third act that went completely off the charts into a metaphoric treatise on madness, European history, and the idea of war being an integral part of the human condition.  It was thought provoking at the very least, with a lot of attention to detail, a very European feel, and a seeming fearlessness for narrative choices.

A Boris Karloff Christmas?

I was watching a Boris Karloff movie as I was eating breakfast this morning, a 1967 film called "The Sorcerers."  Not one of his more well-known movies, but it is one of the last he appeared in at the age of 79, and it got me pondering all sorts of things - about Christmas of all things, about late starts, about the ebb and flow of careers and lives, about the winters we endure, and the resiliency of people in general.  

Films often prompt this in me ...

Karloff, "The Sorcerers"
(image courtesy of The Spooky Isles)

Since I was a child, I've been fascinated with Karloff (who was most famous for playing the original Frankenstein Monster), and the other legendary classic horror actors, especially Bela Lugosi (to me, the most famous Dracula), Lon Chaney, Jr., the British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (who, at 90+ years of age, has just appeared in the latest Hobbit movie).  They are not household names to many; but they have left their mark and they feel like old friends to me.

Shifting Sand

There are certain things in this world that I return to visit, places and people I've seen, and ideas and concepts that I masticate anew with my Western-Eastern mind.

Sand mandala, the Tibetan-Buddhist impermanent art, is a good example.

If you haven't seen a mandala being created, the physical details are this - for several weeks, a group of Tibetan monks will carefully pour sand onto a floor or table space, creating a beautiful and intricate piece of art over a wide area. They work in shifts, starting in the center and working their way ever slowly outward until everything is complete. It can be quite transfixing to watch, this ancient artwork, the monks in teams carefully ticking sand via funnels onto a floorspace bit by bit.

Dates and Reminders

There are little clues everywhere to remind us of the passage of time, to remind us of how important it is to pay attention to the clock.


Yesterday, for example, was a busy day here in Bangkok ... early in the morning, I went to the Department of Land Transportation at the north end of the overhead SkyTrain and endured two hours of bureaucratic queuing and simple eye-hand coordination tests before I upgraded my temporary Thai driver's license to the new “permanent” license which will allow me to dodge motorcycles and Tuk Tuks until my birthday in 2019.


Later that evening, with that date still sticking in my head, I went to see The Lunchbox with my wife, Tan.

Image courtesy of reemsaleh.com

The Lunchbox is a quiet film, existentially circling about the big questions of life and the Mumbai landscape, asking its characters (the contemplative, world-weary Irrfan Khan and sad-eyed Nimrat Kaur) if they're happy to accept their fates, riding the remorseless conveyer belt of life, or if they can choose new courses of action. What is the meaning behind all this? Why do some people eat full-course lunches while others have to make do with a pair of bananas? For what reason do we pack like sardines into trains and buses day after day? These sorts of questions were what this enchanting and poignant new Indian realism were posing.

Two Movies, Two Reactions

Why do we go to the movies?

I've asked that question in classes before (when I've had a chance to talk about film) and it provokes the usual responses - to be entertained, to laugh, to be moved, to think ...

Image courtesy of www.reddit.com

The best movies, I think, do all of these things at one, or even take us somewhere new ... they leave us, as the credits roll, abuzz, slightly off-kilter, wondering what it was that just hit us like a psycho-spiritual 2 X 4.  The magic of the film, whispered to us in the darkness via flickering light and Dolby speakers, should resound even as we head back out into "reality."

I saw two films this week, Monuments Men and Her, and only the latter had that effect on me. I wish both had ...

Image courtesy of www.impawards.com

Monuments Men, a George Clooney-helmed drama based on a true story from World War II, about a band of soldiers dedicated to recovering art stolen by the Germans, left me largely indifferent, or unexcited, which was strange considering that I'm fascinated by the stories of that war, and was looking forward to it, but the sizable group of actors (some of whom are my favorites, like Bill Murray and John Goodman) moved about from scene to scene like lifeless pawns in a game. It was too bad, because the film was exploring ideas of the importance of art (amidst brutality), and those who would fight back against the “loss of our history.”