Easy Come, Easy Go
Summer has passed, we're nearing the end of this year and I find myself feeling nostalgic and moody looking back at these past few months. The joys of being in nature, spending time with family and friends has helped me reevaluate the priorities I had in my life.
I had great momentum and used to workout several times a week over months, but life happened and now I am trying to get back in to the groove. I used to write long entries in my journal, now I can see it getting dusty.
Priorities can shift quickly, focus is getting blurry, and your attention is being grabbed by the latest sale.
Reset. Reevaluate. Prioritize.
READING I have been exposing myself this year to the American literary canon and have recently finished The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden by John Steinbeck and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy - a trifecta of casual, non-PTSD-inducing stories. I connected more with Steinbeck's prose. His explorations of generational trauma and the plight of the working class during the Dust Bowl resonated with me, more so than a bloody carnage at the 19th century borderlands.
Pachinko was on my list of books to read for a long time, and I am glad I finished it. It took me less than two weeks and it was one of the few books I could hardly put down.
WATCHING My new year's resolution has been to watch all winners of the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. So far, I've made it through 28 out of 97 movies. I didn't make much progress recently however - I watched Shoplifters by Hirokazu Koreeda (2018 winner) and Dancer in the Dark by Lars von Trier (2000 winner). While Shoplifters was a beautiful allegory of what constitutes a family, Dancer in the Dark is yet another traumatic movie that deserves a rewatch only in a few years.
I enjoyed another go at Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola and disagreed with some critics accusing the film (and inherently, Ms. Coppola) of racism. Hereditary by Ari Aster was supposed to get me in the mood for Halloween, but reconfirmed that horror movies are generally bad.