i'm sure there was nice stuff later in that week. thursday morning i bumped into dom from school at clapham common station, and since then, i've nearly seen him elsewhere twice, except that it wasn't him, just an hyper-responsive memory gland. later rachel met me after work, we bought sandwich matter and fed the crows and pigeons. we found that crows are a lot more wary of people than pigeons, and are much cooler. rachel made a path of breadcrumbs leading up to us to see how close they animals would come (see, she is a scientist); the crows were much more cautious and obviously more mentally active, you could see from their sideways approach and willingess to actually stand still that they had more going on.
last friday i was desperate to go out to a rock/metal club. instead there was an evening in london fields with a girlfriend that i'd inadvertently hurt. we et pizza on the grass, then went to the dove. the others carried themselves to the dolphin, and rachel and i went home to sort out our issues such that they were. money, jealousy, porn, the fact that i was trying to arrange an evening out without her, and commitment were discussed, and we came out on top; i think we can put it down to 2 month anxiety. saturday was spent in some way; fooling around the flat until we went down to broadway market for coffee and pastries. we were joined by others (this is all quite hard to remember) and eventually i went to do my 5 o'clock shift at cafe pogo. it was really quiet - only 2 pounds of tips each - but i got to listen to a bbc radio dramatisation of solaris and have a meal of those disturbingly realistic vegan fish fingers. stuff that like really makes me want to vegan; stuff like feta makes it so difficult. having failed to get people out to ROCK again, and being too tired for it anyway, i rejoined rachel at alison's birthday at some swanky gastro pub (on the menu today: lettuce and cucumber soup, £5.50. beans and duck egg, £5). we drew pictures and lost my notebook. rachel was shicker, and kept kvetching about her regret at ordering a coral sofa, worried sick it was actually pink. we went back to alison's for a bit, then home. plans for moving to berlin were discussed, as they always are, it seems.
the next day we hung out forever in victoria park with dips 'n' shit. feeding the animals again; we discovered squirrels like ritz crackers more than crisp breads, but may like nuts even more than those.
monday, blah. on tuesday, rachel and i made awesome bolognese (featuring awesome brown tvp [adds 'tvp' to dictionary, certain it will come up again]), in our last meeting before her holiday. this food was still very good two days later for lunch on toast.
hmm. it's nearly four oclock and i actually just wondered what it looks like outside today. a very nice day, is the verdict.
wednesday, i met up with uncle niel for the best curry ever. dan said it might be MSG. this would be a shame. anyway, from pakora to masala dosa and beyond to saag paneer, it was fucking delicious. pricey with it, but my offer of splitting the bill was turned down.
then thursday, dan and i went to see tales of earthsea, or since it was in japanese, i may refer to it as gedo senki. i just like the sound of the words. i've been looking forward to this for ages. the film is a combination of the farthest shore and tehanu (which i've not read, and knowing more about it would have helped), perhaps with other elements from the tales of earthsea stories that i haven't read. where the film immediately goes wrong in my opinion is it's under-representation of the sea. the film really only has three locations: tenar's farm, the city, and cob's castle, all on one island. the earthsea books really are perfect for japanese adaptation, being really quite zen in themselves; in the farthest shore, ged barely casts a single spell. the film consists large sequences of people just staring, or slowly walking down endless roads. which is what i hoped. we see the archmage (the importance of which is never made clear) ged spend a lot of time ploughing fields and so forth. which is great. but the film tries to cram too much in, and ends up missing the point i felt; this could have been a star wars, in it's own way.
ursula le guin's comments say everything i was going to say about it basically. from a ghibli point of view, i wasn't really impressed with goro miyazaki's first film. it was long without being epic; it felt confused, messy, and poorly structured, even for ghibli films, which so often follow a looser plot structure than the formulaic western b-m-e (not that i'm saying that's a bad thing... usually). some parts were charming, but not often. and what's the point of just mentioning stuff like the wizard school on roke in passing as if we're all meant to know about it? go there! show us what it looks like! it's a place with people and towers and stuff. i think this film may have been done somewhat on the cheap.
i just replaced the xkcd internet map on my backdrop with earthsea.
i just have to quote this too:
American novelist Kurt Vonnegut satirized Campbell's views on the monomyth as being excessively complicated by offering his interpretation, called the "In The Hole" theory; loosely defined as "The hero gets into trouble. The hero gets out of trouble."[citation needed]
last night was ruth's birthday in a pub. after work, i went and sat on clapham common, having only just realised how big it is, facing the sun over the pond and feeding the geese. then i spent two hours on buses reading dune. the pub, the palm tree was in the middle of a park in mile end, with a strange cyberpunk wasteland feel to it; anywhere with big lit up buildings in the distance and construction closer in the dark feels like that. there was live, un-mic'd jazz and genuine middle-aged pub folk that i've not seen for ages. there was cake. then i came home and played thief 'til three.
i just found out zabrinski are splitting up after their last gig in september.
so now, it's the weekend, nearly seven, and i've no plans and phone to be contacted upon. i'm just chilling out doing nothing. it's nice. i'll get on and do some programming tomorrow i think.
xx
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