27.5.12
Summers' Past
When in my life will not be reflective? I’m tired of looking at the past. It definitely holds me back, without a doubt, but it’s what I do and I do it too often. Although I am doing it less and less. As the summer starts, I do something I do at the start of every summer and that’s review every summer I ever remember. I can pretty much tell you how every summer went starting with 2004. And last summer is up there with the worst of them. But this summer… this summer I have a job. I’m saving money to move out and by the end of the summer I’ll hopefully be looking for another job elsewhere, but even in all that… It’s the past that’s holding me back. It’s got to stop… tomorrow.
22.4.12
Home
I have about five blog posts written. I just don't know how to finish them all off. I even had this problem in college when writing papers. How do you finish a post when the story is just beginning? Hmm. Anyway, here's one:
They say “Home is where the heart is.” I prefer to think of home as a location. If that is the case, home for me is Jennings, Louisiana. It’s a small town 3 hours south of where I’m sitting now and 30mins from the Gulf. That’s home. I was born there although I have no family there, I lived there until I was 13. My father got a job in Jennings back in 1982 and so my mother and he moved from his hometown (about 40mins away) to Jennings. My mother somehow decided in the late 90s that she wanted out of South Louisiana. She never did like in there. She’s much more of a North Louisiana kind of lady (read: Protestant).
So in 2001, we moved. We moved here to Shreveport. I didn’t want to move. I loved Jennings. It was all I had ever known. I did understand why we had to move, but we did. Since moving to Shreveport a lot has gone on in my life. Just think of your life from the ages of 13-24. It’s all the typical stuff of coming-of-age. Shreveport is a nice town for that kind of stuff. I loved high school and I went to college about an hour from here. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. That being said it still doesn’t feel like home. And neither does Jennings, for that matter. I’ve been back twice, maybe three times since we moved. And the only place that truly feels like home there is being in front of the house I lived in when I was there. I miss that place on a daily basis, but other than that, Jennings offers me no sense of home.
On my last count I think I’ve lived under eight roofs while living in Shreveport. I don’t think you can have a single place feel like home when you’ve lived in eight different homes in 10.5yrs. The closest residence that felt like home to me was the house my mother lived in when she and my father were divorced. I loved that little house and wish they still lived in it, but once they got remarried, they decided to buy another house. Despite the rollercoaster of a personal life, Shreveport has been good to me.
Like I said, it’s a great city to come-of-age in and I’m glad I did it here, but still… no sense of home. I’ve made some great, lifelong friends here, but I have nothing that keeps me here. I find Shreveport offers me little in life opportunities.
They say “Home is where the heart is.” I prefer to think of home as a location. If that is the case, home for me is Jennings, Louisiana. It’s a small town 3 hours south of where I’m sitting now and 30mins from the Gulf. That’s home. I was born there although I have no family there, I lived there until I was 13. My father got a job in Jennings back in 1982 and so my mother and he moved from his hometown (about 40mins away) to Jennings. My mother somehow decided in the late 90s that she wanted out of South Louisiana. She never did like in there. She’s much more of a North Louisiana kind of lady (read: Protestant).
So in 2001, we moved. We moved here to Shreveport. I didn’t want to move. I loved Jennings. It was all I had ever known. I did understand why we had to move, but we did. Since moving to Shreveport a lot has gone on in my life. Just think of your life from the ages of 13-24. It’s all the typical stuff of coming-of-age. Shreveport is a nice town for that kind of stuff. I loved high school and I went to college about an hour from here. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. That being said it still doesn’t feel like home. And neither does Jennings, for that matter. I’ve been back twice, maybe three times since we moved. And the only place that truly feels like home there is being in front of the house I lived in when I was there. I miss that place on a daily basis, but other than that, Jennings offers me no sense of home.
On my last count I think I’ve lived under eight roofs while living in Shreveport. I don’t think you can have a single place feel like home when you’ve lived in eight different homes in 10.5yrs. The closest residence that felt like home to me was the house my mother lived in when she and my father were divorced. I loved that little house and wish they still lived in it, but once they got remarried, they decided to buy another house. Despite the rollercoaster of a personal life, Shreveport has been good to me.
Like I said, it’s a great city to come-of-age in and I’m glad I did it here, but still… no sense of home. I’ve made some great, lifelong friends here, but I have nothing that keeps me here. I find Shreveport offers me little in life opportunities.
8.4.12
That's My King!
Danny, my campus pastor back in college, showed us this video one night. I don't want to say it was life-changing, it wasn't, but it did give me some perspective. I occasionally listen to it when life has got me feeling downtrodden, but I find also appropriate for Easter. There is so much hope it what SM Lockridge is saying. Take a listen:
Happy Easter, everyone.
2.4.12
Meeting Heather
At exactly this time four years ago I was getting ready to go to a Ben Folds concert. He was in Shreveport and my friend Bounds, who was at Tech at the time, and our friend/his roommate Jacob were coming to town on that Friday night to see him perform. I had been invited. I was not at Tech yet. I took my freshman year classes here in Shreveport-Bossier at a local community college. I knew little about Ben Folds. In fact, the only song I knew of his was that cover he did of Dr Dre’s. Yea. That song. But a concert was a good enough reason to go and hang out with Bounds and Jacob, so I went.
Well, we were talking nonstop. After a while, I realized the guy next to her was none too pleased with me. I gathered from a few hints that they were probably on a date (or so he thought), but Heather wouldn't stop talking to me and she was so interesting I didn't want her to stop, so we continued our conversation. (Heather told me months later that she too knew no one there and reluctantly even went the Shreveport with the guy.) We exchanged numbers and I told her that I’d be in Ruston in two weeks celebrating a friend’s birthday and we should hang out then, too. We did. We stayed in contact over the next few months via Facebook and the occasional text. She went to Korea in August for a month, before school started back up again. I started Tech in September as a sophomore. She entered her senior year there. Everything from then on has brought us to where we are today.
Afterwards, they invited me to go to a 24-hr diner that was here in town called Murrell’s (RIP). Some more people from Tech were going too and I decided that since I knew I was going there the following year, I'd better go and maybe meet some people. On the short drive over to Murrell’s, I decided I wasn't going to sit by either Bounds or Jacob. I knew them. I needed to get to know other people. We had a large group so our table was a bunch of small tables put together and I ended up sitting by the wall at the very end. Well, this young lady sat across from me. We started chatting. I guess she told me her name is Heather and she was an English major. Then I asked her what courses she was taking and one of them was History of Modern Eastern Europe. What a coincidence! Just days before I had been studying the cultural differences between Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs and had someone to talk about my findings! Also, we discussed what the origins and the correct pronunciation of the last name of Simić (as in noted Serbian-American poet Charles Simić). Then she told me she was kind of obsessed with Asia, especially Korea. I, being quite the Sinophile at the time, loved this. She told me she was going to Korea later in the year and she was also taking an independent study with the provost of Tech who was a Chinese specialist. I'm pretty sure The Philadelphia Story or Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn were brought up as well. They had to have been!
Heather and me at The Robinson Film Center
10/28/11
10/28/11
29.3.12
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Tonight I went to the Robinson Film Center and saw We Need To Talk About Kevin. It’s the story of a woman whose son kills some fellow classmates and how she has to deal with that trauma of that event. Eva Katchadourian never wanted Kevin to begin with, a fact he was painfully aware of from early on in his life. So his response to not being wanted was defiance. Eva has to deal with Kevin as he grows up, but she also has a husband – Franklin – who subtly defends most of Kevin’s defiant behavior. Eventually Eva and Franklin had a daughter – Celia – who throws another element of dysfunction into the family because Kevin was so cruel to her. The story itself has little to do with Kevin or the massacre, but more the universality of having to deal with the consequences of others’ mistakes. Eva does this horribly. Although she never leaves town, she is shunned by it. She gets a menial job after running a very successful travel agency before the incident. Her thoughts are mostly memories of Kevin and how and where it all went wrong. She continually relives the past, though she portrays a front of one that is very much moving on. It’s such a tell-tale story of not letting others and the past define you, but finding yourself in the rubble that is left of your life.
The way they mainly chose to deal with that in Tilda Swinton’s character – Eva Katchtourian – was through flashbacks. Non-sequential movies usually are not my cup of tea, but Tilda totally is. There is very little dialogue in the movie, as you see Eva’s pain in her eyes. She obviously speaks to people like Franklin and Celia and her boss Wanda and another work friend, but other than that, this woman is very, very alone. When she goes to one of her frequent visits to juvie to see Kevin, they just sit there not discussing much of anything. When she’s home she just lays on the sofa thinking on the past. The flashbacks are just as bad. As she tried to raise Kevin (and Celia) as productive members of society and “good kids” and his continued refusal to do so is quite worrisome to Eva, but she said little. Swinton played as though this were a silent film. Her body spoke, her mouth didn’t. For the first 20mins of the movie, the dialogue is minimal. The first words Swinton’s character offers the viewer is “That’s fantastic.” Oh, what was to come. The horror in the silence is what made the movie. Also, the cinematography wasn’t too steady, an obvious allusion to Eva’s own uneasiness about life. Ezra Miller who played Kevin was really, really good, too. I’m not familiar with him at all, but you really both hate and have sympathy for Kevin throughout the movie. Miller made this happen through – again – his eyes. The innocence has definitely left them, but there’s a reason for that. Although what he did was inexcusable, why and how it came to what happened can be understood on some level.
The Robinson will be showing Friends with Kids and Detachment later. I want to see both, but more Detachment. It stars Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, Blythe Danner, Lucy Liu, James Caan, Bryan Cranston, and William Petersen, just to name a few. Oh and Tony Kaye is the director. Are you KIDDING me?!?!
The way they mainly chose to deal with that in Tilda Swinton’s character – Eva Katchtourian – was through flashbacks. Non-sequential movies usually are not my cup of tea, but Tilda totally is. There is very little dialogue in the movie, as you see Eva’s pain in her eyes. She obviously speaks to people like Franklin and Celia and her boss Wanda and another work friend, but other than that, this woman is very, very alone. When she goes to one of her frequent visits to juvie to see Kevin, they just sit there not discussing much of anything. When she’s home she just lays on the sofa thinking on the past. The flashbacks are just as bad. As she tried to raise Kevin (and Celia) as productive members of society and “good kids” and his continued refusal to do so is quite worrisome to Eva, but she said little. Swinton played as though this were a silent film. Her body spoke, her mouth didn’t. For the first 20mins of the movie, the dialogue is minimal. The first words Swinton’s character offers the viewer is “That’s fantastic.” Oh, what was to come. The horror in the silence is what made the movie. Also, the cinematography wasn’t too steady, an obvious allusion to Eva’s own uneasiness about life. Ezra Miller who played Kevin was really, really good, too. I’m not familiar with him at all, but you really both hate and have sympathy for Kevin throughout the movie. Miller made this happen through – again – his eyes. The innocence has definitely left them, but there’s a reason for that. Although what he did was inexcusable, why and how it came to what happened can be understood on some level.
The Robinson will be showing Friends with Kids and Detachment later. I want to see both, but more Detachment. It stars Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, Blythe Danner, Lucy Liu, James Caan, Bryan Cranston, and William Petersen, just to name a few. Oh and Tony Kaye is the director. Are you KIDDING me?!?!
27.3.12
What Now?
The French have many phrases I love. One phrase I like is raison d'être. It can be translated as “reason for being.” Well, I’m trying to figure out exactly what mine is. I’m in a rut really, not sure where to go from here. I think that if you’re in your 20s and you’re not super confused, then you’re doing it wrong.
Now that life is no longer structured by academics, we have a new found freedom and a new found question, “What now?” I dare say all of my close friends have confided in me that they’re asking “What now?” along with me. It’s nice to all be confused at the same time, but direction from those who know me best would be nice as well. Ha! I’m still asking “What now?” on a daily basis. At least I know where I’m supposed to be (Chicago). That’s an advantage I don’t think many people my age have. However, getting there is going to be tricky because I have no clear plan or path yet.
March 2012 kind of threw my life in blender. It’s still mixing and I’m excited to see what the product tastes like. I often think about what my thoughts were when I was in Chicago in December and what they are now. What a difference four months can have on one’s life. Constantly, constantly changing. I will say that although life looks unimaginably different than I thought it would four months ago, I’m happy. I’m content. I’m ok. I still feel like this blender I’m in is just a holding cell for my life waiting to be released.
The Lord has me pinned down right now for some reason and is just hacking away at a lot of places in my life. Can He scream “Trust me!” any louder? I think not. Am I listening? I don’t think good enough, let’s put it like that. Meanwhile, I'll continue to try to discover ma raison d'être.
Now that life is no longer structured by academics, we have a new found freedom and a new found question, “What now?” I dare say all of my close friends have confided in me that they’re asking “What now?” along with me. It’s nice to all be confused at the same time, but direction from those who know me best would be nice as well. Ha! I’m still asking “What now?” on a daily basis. At least I know where I’m supposed to be (Chicago). That’s an advantage I don’t think many people my age have. However, getting there is going to be tricky because I have no clear plan or path yet.
March 2012 kind of threw my life in blender. It’s still mixing and I’m excited to see what the product tastes like. I often think about what my thoughts were when I was in Chicago in December and what they are now. What a difference four months can have on one’s life. Constantly, constantly changing. I will say that although life looks unimaginably different than I thought it would four months ago, I’m happy. I’m content. I’m ok. I still feel like this blender I’m in is just a holding cell for my life waiting to be released.
The Lord has me pinned down right now for some reason and is just hacking away at a lot of places in my life. Can He scream “Trust me!” any louder? I think not. Am I listening? I don’t think good enough, let’s put it like that. Meanwhile, I'll continue to try to discover ma raison d'être.
21.3.12
Casablanca!
Not unlike the Oscars, I planned on blogging about Casablanca, but what I just saw is way too much to blog about. Perfection in every way. If you think seeing it on TV is absolutely fantastic, it does not hold a candle to the big screen.
As many of you are well aware, I have anunhealthy obsession admiration for Humphrey Bogart. Bogie just delivers in this film. Everyone does. All the way down the credits to S.Z. Sakall, they’re all fantastic. To think this movie had so many troubles being made, it was well worth it all.
Love. War. Suspense. Bergman. Bogie. It just doesn’t get much better than that. Hal B. Wallis, you magnificent, magnificent man. Much love from me 70 years later. And now, my favorite scene:
As many of you are well aware, I have an
Love. War. Suspense. Bergman. Bogie. It just doesn’t get much better than that. Hal B. Wallis, you magnificent, magnificent man. Much love from me 70 years later. And now, my favorite scene:
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