The Convivial Gist

Yesterday I had an interesting discourse with my TB (talk buddy).  A talk buddy is someone who I engaged in conversation by a telephone regularly, come tornado warning or the call of a child wanting to practice his newly acquired efficiency on using a toilet.  She told me that the opposite of love is not hate but apathy.  And she's right. The feeling of  hate  evokes strong emotions, it can still stir up feelings. But when you are dispassionate to someone, you just don't freakin' care if that someone was  trampled over by 27 elephants or suffered the most virulent  diarrhea on his/her wedding day.  Total indifference, that is painful , of course being under the elephant and having the runs are exhausting too.  Which would you choose? There is so much indifference in this world, it seems we just stopped caring or maybe we are suffering from the I Me and Myself  syndrome often. So in parting,  I would rather you hate me if I did you wrong  rather than be detached to my existe...

Lately, I had been watching a lot of Short feature movies. I find  these movies engrossing and thought-provoking.  No mega stars, CGI's or fancy props but it leaves an imprint on my mind that I can recall an entire movie even if I saw it months ago.  Last night I saw the brilliant work of Masanori  Babu, writer, producer and director of Chiyo. It's about the story of Chiyo (played by Miyu Tanaka) her quest to see her father (Hiromasa Takagi) , a soldier who went to war in 1944.  A year later on the night of the Obon, a Buddhist tradition wherein the dead  visit their relative, Chiyo searches  for his father.  During the course of her search she met various spirits but not her father. When she finally found him, he can not see her. He told her,the hell he saw in the arena of war  blinded him.  He was implying that there was  a limit to man's ability to endure extreme cruelty and not seeing what you were seeing was the only way to survive (his spirit not his physical being in...

Society in general set up criteria on which we as members are defined. Philosophers, thinkers and even  the detritus of our community muse on what is the definition of person.  Take note that I am using the word person instead of a more dramatic noun "man".  That is because I am a woman and I am trying to make a more politically correct piece. Let me start on our conception. We are measured by the inconvenience we gave our mother, so much so that we are compared to our siblings in terms of how much nauseuos mornings, cravings, moodiness and unwanted weight gain  we exacted on our host ( our mother, of course)  during the time of pregnancy. During our first foray in the outside world, we are measured on how  much we weigh ( she/he is a big baby 20 pounds)  , gushed our parents, the fracas brought about by our wailing and  how long and painful the labor pains are. This is  used often ...