Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Shake, Rattle, and Roll

I understand that news sources as high and mighty as CNN are carrying stories of the great (moderate) Vermont earthquake, but here's the straight story from someone who lived to tell about it. This morning, just before 7am there was a 30 second 5.1 earthquake. It was very loud, reminding me of the library demolition ruckus that chimed through my window every day during fall semester. I definitely sat up in bed aware that something unusual was occurring, in my room my glasses were clinking and my bed was distinctly shaking. I was still half-asleep, but I remember thinking I should stand under the door frame, but by the time I realized what was happening, it was over.
This was actually the largest earthquake in Vermont's history. In Middlebury, we were about 15 miles from the epicenter, that's "shake and bake" (earthquakes and volcanoes was my science requirement) jargon for the center of the quake. The sensation is physically exhilarating, but much like riding an amazing loopy roller coaster, after your stomach settles and the imprint of the seatbelt wears away, you want to ride again and again. So it's probably unlikely that this will happen again, but it would be cool if it did.
Granted this is big news in a tiny boring state... but local news would have you believe that the state of New Hampshire was swallowed into a gaping hole created by two colliding tectonic plates and that Vermonters were slowly succumbing to the same fiery fate as towns such as Rutland and Brandon tipped into the expansive gorge. One newscast (the local station Jack does not work for) devoted an entire news broadcast to the earthquake, treating it with near demolition day care. They had nothing to report, aside from showing some impoverished churches in the area which likely had cracked foundations to begin with or people who drove old dented rusty cars and they blamed it all on this minor tremor... we laughed 'til we cried over this at dinner and then returned to the computer lab to lick away at the thesis lollipop some more. Oh, this news station completely ignored the 4/20 celebration on Burlington's town green where approximately 7million hippies busted out the patchouli and rolling papers in hordes and got stoned and publically at that... yeah, that's not news worthy, I guess.

Well, the day no one thought would ever come, came, I found the Chinese film I didn't like. My explanation is that I watched a Taiwanese film, which everyone knows is not China but an Asian version of the United States with more digital gizmos and an ever freer market. I went to see "The Flowers of Shanghai" a quiet, eventless, dark movie about the boring mundane life of "flower girls" (i.e. entertaining courtesans) in China in 1870. It was dull, there was little to no dialogue, little to no action, and it was a general waste of time. The seats in the theater are uncomfortable, the subtitles were written in white playful font, and the movie held my attention about as much as a piece of string... so I think I'll stick to Wong Kar Wei and Zhang Yimou as my favorite Chinese directors for the time being. When I worked at Real Art Ways this film closed after a week after several audiences just walked out... and those who did stay, seem to suffer from the same strain of summer-induced narcolepsy that I do.

posted by lmjasinski at 11:34 PM