Getting used

We are getting used very fast with good or bad, with what we previously feared, or distrusted. All we need is to tell ourselves that what it is going on with us is part of "our" normality, eventually the normality agreed as well by the others. We focus all our efforts and energies to find out people like "us" with whom to share our common experiences. And, to get more psychological support for what we achieved or for what we don't. The most important is to have a certain mental comfort. It is the same with age, with illnesses, with various status upgrades or downgrades. The social choices we have at our disposal are offering an vaste range of possibilities to stop improving, to stop being angry against our pitiful human situation. With or without a religion, our reactions are following similar patterns and whatever braves our minds and hearts we expected to be, at the end of the road, we are still facing the poor shortages of our desperate efforts to survive. At any kind.

Randomly

The high degree of specialization of the Chinese painting. You don't only have the usual "work division" between painters of landscape, of portraits. You have also within this unlimited subjects the expert in painting bamboos, or leaves, or mountains, or stones. The meaning is that you need years - to be read your whole artistic life - to feel and understand the subject/object you are representing. And, that, the thema have to answer the disposition of your character.

Will Bar Refaeli answer?

to this request to do not marry Leonardo di Caprio?
What's wrong with Leo?

The mysterious Hebrew letters

I must recognize my ignorance and limited understanding of the current "cultural trends" but for me, Guy Ritchie is not a reference. I watched Snatch, and haven't laugh at all. Matter of humour. And, maybe I was more interested in his family/love story with Madonna.

Accidentally, I went recently to see Sherlock Holmes, his latest achievement. London under the threat of a terrible conspiracy, is saved, of course, by Sherlock Holmes. The stories of Conan Doyle, a bit too soft for our daily culture faced every minute with reports about various kind of petty or big criminality are put in an apocaliptic scenario, more "cool" for the nowadays "sensibility". A big success probably among the fans of various apocalyptic sceneries.

In-between various fights and plots, my attention was attracted by the presence of the Hebrew alike letters in various rituals introduced in the movie as part of the dangerous conspiracy aiming to conquer the world. The "Jewish" element is appearing as well in Snatch, where the thieves are dressed as Hassidic Jews from Antwerp, one of the most important centers of the diamonds' industry. Almost neutral presence. But, in the case of Sherlock Holmes, the Hebrew/Jewish aspect is associated with the "evil", the "conspiracy", the "hunger for power". Sounds familiar, isn't it?

The men's mind

According to Paul Delvaux. In the surreal framework of a fantastic coreography of the architectural details.

And, what is in men's mind?

What are they reading?

When I see somebody reading, cannot stop spying what kind of texts it is about. Sometimes I am able to see the title, the author, or to identify the language. Or the kind of newspaper article are interested in.

Sometimes I am moving strategically close in order to see better. An interested professional look if it is something interesting, I've heard and read about. A secretely smile. Comme entre les conaisseurs. A surprised look when I discover it is a complicate mathematical book.

Whatever the public transportation, I am always looking for the very short company of people with books. They are always offering me a kind of imaginary secure comfort. Hoping their vicinity will confer a better mental space than, for example, those with bottles of beer, wine, champaign or vodka.

Surprised and ashamed sometimes, when early in the morning after a party I see people reading something. I do not carry a book with me all the time. Mostly when I am in a foreign country, I prefer to listen to the people speaking in their mother tongue, ready to grasp some new words or testing my capacity of understanding their language. Trying to understand their culture following the way they dress, find their place ina crowdy tube, or sit.

But, very often I have something to read with me. For a long time, reading in-between stations or, even more, in the airplanes, was the perfect time to concentrate. When the phone was not ringing, of course.

And for a while, my reading habits were subject of casual rude observations from the part of the other "travellers", as long as, in some places, the pleasure of reading is seen a disgraceful anti-social self-assumed status.

"Too Much Information"

via Tablet Magazine

Status Update Details IDF Plan
It’s complicated for kicked-out Israeli soldier
By Liel Leibovitz 3:00 pm Mar 3, 2010
Ugh, remember that time you had told your friend, who you’re like friends with or whatever but didn’t feel like dealing with, that you were just going to stay in for the night, but then you went out and the next day someone posted a picture of you on Facebook, and you were busted? Well, this story [1] out of Israel is kind of like that. Except replace “picture at a bar” with “status update detailing a military operation against Palestinians in a village near Ramallah”! And replace “busted” with “kicked out of your IDF unit”!
Yes, a soldier in the Israel Defense Force redefined the meaning of Too Much Information last month when he logged on to Facebook and posted, “On Wednesday we’ll clean out [the village of] Kattannah, and on Thursday, God willing, we’ll be home.” He also provided the name of his unit, and the exact location and time of where the operation was slated to take place.
Several of the soldier’s Facebook friends, shocked by his indiscretion, reported him to the army’s Division of Information Security. Almost immediately, the operation was called off and the soldier tried and ejected. An unfriending for the history books.