#anhedonic for months now i think

[iavenjqasdf]

I feel like the quality of my posts is inverse to how well I'm actually doing most of the time

#posting be kind be gentle be well while having panic attacks near daily #anhedonic for months now i think #all sense of time gone mostly just boredom punctuated by agony #i have to calm the fires but there's not much else in this shitty room #just a malfunctioning stove and food i don't wanna eat #this too is eury

[etirabys]

on jogging

I took up jogging 2.5 months ago. I'm going off the c25k schedule, which slowly ramps you up from couch potato fitness to being able to run a 5k. This was much more effective than just trying to get into jogging by mimicking other, fitter, joggers, which was what I did every previous time I briefly tried to get into jogging. I feel embarrassed for never having thought of this before – it's clear that 'my brain was off' in those times when I went mimicry-running.

One issue that made me get into jogging so ineffectively: I didn't realize how terrible my starting physical fitness was. I used to think I was… like… normal? No athlete, for sure, but I'm a "normal amount of miserable" on hikes (and can complete most of them), I'm an intermediate boulderer, I rarely notice activities I'm gated from because of fitness. But when I started c25k with three partners, none of whom regularly jogged, they were all significantly less winded than I was.

And for the first dang time in my life I explicitly had a thought that went, "I can run 1 minute before my body forces me to stop. My partners can run 3-4 minutes. Some people can run 30 minutes."

Once I actually had any sense of "jogging levels" it was so clear how close to the bottom I was when I started out. That gives me some hope that being much fitter will solve my fatigue problems?

I used to be able to run 1 minute, and now I can run 2. By one (terrible but also kind of reasonable?) metric, I'm twice as fit as I used to be. But a nontrivial fraction of the population can jog 30 consecutive minutes! It seems worth getting to that point to see what that does to my energy levels / cognition.

–

Also: I haven't been sticking to the c25k schedule. I go 1.5 times a week where it expects 3, and I stuck a level between week 2 and week 3 because the 1.5m->3m jump looked insane to me. I've been on that custom level 2.5 for a month. I had a mindblowing conversation with the giant and 81k yesterday where I went, yeah, I've been stuck at week 2.5 because I've felt unready for week 3. And they said, that's probably because you're not going enough.

What do you mean? I asked. I've run about a full session and a half session every week for four weeks. Isn't that the same as 3 full sessions every week for two weeks?

No, they said, surprised I didn't know this. There's an optimal timing. If you'd probably stuck literally to the c25k schedule you probably could have gone from level 2 to 3 in a week.

GYARJRGH? I said. FUSBARIJIJJLK?

(I still disbelieve the literal claim that I can go to level 3 after doing level 2 properly, but I believe them that I would be leveling up a lot faster if I stuck to the schedule)

–

Anyway, some things I'd like to say to my past self, who felt obligated to work out for fatigue issues and then proceeded to exercise very badly because there was such a big ugh field around the topic of exercise:

You do not realize how big the gap between you and even moderately athletic people is. This is good, actually. It means that the correct place to start is easier than you think.

You should try to do it like 3 times a week. Date a jock. There are some on tumblr

Consider starting this when you have positive pressure rather than negative pressure. When you're buckling under multiple joy-sparking projects and want to rise to the challenge, it will be much easier to start & stick to it than when you're an anhedonic lump who has nothing to look forward to, but knows that exercise will in theory make life better in some vague way.

#rambl #c25k

[chocobosdungeon2]

The difference between where I was last week and where I am now feels like night and day.

Ive been on fluoxetine before, my wife thinks that may be helping it kick in faster. But like... last week I was so anhedonic I couldn't think. It was mind-numbing. I couldnt enjoy anything, every negative emotion hit like a truck, and every waking moment was filled with self-loathing. Every day was spent trying to forget what a gaping maw of nothing my existence felt like.

It was at its worst on Friday, the day I had my Dr's apt and took my first pill. It's only Tuesday and already that feels so far away. I am already feeling BETTER than I did the whole month leading up to it. I wanna *do things* but I can also sit and *appreciate* doing nothing for a moment. I feel like I have the room in my brain to think about something other than past trauma and misery.

I know it doesnt work for everyone but fluoxetine is seriously a life saver for me. I'm so thankful this exists. So thankful my brain chemistry happens to work with it. Sure, I wish I could be fine without pills, but I cant so thank fucking god for them.

#fluoxetine #personal #prozac #depression #anxiety #i know im gonna plateau at some point #cause im only on 20mg #but its not going to be hard to up my dose #cause this is just meant to build me back up #:) #im also really fortunate to experience close to no side effects

[aspaceform3]

I'm SO extremely far of who I used to be a year ago netherless to say 2 or 3 or 4.

the songs i used to listen to to? not a glimpse of interest today.

all were about sadness and being heartbroken and depressed and down and about daydreaming scaping....

and today? dude i be listening to the most funny songs. Not only dancing ones but FUNNY ones and very interesting and deep and...

beyond the fact that this might be due to the fact that i am incredibly anhedonic for the past 3 months bc winter depression...im so different now.

i used to dream with a boy that would enter my window like Peter Pan and save me.

and then BOOM. I did that myself.

and these days love or dating sound so extremely complicated and far away from happening to me that i do not even think it exists as such.

i dont know what its like to be loved in a partner form.

neither if i want to know? like holding someone else's heart is SO fucked. That shit is so delicate.

and well then its my health issues and suxh wich...hace def torn into my actual mind to think of.

wait a damn second...

I TURNED IT AROUND.

IM THINKING ABOUT MYSELF AND MY SHIT.

IM PUTTING MYSWLF FIRST AAAAAH

fuck YOU TRAUMA!!!!!!!!!!

oh well thats good thats nice uh oh i worked VERY HARD to achieve it.

honestly i'm only gonna get hotter. Just wait till i get my surgeries and yall will BEG for a second of me.

i'm gonna be such a bitch lmao.

#personal #but a good one i promise

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 082221

22 August, 2021

Dear Dad--

Happy what for you will be Sunday! Perhaps I should just say happy weekend. It’s Saturday morning here in the trailer and it seems like we’re going to catch some of Hurricane Henri sometime about Monday or Tuesday. I am excited by this! I’ve mentioned how our single-wide leaked like a sieve from the windows along its west wall. Well, in response to our maintenance request, they sent a dude around to come fix it. I believe caulk, or otherwise some big tube of silicone sealant in a dispensing gun (pew! pew!) was employed. We still have our original leak; water always comes in through the top of our back door. The dude put the magic caulk on that thing too, but it’s like original sin...it’s just always gonna be there. It’s the leak where the previous tenants installed plastic hooks on the door, to hang towels on, to catch the leaks.

I spent some time on the internet yesterday and got myself some medical benefits! I now have medical, dental, and vision coverages. I don’t know when they start, but I’m going to search for a dentist some more today. I tried the area’s largest family dentistry, a place with (I’m guessing) maybe 20 dentists working in it, and their website says they have no available appointments. This seems unlikely, but not impossible. I think there’s a problem with the scheduling website, or else they’re having a surge of business before school starts, or something else temporary. Either way, I’ll find a dentist. The dental pain which I’ve come to live with and treat with Ibuprofen every day may soon be a thing of the past.

I don’t suppose I can avoid mentioning that I’m still having problems with depression. I have a few online friends who’ve been super helpful while I seem to be in this downswing, and I’m hoping to get rid of it, and return to my usual sarcastic-yet-ebullient self soon. (You don’t need to suggest exercising, I can actually hear you thinking it from here. Got to admit, I kind of wish I owned a weight bench.) I believe at least some of the depression stems from having no circle of friends. I have, at best, a very tiny triangle of friends. The three components of the friend triad would be: husband, cats and coworkers, and Mr. and Mr. plant scientist guy. I was going to go with Zach to plant scientist guy’s home today to eat, but instead I’m going to stay home and eat worms and feel sorry for myself. (Zach suggested I might like some “me” time, and I’m not keen to inflict myself upon anyone just now anyway.) Also I have lots of work shirts to iron.

I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow, just a little bit, even though it’s my Monday. My boss has suggested in advance that I do 6 of the 7 audits tomorrow, and I don’t think I’ve ever done 6 in a day before. I especially haven’t attempted to do 6 on a Sunday, since we always audit the previous day’s stuff, which means I’d be auditing a Saturday, typically a busy time. I’m confident that I can do it, however. I can do each of those 6 audits in about an hour, and that gives me a whole two extra hours for “shit happens.” I like knowing how to do all that stuff. There’s a good chance I’ll get through all 6 audits without having any questions, or any problems I can’t solve myself.

And it’s going to be September soon! That always gets me excited, since that’s when I start my two month scary movie marathon, beginning with Night of the Demon, from 1957. I’ve reached a point where, as soon as I hear that movie begin, I relax a bit, because I know summer is over. Also, a lot of my favorite movies are in that genre, including a bunch of British ones, and a bunch with extremely unconvincing monsters. But that’s when I watched The Thing From Another World (1951), and The Fog, and the original Amityville Horror, and The Changeling, with George C. Scott. Good stuff! And, of course, the two months culminate on Halloween, when I watch a couple I saved for last, and we eat all the candy we bought, because children generally know better than to come to a trailer park during the time of plague resurgence in search of things to put in their mouths, that they KNOW FOR CERTAIN was just handled by a stranger.

Actually, I think the way they do Halloween now is: everyone buys candy and drives to church, and everyone else brings their kids, and the kids just visit each car for candy, one after the other. It doesn’t sound like it provides as much walking as the traditional way of trick-or-treating, and it seems to reduce the possibility of criminal mischief to near zero. (I’m just thinking you can’t TP someone’s house when you’re gathering candy in the church parking lot.) But it preserves some of the elements of the old fashioned style. Halloween is a great holiday, mostly because I like watching the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown special. I’m one of the few people that loves every second of that TV special, even the WW1 parts where Snoopy gets shot down behind enemy lines by the Red Baron. That show has some great jazz music in it.

I received something kind of cool in the mail today, a 16 x 100 inch roll of dichroic film. What the shit is that, you ask? Well, you see it in holiday decorations a lot. It’s a colored film that changes color depending on the angle from which you’re viewing it. It’ll also do stuff like: light passing through it is blue, but light bouncing off it is bright orange. It’s just a film you can use to tint plastic and windows that make pretty colors. I have tinted two windows in our metal living tube with it! I’ll include the pictures. It sticks on with soapy water, and is supposed to peel right off when it comes time to move out and take all my disco shit with me. I’m considering putting a couple of small patches of it on my car, just because it’s so pretty. I’ll include a pic of the dichroic film. By now, as you’ve probably concluded, they use that dichroic glass in certain disco lights.

I have a few things happening, but it’s a slow period. I have already put some of the dichroic film on the bathroom window and the window in the back door, which we never open. As predicted, it is pretty as fuck! I want to cover my car windows with it, but I checked, and I’m pretty sure that would be illegal in Maine. Auto window tint has to allow at least 30% of light to pass through (no worries, and with disco colors!) and it has to be non-reflective (shit! Mine is super reflective!) Just taking a picture of some balled-up leftover bits of the dichroic film is pretty. Anything you can scrunch up into a ball and take a beautiful picture of it MUST be special.

I was afraid, for a period, that I had done something to kill my ability to read books for fun! I know I’ve been anhedonic lately, but I’m pretty sure that I haven’t smoked enough drugs to make myself illiterate. Then, as an experiment, I picked up a Jack Reacher book, and read all 450 pages in about a day. I am pleased to report that I have neither smoked myself illiterate, nor forgotten how to enjoy a good page-turner. This pleases me!

More next week! All my love to you both!

[yourghastlycloseness]

tried thinking about killing my dog earlier and realized i cldnt visualize it. it was too cruel a thought, which means im not too far gone yet. ive always loved dogs and animals. that day (ok months ago) i rly thought about snapping my neighbour’s dog into two because i was tired of its barking. that was quite new to me since ive never thought about hurting animals, so i had thought i was a little gone

was thinking about stabbing someone random in the street tmr for some confirmation that the world i live in is real and that i will end up in jail and be miserable because there are proper consequences to my actions. now what if im not miserable when in there (even if i get bullied by inmates and the staff or the reverse) and the emptiness persists — then we’ll have a problem. actually, even if this were all a big simulation and my solipsistic beliefs exist for good reason, there cld still be logical consequences to my actions. in skyrim, you get a bounty on your head for attacking civilians but iz only game, know what im sayin. im struggling to tell if the world im in is real bt maybe the real struggle is trying to tell if im real, to me, and to the world

that im blogging about this with relative anonymity on tumblr and not telling this friends means i am also aware of the “taboo” nature of these thoughts, that i recognize social boundaries in conversation topics, which once again, means im not too far gone yet

these cld just be intrusive thoughts, idk. i probably feel this way because i think im very ugly and my rejection of my body over these past few days has led to a detachment frm my physical form and hence the physical world and the reason i sank into that was because i wasnt decent-looking enough to talk to him. the looks thing will always be a complex. i think i actually have no other complexes other than the total shit i feel abt my appearance

this state will probably pass. it isnt such a bad one to be in. honestly im either:

1) shit ass depressed and suicidal

2) or like what i am rn: anhedonic, solipsistic, disconnected, detached, depersonalized (?), disassociated, yeah all those fancy D words

3) or blistering with rage and wanting to hurt or kill others

4) or over the moon and thinking im the greatest piece of shit alive and everyone probably adores me

^ none of them are great states to be in. there all unbalanced af

im very tired of my moods cycling up and down. dont know what i feel anymore bcos it isnt consistent. i cant even love anymore. nor can i feel it. turned 27 recently and i had a week’s worth of celebrations bcos i was given gifts by family and friends and colleagues and i am so blessed because they know me so well and i loved all the gifts and my friends had planned a fun day out for me and mom gifted me with earrings which made me laugh and cry bcos i love her so much despite us rarely getting along (this i know, and will always feel real to me) yet i want to not be alive

[bloggerblagger]

87) Blank space. (And the profound questions deriving therefrom.)

                                                              I was there.                            ______________________________________________________________________

I am looking for a film.

I have hunted high and low and I can’t find it.

I don’t mean a roll of film - who has those these days? Unless you’re living in the dark ages. Or in Hackney or Stokie or Lewisham and have a beard, tatts, nose ring, possibly a lip disc - and that’s just the girls, tee hee. (Sorry, I meant cis gender women.) (And trans women too of course.) (Maybe I shouldn’t have started this.)

Anyway, no, I do not mean that kind of film, I mean a film as in a movie, a flick, a picture, a cinematic experience. I have lost one - no. 45 to be precise - and being a bit anal about these things, I am quite disturbed.

To explain: a few weeks ago we had the London Film Festival. As a one time titan of the airwaves, and now the the author of this estimable blog, I am, in exchange for an ever increasing fee - forty five quid  this year - able to blag a press pass.

And very grateful I am. What better way to fill a retiree’s days as the autumn chill begins to bite.

The trouble with joy

Ah! If only simple pleasure were enough for me. I am, as Woody Allenonce described himself, ‘anhedonic’. As I understand it, that means incapable of having a good time for the sake of it.

Something - somewhere inside my amygdala or frontal lobe or wherever such impulses lurk - insists that I must have an aim, a goal of some kind. It’s as though standing before the Eiger, it would not be enough for me to admire its magisterial beauty. I would feel an  irresistible compulsion  to grab some crampons and leg it  up the North face. (Okay, possibly a slight overclaim there but you get the idea.)

And thus it is that, each year, my principal purpose at the festival really has nothing to do with appreciating  the glories of world cinema. As with the mountain that must be climbed because it is there, I hear  an irresistible call to a completely pointless course of action.

My personal Eiger (it really should be Everest but I’m stuck with the Eiger now) is to pay an average price of less than £1 per screening that I enter.

Rules of the game

And lest you think that’s dead easy - and that all I have to do is walk in, get the person with the BFI badge and the little hand held   recording doobery to record my press pass number, and  then walk straight out again - you are most seriously mistaken.

Rule 27 subsection b, clearly states that I have to see enough to be able to write some kind of review for each and every film.(See below.) (And further below.) (And much further below.) Furthermore, although I am  permitted to walk out if I think the film is really shite, I have to stay for at least half an hour.

It is a feat  that I have, for one reason and another - typically, violent vomiting brought about by a surfeit of Gallic pretentiousness or a crippling attack of wobblycamitis -  never previously managed to accomplish. And inflation makes it an ever more daunting prospect. It’s like the Eiger growing another couple of thousand feet every year. At the 2018 price, it would mean I had to see at least forty six films.

Reaching for the stars

The one thing that gave me a tiny shred of hope was that this year I would be in London with a more or less empty diary for the entire period of press previews, beginning Sept 24th, and for the actual festival, which ended October 21st. Forty six films in twenty nine days. Obviously tough, but at one and three fifths  a day, it did seem just about doable.

In fact, a bit  like Mo Farah, who is happy to ease himself into the race and hang about at the back of the field for the first lap, I saw only one film a day for the first week and gradually stepped it up so that by the beginning of the final week I still had twenty three films to see. Yes, as  the bell sounded for the last lap, I still had an immense amount of ground to make up.

But I was honed, oiled (a steady diet of oatmilk lattés) and up for the challenge. Saw four films a day Mon to Fri, except Wed when I saw five - my first ever 5 a day! Saw two on the Sat - but, as much as it stuck in my craw, paid - PAID! - for a ticket for one of them (will explain later) so  only one counted. And  then three more on the final Sunday. Meaning I had seen forty eight films overall  with forty seven eligible  - forty seven for the price of my forty five pounds press pass. Average cost: 95.744 pence.

NINETY FIVE POINT SEVEN FOUR FOUR PENCE!!!! Cue tumultuous applause, wild cheering, caps being hurled into the air, my modest, slightly sheepish acceptance of bouquets thrown at my feet, headlines in the dailies, in depth analyses in the Sundays,  a billion tweets, Facebook breaking down through worldwide overload,  invitations to appear on Breakfast TV, The  One Show - rejected - Graham Norton - maybe - James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke - okay -  and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon - accepted if whole show is devoted to me.

Let the naysayers nay

Of course, I knew there would be doubters. Small minded types consumed with envy - very possibly like yourself - and  conspiracy theorists  who would insist that, like the landing on the moon, seeing forty eight films (forty seven eligible) in twenty nine days was simply beyond the reach of humankind and that the whole enterprise was some kind of epic confidence trick.

So I knew I would need proof. And so I kept notes. Contemporaneously. Each film I saw, I noted down on the yellow notebook thingy on my i-phone. From one to forty eight (forty seven eligible) they went in and were consecutively numbered. And then, at the end, it was my intention to review them. (Too busy resting in my  bivouac - aka the cafe in the PIcturehouse Central - to write them as I saw them.)

That was the plan and the plan was put into effect. All went swimmingly, if several tads slowly - at the time of bloglication it’s already the thick end  of a month since the Festival finished - until I reached no 45.

And then - disaster.

YIkes!

44 was clear enough: ‘Ollie and Stan.’ And 46 was there: ‘Girl’’. But beside the number 45, there was nothing. Just blank space. (And though Blank Space could easily have been a film, perhaps based on the song Blank Space by Taylor Swift - ‘I’ve got a blank space baby, And I’ll write your name’ - and there was actually a film called Blank Spaces made in 2010, the blank space in question was just in fact, no more than that, a blank space.)

The reader - if there still is one - will be easily able to imagine how distraught I was. I was - and I remain - convinced that I had seen forty eight movies (forty seven eligible) but I could only identify forty seven ( and therefore only forty six eligible.)

How could this have happened, I wept and beseeched the God in whom I do not believe? As expected, no answer, but retracing my fingers I concluded that in writing the reviews beside the numbers, I had unwittingly deleted the name of the film that had been beside the number 45.

An absence of proof

I grabbed my dog-eared copy of the Festival Programme and cross-checked all the gazillions of  titles with those on my list, to see if there was one that I recognised that might have been no.45. But when you are as anal/OCD/idiotic as I am, you have to be punctiliously - obsessively - honest and I have to confess that I couldn’t find anything. I delved into the settings of  my i-phone’s yellow notepad thingy several times to see, if I had by any chance, inadvertently made a copy of the original entries before I began the review, but nada.

Eventually I had to accept that,  like Shergar, the name of the film that should have been beside no.45, would never be found. My only consolation was that this fascinating tale would be the basis for a fantastic movie, which I shall, one day, star in, write, direct, and produce: ‘And the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor/Writer/Director/Motion Picture goes to: Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Blank Space!’)

Other than that, I am left with nothing but a terrible quandary. Do I insist, despite the missing movie,  that I saw forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and that  the price of 95.744 per film stands? Or do I say, since I cannot name film no.45, that, for the official record, I shall accept, albeit grudgingly and bitterly, that only forty seven films (forty six films eligible) can be counted, which increases the average price to 97.827pence per film. Yes, still inside £1 but unarguably by a substantially narrower squeak.

But  that is not proof of absence.

As you will imagine, I have, before sending this blog post off into the e-ther, fought an epic battle with my conscience. I have tossed and turned in the night, spent days in a monastic retreat - well, sitting on the loo, as good as - before deciding that, one missing title notwithstanding, I did indeed see forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and will claim, until the moment I have taken my last breath that the average price per film was 95.744p.  Indeed, given the importance this  has assumed in my life, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that these will be  my actual last words -  though hopefully not right now.

However, my rigid insistence on  complete honesty  demands that I confess that there is another reason for choosing the 95.744 option.

It is this: There  is another rule - 39, clause iv - that has to be obeyed. And to explain that properly, I need to go out of order and begin my reviews with no.22

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Rule 39, clause iv, states that I must see every film ‘completely cold’ - by which I mean, knowing as little as conceivably possible about what I am about to see. I make a point/fetish of never reading the Festival programme blurb before I go in. When going to the cinema in the ordinary way, that is to say paying a proper price, I do everything I can to avoid seeing a trailer, usually by timing my entrance so I miss them, but if not, I  cover my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears, and I would go ‘la la la la la’ except I would be bombarded by popcorn and soggy nachos.

And I never, ever so much as glance at a review until after I've seen the film, and not just because I think all reviewers - except me - are tossers. I want to make a judgement of my own, uninfluenced by the half baked opinions of others. I want to witness  the story unfold exactly as the director intended that it should. Of course my determination to be so pure has its drawbacks occasionally, and never more so than  in this case.

Thus:

22 Little  Drummer Girl

I went in with high hopes as the director Park Chan Wook, who made the astonishing Korean and Korean-ised version of Sarah Waters’ fantastic (I thought) novel Fingersmith. (His film was called The Handmaiden, not to be confused with The Handmaid's Tale.)

TLDG started intriguingly and then, after about  an hour, the end credits rolled, seemingly  half way through the film. I sat there thinking, ‘how very odd’,  but, given my admiration for this director’s previous film, I decided this must be some uber cool directorial device and carried on watching regardless. Then an hour later the same credits rolled again, this time, as it turned out, at the conclusion of the performance. Even odder, for there seemed to have been no clue - at least none that I’d picked up -  as to why the credits had  been run the first time.

So whatever uber cool trick the director was trying to bring off, it was clearly way too cool for me. Moreover the story was left completely unresolved. It seemed as though there was a lot more  to be said  and  the audience had been left high and dry. The whole thing was completely baffling. Until, that is, I finally referred  to  the programme blurb and discovered this wasn’t a film at all but the first two episodes of a new BBC series. (Now showing.)

Why should this be shown at a Film Festival, especially when the TV series is to be broadcast only two weeks later? Answers on a postcard please.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0* (Not a film.)

So, you can see the problem. This wasn’t strictly a film - as in a movie that you might see in a regular cinema - at all. So should it count?  If the Rules Committee (me, myself and I) took a really strict view, they might not allow The Little Drummer Girl through even though I had  thought it would be a proper film  when I went in.

You can see where I am going with this. If I had not refused to back down on the missing no.45, I could have been in serious trouble. Because If I hadn’t and the Committee  put their black caps on in regard to no.22, I would be down to forty six films viewed and only forty five eligible, meaning the average price of entry would be £1 exactly.

Still a formidable achievement but, whichever way you look at it, £1 cannot be simultaneously less than £1. I would my miss target for yet another year.

Agonisingly close but no cigar. And you can’t really plant the flag unless you’ve reached the summit.

Let the record show

As I have said, I am not a believer but sometimes one simply has to invoke the name of the  so-called creator because it is the only word that will do. So thank God that after long, and sometimes hotly contested deliberations, the committee voted by a majority of two to one (myself and I for  the motion, me dissenting)  to take a lenient view and admit no 22. What’s more they didn’t even raise the subject of  the missing no.45.

So, all’s well that ends well. Will 95.744p ever beaten? One never knows, but my guess this is a Bob Beamon Plus Plus Plus sort of record.

One final note before I get to the other forty six reviews. I am the reviewer who is absolutely, positively guaranteed never to give the game away. No plot spoilers, no tedious Kermodian descriptions of every tiny thing. In fact, sod all apart from the odd detail such as the title, occasionally who might be in it, its country of origin and the briefest reference to  the skeleton of the story.

Reading one of my reviews you will never learn who dunnit. You won’t even know  wot they dun.  

The rest of the reviews:

1 Asako 1&2 (numbers are part of the title) 

Japanese romance with a clever plot twist.  Inoffensive, watchable - a slightly different slant (shamefully politically incorrect pun but impossible to resist) on familiar themes. 3*

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

2 Petra 

An incoherent Spanish film about a young woman and a small daughter in search of something or other. Complex plot which asked too much of this audience. (By which I mean me.) Tiresome.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1.5*

3 The Guilty 

Highly unusual and thought provoking thriller of sorts. Although nothing remotely like it, except in its ‘message’,  it reminded me of the celebrated Guardian commercial - celebrated if you lived  in the advertising bubble, that is  - which showed one scene from different points of view, each one altering your assumptions about what was going on.

A lot of concentration required for ‘The Guilty’  - slightly more than I had. A few irritating plot flaws but worth your time.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

4 Wildlife

Thanks to British Rail’s time honoured uselessness,  I was 10 minutes late but I don’t think I missed anything crucial.  This was the very first film I saw but I can still just about remember it which says quite a lot for it I suppose. Carey Mulligan who I usually don’t like is very good in this 50s Americanadrama. Ed Oxenbould as the teenage son in the midst of a family crisis is impressive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

5 Crystal Swan

The lesson to be learned here is that  under no circumstances choose Belorussia  for your next holiday unless unremitting bleakness turns you on. But the story of a rebellious young woman desperate to get  a visa to America is intriguing and persuasive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

6 Shadow

Another of those Chinese warrior films which involves all sorts of leaping about and balletic sword twirling. Not my cup of Lapsang Souchong  but if it’s yours, go for it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

7. Arctic.

Icelandic. Very snowy. A man lost and hungry and  not a happy bunny (not that any bunny would be)  in the eponymous frozen somewhere. In short, All Is Lost on Ice. (A brilliant line if I say so myself. If you haven’t seen All Is Lost, you should because it’s better and also because you will then appreciate the brilliance of the line which will otherwise be wasted on you )

On the other hand if you don’t see it, Arctic will probably seem more original and interesting than it did to me.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

8 Jinn

Awful, unlikely story about a black Californian teenager who wants to shake her booty  and her controlling TV weatherwoman mother who discovers Islam. 

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

9 Manto

Worthy but tedious biopic about a famous writer caught up in the cross border chaos of Indian/Pakistani independence. I lasted for about 3/4 of it, then decided to get a sandwich instead.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

10 After the Screaming Stops

Where else but at a press screening at the London film Festival would you find yourself watching a documentary about a Bros reunion? Interesting  in that it showed what an incredible jerk Matt Goss is. And sometimes funny in the laughing-at as opposed to laughing-with sense.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

11 May  the Devil Take You

Walked out. Hated  it. Apart from that I can’t remember anything.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0.5*

12 Mandy

Never got all this cult film bollocks.  Never liked Russ Meyer or  got George Romero or John Waters  and this film which appears to be in this ‘cult’ category was , as far,  as  I was concerned,  simply unbearable. Left after an hour.  Yes, I know it’s had fantastic reviews from all and sundry but then remember, fengshui proves that a billion Chinese can be wrong.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating. - (minus) 200*

13 Ash Is Purest White

A Chinese melodrama about low level gangster life centred on the life of the moll. (I mean morr- ha ha ha.) (Is it racist to make pathetically obvious jokes, if you can call them that, about Chinese/ Japanese pronunciation issues? Probably yes, so why do I keep doing it? Discuss.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

14.Widows

The gushing reviews it seems to have received (judging by the number of stars on the posters on the underground)  baffle me. It was nothing more than a highly polished turd. The original television serious was completely implausible and this film is no improvement. In the trailer  that I advertently failed to miss, ‘12 Years a Slave’ director and, in another life, Turner prize winner, Steve McQueen - the new one not the dead one - appears himself  to  claim this is the film he always wanted to make. 

Personally  I think it might have been about the money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

15 Thunder Road

A curious piece, written and directed and starring  the same person, all about the  disintegrating life of an American policeman. Tonally it was partly black comedy and partly unalloyed tragedy. A tour de force of sorts creatively,  but not quite sure what to make of it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

16 Border

A love story with knobs on - but not necessarily in the usual places - this is a quite brilliant piece of filmmaking which questions the very nature of attraction.  ‘Border’ has a very contemporary story but one which is drawn,  apparently,  from Nordic mythology. One of the two or three best films I saw in the festival.  Highly recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

17 Colette

I started by being irritated by Collette. Keira Knightley has had a bit too much onscreen rumps pumpy to be a convincing teenager in plaits skipping through the grass. And there was early dialogue referencing toothpaste and the top line on an optician’s charts. In 1892? Did they have those in 1892? (The answer it turns out is yes - toothpaste invented in the 1850s, Colgate producing it in jars in 1873 and in tubes in the 1890s, and opticians have been around since earlier than that - so one in the eye for me. And one  in the mouth.)

But all this became quickly irrelevant anyway. Because I stopped being picky and submitted to the  charm of this film, seduced by the bravura performance of Dominic West - who seemed  made for his twinkly eyed, moustache twirling part  and by the surprisingly nuanced Keira Knightley - never been a fan but I am now. As it turned out, after that first slightly jarring note, she was perfectly cast as the country school girl who goes on to be a revolutionary in the fin de siecle culture war in Paris.. But above all it was the astonishing, and very well told, story of Collette - nothing of which I knew - which fascinated. In short, a  damn good night at the cinema.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

18 Beautiful Boy

Film about parental angst over teenage son’s descent into drugs hell. I found it interesting, if for no other reason than it made me realise the blindingly obvious fact that each viewer sees  a film through the prism of their own life experience and that must affect their appreciation of it. In  this case, as a father I couldn’t help but see  things  from the father’s point of view but if you you were in the first flush of youth you would, I think see it from the son’s. 

The  casting of Timothy Hutton  as the expert to whom we see Steve Carell talking caught my eye because he was, about 40 years ago,  the Timothy Chalomet  of his day - remember ‘Ordinary People’?- and then looked a little like him.

And here’s another curious little factoid about Timothy Hutton - perhaps something to thrill the table with if Christmas lunch is flagging. He also appeared in a 1996 film called Beautiful Girls.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

19 Sometimes. Always.Never

Light, low budget British comedy with Bill Nighy; painstakingly made and clearly a labour of love. A little twee at times but very well played and with something semi-profound to say - though at a distance of a few days, having seen so many films since, I can’t remember exactly what it was.  

It had a particular appeal for me because the hero had  spent a life in the menswear business, as my father did, and  the title refers to how one should button a three button jacket, from top button downwards - something I learned at an early age and have never forgotten.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

20. Roma

I would say that Roma was a faultless recreation of 1970s Mexico City except that I wasn’t in Mexico City in the 1970s so how could I know?  It did however ring completely true to me - apart from a shower head which looked suspiciously modern - pedantic? moi? - and demonstrated  the astonishing versatility of the director, Adolpho Cuaron, who  also made ‘Y Mama Tu Tambien’ 'Children of God' and ‘Gravity’ - that’s some CV -  films which could not be more different to this. ‘Roma’ is a sort of upstairs downstairs story and has wonderful performances from all the actors but most particularly from the main character, the young servant girl. 

If I have one caveat it is that it didn’t quite ‘speak to me’, apart from making me queasily guilty that I have a cleaning lady.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

21 Non Fiction

One of those literary French films purporting  to be profoundly intellectual (even if, in this case, also supposed to be ironically amusing.) All about writers and publishers and their existential angst in the digital world.  But then  aren’t all French films like this about existential angst - whatever it means? This is the sort of thing I viscerally loathe  and after about half an hour, je sort, and  gave ‘Non Fiction’, the General de Gaulle - ‘Non! Non! Non!’

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

23 Life  Itself

Not everybody loves this film; in fact, the reviews have generally had the whiff of a  blocked drain,  but I claim my right to vigorously demur - up to a point. Directed and written by Dan Fogelman (the guy who does ‘This Is Us’ on Netflix or somewhere) it begins with a story about familiar  Noo Yorker angst but approaches it from a surprising angle - at least to me. ‘Life Itself’, comes in four labelled acts, something I don’t like in movies usually but the first three  worked for me. The  last seemed like a rather - make that very - tired cliché. 

My main issue with the film was that, whereas with Roma I couldn’t quite understand what it was trying to say, here the message was triple underlined in upper case bold. Not yet quite at the stage of jibbering senescence where I need to be spoon-fed.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

24 Wild Rose

Have to declare an interest here. The film’s star, Jessie Buckley,  is someone I know a little, and whose  career I have watched with interest since she was about 18 when she appeared on a TV talent show and after which  I interviewed her. I am a massive fan. She is an astonishingly gifted singer and a damn good actor. (Brilliant in her earlier non-singing role in last year’s ‘Beast’, which I thought was an exceptional movie, better than this to be honest, and which may yet prove to be a bit of a sleeper.)

 ‘Wild Rose’ is about a single mother from the badlands of a Scottish estate who has a yen to be a Nashville diva. (A bit like  Lady Gaga in ‘A Star is Born’. C&W seems all the  rage at the mo.) ‘Wild Rose’ has a few credulity stretching moments but the  feel good peaks make you want to ignore  those. It will make the Saturday night popcorn go down with a tear and a cheer. And it is a wonderful showcase for Jesse, who, If there is any justice, is destined for Hollywood mega stardom.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

25 Sunset

Lazló Némes, who made last year’s wincingly convincing Auschwitz film ‘Son of Saul’, now comes up with a wobbly cam evocation of verge-of-World War One Budapest called ‘Sunset’. By a complete but happy coincidence the person sitting next to me turned out to be an old  pal, Saul Metzstein, who is a movie director himself. 

I was gratified to learn that he was as mystified by this film as I was. No idea what the point of it was - went straight over my head. (Which,  admittedly does not require much intellectual elevation.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

26 Dogman

Loved this. One of my Festival top three or four and likely, I read,  to be a runner in the Oscar Foreign Film race. It’s a modern tale of the  little man in a hostile world and takes place in one of those seedy parts  of Italy that you find everywhere if you stray very far from the tourist trail. It is already on release - in fact, by the time I get around to posting this blog, it may already be finished, but try to catch it if you can. (Beware of violence though, if that bothers you.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

27 The Kindergarten Teacher

Never been much of a Maggie Gyllenhaal fan - always seems a bit cold and distant to me - but she is exceptional in this unusual contemporary New York drama about a thoroughly decent middle aged woman who,  for reasons which may or may not be valid,  finds herself out of step with those about her. Intriguing and thought provoking and better the more I think about it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

28 They Shall Not Grow Old

Everyone is raving about Peter Jackson’s  colour and  3-D reincarnation of genuine old World War One footage but it left me pretty cold.

It may be - no doubt is - an astonishing technical feat but after so many books and plays and films and so much TV and radio devoted to the subject I am afraid to say that I have a touch  of World War One fatigue and this didn’t relieve my symptoms.

Last year’s  wonderful remake of RC Sherriff’s ‘Journey’s End’ packed far more emotional punch, for me at least. Yes, the colour pictures of corpses and lice and rats and trenchfoot were ghastly but I wasn’t shocked and I wasn’t surprised. Who doesn’t know that World War I was unspeakably awful? Or rather, who amongst those who might go to see a film like this, doesn’t know? (‘Venom’ fans, I would have thought,   are unlikely customers.)  

My biggest complaint, though,  is about the soundtrack: I found the unrelenting stream of voices irritating and soon switched off and stopped listening to what they had to say. Easily the most powerful piece of sound in the film was, I thought,  the accompaniment to  the end title, the marching troops singing ‘Mademoiselle from Armentiers’. (Sung  of course, as Ah-men-tears’.) Nothing seemed to me to sum up the pathos and suicidal naivety  of the cannon fodder as much as this.

Perhaps more music of the same intensity and fewer quotes might have made them more memorable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

29 Rosie

An Irish version of a Ken Loachy sort  of film about decent people caught in the poverty trap. Persuasive and faultlessly done. But I am not sure what it told me that I would prefer not to know but unfortunately do.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

30 El Angel

A highly original and sometimes very funny,  blood soaked,  true story  about a teenage boy with decent, law abiding parents and   a head  of blonde curls  which is  set   in  Argentina (where, typically, people  are swarthy with black hair) in the 70s, and   who determinedly but very merrily sets about pursuing his ambition to become a ruthless murdering gangster. If there seem to be a few contradictions there, that is the joy of this film. 

Remember to search  for it on Amazon or Netflix in a few months  if it doesn’t get a release.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

31 Florianopolis Dream 

Was really   struggling to remember anything at all about this film  and,  until I checked, I thought it was more of the seedy  Italian  seaside and the story of two women battling it out to claim maternal rights over a small child. But now I realise that was another film entirely, which was....

32, Daughter of Mine.

Okay but in the unlikely event of  it ever getting a release, I wouldn’t worry about FOMO if you can’t manage to see it. 

And, now that I  do remember it, likewise  Florianopolis Dream, a Brazilian effort about a family’s seaside holiday in a place where it seemed to be perpetually cloudy. (Just to be clear, the  cloudiness was nothing to do with the plot, which was largely non-existent, but the obviously very low budget. I am sure the director would have preferred the sun but couldn’t afford to wait.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.

Florianopolis Dream 1.5*,

Daughter of Mine 2.5*

33 Capharnaum

A close second, that well  might have been first had I not seen the winner afterwards in the race to be my top pick of the festival. Timing is everything.. This is the heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting story of a boy of about twelve brought up in abject poverty in the slums of what I presume was Beirut. 

The performance of the boy is magical and though a two hour journey through the world of the  Lebanese dispossessed (or rather,  the  would’ve been dispossessed if they had ever possessed anything in the first place) may not sound like a fun Saturday night at the pictures, do not be put off. Whilst not so much pricking your conscience as repeatedly firing a  Kalashnikov at it, it somehow manages to be a feel-good movie at the same time.  

My only quibble was that the editing around the clever device upon which the plot is built,  slightly confused me at the end. Oh, and also, what’s with the title? Could they have found anything more obscure? Or maybe there was a clue in the film but, if so, I didn’t pick it up.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4.5*

34 Birds of Passage

Think of this as a pre-prequel to Narcos. Drugs and grisly murders mixed in with a bit of ancient dream interpretation  in Colombia in the sixties, when it was the  Native Americans (or one of the 87 tribes of Pueblos  lndigenas  as they call  them in Colombia - isn’t Google marvellous?) and not the Sicarios who were cashing in on the medical benefits of the local cash crop. 

Judging by the gore in ‘Birds of Passage’,  they  could have taught  Pablo Escobar a thing or two about effective persuasion -  blowpipes were out and sub machine guns deffo in. Clear and solid storyline, good pace, convincing acting, and lots of ketchup  - what’s not to like? Another probable Oscar Foreign Film contender.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

35 Carmen and Lola

Good late Sunday night on BBC4  type film in which two young gypsy women in modern day Spain confront the fixed ideas of their incurably misogynistic families. One fascinating side effect of seeing this film  was noticing in the sub-titles that the Roma  in Spain (who are not shown as travellers but living in permanent homes) refer to the wider Spanish community as white  people.  

To me,  the man and woman in the Spanish Street  and the Roma  all looked pretty much the same - dark haired and sallow skinned,  and hard to differentiate from each other. I mentioned this in the Q&A afterwards and Spanish members of the audience - and remember, film festival goers are usually predictably right-on - seemed a bit put out. Perhaps I was being tactless and/or naive. Prejudice runs deeper than you might think.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

36 The Quake

I correctly interpreted the title as heralding  a thriller about an earthquake and looked forward to some  light relief from the intense social commentaries that are the bread and butter of the festival. I have rarely seen a bad Norwegian film but I did this time. Ludicrous  plot,  wildly overdone CGI including a slowly toppling, and clearly named  Radisson hotel - very  odd  product placement. Avoid.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 1*

37 Girls of The Sun

A no punches pulled war film from a French woman director about Yazidi girls fighting in the Kurdish army in Iraq. Couldn’t help but be struck by the casting of far and away the prettiest girl as the group leader and main character. A curious - commercial? -  decision in such a feminist piece. 

A decent enough effort otherwise  but I feel that Henry Naylor’s plays which have done so well at Edinburgh and in New York in recent years (Borders, Angel etc, a couple of which are on at the Arcola, Dec 4-22)  and which deal with similar themes  do so much more effectively. A rare case - for me- of the cinema being inferior  to the theatre.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3*

38 The White Crow

Quite nteresting without being competely fascinating, watchable without being riveting, this is a tale of the early days of Nureyev directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also appears,   thankfully not as Rudy, but as his teacher, giving a performance which I found somewhat  distracting as he strongly reminded me of Paul Whitehouse. Nureyev Is portrayed as an unsympathetic character, driven and selfish, which could well have been true, so ‘The White Crow’ ticked the ‘seems authentic’ box, although his chilliness  doesn’t help you love the film.

 I would semi-enthusiastically recommend it, but I doubt it will be shown very widely since I can’t see it  doing brilliantly at the box office - not sure that the world of ballet is a place the Saturday night  popcorn crowd want to visit.  And who under 50  will know much - or indeed anything - about  Rudolph Nureyev and his place in the sixties zeitgeist?  But then who cares? It wasn’t my money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

39 Burning

There seemed to to be a bit of a buzz about this film amongst the so called press (aka the vast number of liggers who, like me, and with no less right, had managed to blag a press pass) but I have no idea why. It’s a strange story about the homecoming of a rather disorientated young Japanese chap with a father in gaol and another contrastingly self assured young fellow  who is doing jolly nicely thankyou. Plus, for some reason, there are burning glasshouses. Utterly mystifying - to me at least - and so slow it made the average glacier seem like Usain Bolt.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2*

40 Yommedine

A road movie about an Egyptian  leper and a runaway orphan. (One of the many surprisingly good things about this film is that there it unlikely to be a Hollywood remake.) 

An astonishing achievement to have made such a simultaneously upbeat  and yet deeply moving  film about people one would normally think of as being at the very bottom of the heap if, that is, one gave  them any thought to them at all. Brilliant performances that take us beneath the skin that so many are terrified  to touch.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

41.Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Stands a pretty good chance of coming to a cinema near you and I don’t you think will begrudge the price of a ticket. Melissa McCarthy gives a masterful - if that’s the right word to use - performance in the true story of surly, lonely, habitually rude 51-year-old biographer and lesbian Lee Israel  and her extraordinary and ingenious attempts to make money in 90s New York.

 Richard E. Grant plays her camp hoppo with all the Richard E. Grantness that you’d expect and Dolly Wells does a nice little turn as a guileless bookshop owner. (To be frank I might not have mentioned her, but coincidentally her mother was my Airbnb guest on the day I went to see this film, so I thought it was only fair to give her a shout out, and I did think she was pretty good.) Amusing, touching and very watchable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Hate U Give

Based  on a ‘young adult novel, this is the story of a young black girl living  in a rundown,  violent, gang ridden   district because her father, whilst allowing her to be sent to a private white school doesn’t want to make the move into a middle-class world. (Sounds fairly unlikely but on this occasion, I wasn’t in one of my usual hole picking moods so I went with it.) 

A series of regrettable incidents  force her to come to terms with the conflicting  aspects of her identity. Not quite sure if this film was actually intended  for my demographic group, but, despite it’s improbable  plot turns, I thought it had something useful to say. And hear.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Sisters Brothers

Saw this on the day that I actually managed to attend five screenings. A notable achievement but knackering and while I was supposed to be watching  this - I think it was my fourth of the day  - I have to admit I nodded off more than once.  I have a strong feeling it was probably rather good - featured Joaquin Pheonix, Jake Gylenhal, John C.Reilly, so a promising cast -  but I’m not really sure. Anyway, it’s cowboy film with a slightly Coen Brothers tone of voice, but isn’t one of theirs.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

43 A Private War

Like Maggie Gyllenhaal - see The Kindergarten Teacher, above -  Rosamond Pike has never been  a favourite of mine. and for similar reasons. I’ve always found her ice queen manner slightly off putting. Here she is playing legendary war journalist Marie Colvin but I never believed her. Lots of actoring with cigarettes and an eyepatch and her unruly wig flapping about  but it just seemed like dressing up to me. I kept wanting to scream at the screen, ‘Put a bloody helmet on!’.

 For all that, I can’t deny that ‘A Private War’ held my attention and had the odd moment.The sort of thing that might not  seem a complete waste of time when it makes its inevitable appearance on    BBC2 late on some future Sunday night. Otherwise not really recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

44  Stan and Ollie

As a child in the er ah ahem um er nineteen whatevers I use to love Laurel and Hardy and here John C. Reilly and the make up artists do a great job of recreating  Oliver Hardy on screen and Steve Coogan is more than passable  if less impressive as Stan laurel. 

A fascinating story of their later years but for me, let down by the stagey, artificial representation of fifties England. Also very odd casting and playing of legendary impresario Bernard Delfont. Was Lew Grade’s brother really like that? No idea but not how I imagined the man who brought us Sunday Night At the London Palladium. Still, all in all, a pretty decent night out at the flicks.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

45. (As previously discussed.)

46 GIRL

 On the final Saturday I went with some friends to see the announcement of the result and the screening of the film which had won the best first feature award and I had to pay so I could sit with my pals. A little bit of a gamble as there was a chance I had  already seen the winning movie,.  

The winner  turned out to be Girl,  a story about a Belgian boy of 15 who wanted to be a ballerina. (Note:  Not another Billy Elliott -  he wanted to be a real ballerina.) When the announcement of the award was made, the  good news was that it was a film I hadn’t  already  seen but the bad, I glumly thought, was that I had consciously decided not to see it earlier in the week because, to be honest,  I have grown a little weary  of the entire LGBTQ I XYZ trans-gender, cis gender, gender  fluidity,  gender whatever, what? WTF!, what-do-THEY-do? thing. 

Only it didn’t turn out to be bad news at all. Girl is an absolutely extraordinary film, deeply touching with an astonishing performance by the young boy playing the young boy who wanted to be a girl. Not only was it riveting viewing but it made me completely rethink my attitude to the whole transgender thing.  Whereas  previously my attitude might have been summed up as ‘all these boys wanting to be boys and girls wanting to be boys - perlease!’ I felt afterwards that I had at least a small but sympathetic understanding of the predicament that Victor/Lara and his family faced. And by extension, others like them. A really good film can do that - open your eyes and mind to a different world. 

So, from being  a movie that I hadn’t wanted to  to see, Girl became my personal pick of the festival and recipient of the Palme d’bloggerblagger

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 5*

46 Blaze

Went to see this because I noticed that Ethan Hawke was the director and I am a bit of a fan of his work both as an actor and as a writer - he once wrote a very good novel, the name of which now escapes me. Unfortunately this film, a story, supposedly true, of a  singer and songwriter in the sixties - I think - failed to stop me from making short but frequent visits to the land of nod.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

47 The Fight

The very last film I saw, A low budget British film about a fortyish woman in a racially mixed marriage with a bullied  child and  a dark secret and a bad relationship with her own mother and who, for some reason that I never quite got to grips with,  takes up boxing.  I might have appreciated this film more  had my hearing been better. I discovered in post movie conversation (with one of the other members of the  press/ liggers ) that I had mistaken the spoken number 30 for 13 and that had a significant bearing on my misunderstanding of  the story, and consequent confusion and mild dissatisfaction.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

PS Anyone with so much time on their hands that they have waded through this nonsense until the end will have noticed, as I have only just done, that there were, in fact, two no 42s. Which I take to mean that, joy of joys,  we have found the missing no 45. (Something obviously went awry with the numbering system in my i-phone’s yellow notebook thingie. Or possibly, though obviously improbably,  it was my fault.)

Delighted to have been vindicated in my claim that I did indeed see 48 films (47 eligible.) Or, if there were an appeal against the present ‘Little Drummer Girl’ decision (unlikely but you never know) and it were to be upheld by the Rules Committee (even unlikelier) I would have seen 47 films (46 eligible.) And in even that remote eventuality I would still have officially reached the summit of my personal Eiger (Everest).

But it also means   80% of the first 1500 words of this post are completely redundant.

I could start again, I suppose. And I probably should. And yet….really?

[recentanimenews]

The aquatope on white sand – 14 – Nunca te rindas

I don’t know about you, but Fuuka’s sudden appearance on the beach and her and Kukuru’s warm embrace are romantic as all get out. Just look at that shot: Fuuka is basically Kukuru’s valiant prince, drying her eyes strained from tears of frustration and filling them right back up with pure unbridled joy. Even better: Fuuka is back for good. She’ll be working at Tingaara…and even moved next door to Kukuru.

That’s a lot of surprises, but Kukuru is fine with all of them, because if ever there was a time she needed Fuuka close by, it’s now, when she’s feeling totally unmoored in her marketing job. Thanks to Gramps, Fuuka was able to get a job at Tingaara, and Chiyu is clearly not okay Gama Gama nepotism. If she’s going to accept Fuuka as a colleague and not a up-jumped hanger-on, Fuuka must memorize all 20 of the cape penguins.

“There’s no ‘Gama Gama Faction!'”, the Gama Gama Faction protested as they all went out to eat together. Though replacing Kuuya is Eiji, who is tastefully intrigued by the former idol-turned-penguin attendant. Rumors of cliquery aside, I like how the Gama Gama exiles still hang together after work, lay down their troubles, and enjoy Udon-chan’s widening culinary repertoire.

Kukuru admits after dinner that a part of her felt jealous that Fuuka got the job she thought she’d get at Tingaara, but fully admits that kind of thinking is childishness she wants to grow past. With  Karin, Chiyu, and her fellow marketeer Akari (voiced by the Saekano heroine herself, Yasuno Kiyano!) an now Fuuka, she has plenty of girlsboss to emulate. She even discovers she does have a knack for making people care and fall in love with aquariums, as she takes the aquarium-indifferent Akari on a rehearsal tour and wins her over.

This week Kukuru does indeed work harder and smarter than her first bumbling/arrogant days, staying meek and formal on the outside, but keeping that burning fire in her belly stoked. She learns the value of forming little alliances with others to make things easier, and figuring out the precise way to deal with people. Take Chiyu’s second-in-command Marina (Touyama Nao—this cast is stacked): since Kukuru is Fuuka’s friend and Fuuka is cool, Marina will go to bat to change Chiyu’s mind about including the penguins on the tour.

Speaking of intricate social patterns, this week was a low-key cape penguin documentary, as we observe along with Fuuka how to tell the twenty penguins apart not just by their colored wing bands, but how they behave. And while Fuuka was only at Gama Gama for a month, that was enough to know when the birds are agitated due to their sudden new environment (mirroring Kukuru’s own difficulties).

Kukuru believes it was not only Fuuka acing the name-that-penguin test, but recognizing and acknowledging the emotional state of the birds that impressed Chiyu enough to give the go-ahead for their (limited) exposure to tour groups. Kukuru only manages to get a family of four in her first tour, but she ends up nailing the tour just as well as Fuuka nailed her test, showing that the director didn’t throw her into this new environment willy-nilly. He knew she’d eventually figure it out and thrive.

Is Kukuru’s anhedonic ass of a boss Suwa pissed she only snagged one group of four? Absolutely. Does Kukuru let him get her down for long? Nope! She walks out of that office ready to keep up the fight. The episode ends as it began, with Kukuru and Fuuka looking like a particularly happily married couple, this time cooking dinner side by side.

Kukuru gives Fuuka the credit for changing Chiyu’s mind by proving she not only knew about but cared about the penguins. But that’s not entirely fair to herself…who helped Fuuka study for that penguin test? More to the point, Fuuka makes it clear that while she feels she belongs in an aquarium now, the main reason Fuuka is back is to be with Kukuru. Kukuru just so happens to also belong in an aquarium, so it’s allll sea gravy!

By: sesameacrylic

#Anime #News #RABUJOI – An Anime Blog

[vinelasht]

1 28 2021

Fumbling in search of reasons to persist. I feel as if I have been caught in floods for so long now. Abandonment, fracturing, anhedonia. A year and more of this, with a brief glimpse of light stuck in the middle. Existential crisis into existential crisis. It's easier to talk about my present condition in the negative, what I feel does not characterize my experience: wholeness, joy, love, vitality, excitement, comfort. Only when I am in the immediate presence of friends does the tide recede, and even then, I still feel unpredictable rushes of fear, anxiety, grief.

Now more than ever I feel stuck in a small room with images of violent self-destruction. I hate that this is true. I feel increasingly lost to it. More layers of removal keep falling on my ability to fathom good things. I haven't experienced beauty in a long time. I can't imagine feeling happy in my soul. I move forward, decreasingly, in the hopeful pursuit of some beautiful era. Instead, I am surviving—comfortably enough in the material realm, but in the psychic realm, gravely.

I still feel wronged and unable to move beyond that. I still think of you more than I want to. Yesterday I stumbled across a picture of you and felt amazed by the simple reality of how I used to be in love with you, and how different things have been. The far journey I have taken away from joyousness.

Our relationship was, for me, a fork in the road. I shouldn't have let you back into my life, but because I did, it felt like things could have gone in two ways: the way they did go, and the way I had hoped they would go. I want to try and remember that the last few years of my life led up to these present conditions and that the time is all tied together—even though, when I think back, it all feels so distant, like otherworldly dreaming. It's hard to imagine being in my old bedroom, even two years ago, in the orange light and the blue light and the red light. I rarely felt good back then, but I would take back those conditions readily.

The way I had hoped things would go with you was the first truly beautiful thing I had perceived in a long time. I think I could have done anything with you and felt happy. I loved you with a purity and intensity that felt life-affirming, rich with depth, and sacred. I saw us under stars and blankets, in the woods, in rivers and in lakes. I came to value our relationship more than anything, even as I continued to maintain my individuality. In the face of what, for years, felt like an increasingly ugly and empty world, you were a spring of hope and life.

That's why I let you back into my life even when I should not have. I loved you intensely. I couldn't have known how things would go or the extent of the damage I would feel. There was a world without you and a world with you, and I chose you. I tried so hard to make it work as it started to fail. I tried so hard to redirect, transform, and stop the feelings of anxiety, which eventually became like fire in my abdomen, dominating me. I imagined myself as fighting a sacred fight against a lowering veil of insecurity and unwellness. I struggled, and I know you struggled too. I know it wasn't easy for you.

Now, I wish I had not fought that fight. I wish that I had not let you back into my life—I even wish I had never met you. More than joy or love, you have given me abandonment and grief. You have disappeared and left nothing. You lied to me. I feel deceived by you and I don't feel capable of trusting the universe.

I've told this story to myself and my friends so many times that it feels unnecessary to keep doing so here. You are gone now. You have shown me an ugliness that I didn't know existed, in yourself and in the world. I loved you deeply and the flourishing was beautiful. It feels existential to be plunged into misery by a human being who you trusted more than anyone, loved more than anyone. The grief and fear have felt existential. The wrongness. The world was a refrigerator, it was terrifying.

I feel like I have gone through a dozen or more phases in the wake of it all. I can't describe the kaleidoscopic procession, the images, the feelings, the lingering sickness. It's not that I would have expected to be totally over you by now—I loved you, sincerely, and not in some passing way. But I have been disturbed by the particularity of the rippling. The anhedonic, suicidal depression. The muffling of my capacity to feel anything positive, and the deepening of my capacity to know ugliness. The real, cold, indescribable fear. The human world felt ugly before all of this—advertisements, garbage, life-sucking machinery, and so forth. Now, ugliness feels like a monster that I am in the same room with.

I've tried many methods to keep myself moving forward. I stopped travelling in the van because it was too much to be all alone in a world that was, literally and figuratively, cold. I stayed with my father for a while and tried to feel more normal again, plunging myself into making unimportant music to distract myself. I've tried reading, magic, talking to friends, a tiny bit of dating. It's all temporary relief. I'm still wondering how to mend in some holistic way. How to not feel haunted by the image of my own death. How to experience beauty again.

I do not feel like who I was before. I keep thinking of this concept of mind-altering grief. Experiences that cannot be wiped away. I think that I have been changed for the worse by all of this. I think that causality branched into a more negative space. I think that I lost the gambit of allowing you into my life again.

Now I am trying to even fathom wholeness, to even experience it in passing. I think that, alone, I have felt truly comfortable and well for about one hour in the last month. There is something terrifying in all of this. I feel more like I'm stumbling forward than anything. I've learned not to trust the periods of relative ease, and I've started to acclimate to feeling a wrongness in my gut at all times.

May writing this expel some of the bile.

[fleurren]

old journal entries, pt. l

  lament from last march 

In a strange, sour stage of a loss of wanting. It's less of a societal reaction--maybe--maybe it’s a lapse in self. There is a lasting desire to be alone not because you want to be, but because no one else can exist in your world with you. I’ve never willingly shared a world with someone else; if I did it was because they let themselves in, moved things where I couldn’t find them, left the place ruined. After they were gone, I needed years to rebuild. Since then, it's always been ‘my world’ and everything that extends outside of it--I don’t want strangers touching it, I don't want my family touching it. I like my world with them when it's just me in it. It could be that I like myself alone, touching several different worlds, leaving my own intact.  I saw something on Instagram today that was wedding-related and I thought of wedding decorations that I would choose if I were to have one. And then I thought: I really don't think I ever want to have one. This is new. I was never the little girl we all hear other girls say they once were, (you know, the one we’re all taught to be). The one that couldn’t wait to have her dream wedding when she grew up. I never dreamed of one. This is different than wanting. I did want it, I just didn't care for extravagance. Now I find myself not wanting anything, not even low-key. Because it’s not about the wedding. It never is. It’s about what happens after the dust settles and you’re staring at this world that is no longer yours, this world that you have to share. I did want to find love, wanted that voraciously, but after the last one and maybe a little before he came into the picture, I stopped aching for it. But you have to know this: the aching made me who I was. What I’m saying, if it wasn’t already obvious, is that I don't want to get married anymore. I don't want kids and I don’t know if I ever will. And lately, through changes that I never thought I would see in myself, I fear commitment. Thinking of having to do all of these things makes me tired. Maybe it is a societal reaction, to a role I feel pressured to play. I never understood the fear of commitment until I did. I learned that it had been easy to call people who have a fear of commitment immature or selfish until I discovered that we all have a threshold, and the point where the pain surpasses tolerance is the point which causes that fear. This is how I began to handle my grief. Perhaps now it makes sense, that when people began to enter my world again and destroy what I was rebuilding, I was okay, too okay; something was numbing me and I wasn't interested in stopping it. If I held onto myself for 6 more months, I might have been better for what was to come, or I might have known myself well enough to avoid it entirely. The excitement for life is misplaced. I do not think that life is tailored for people who belong to their own worlds. One place I still feel safe is inside his apartment with him and right now, that is all I can see. Like this point in my timeline is for resting. Are people rest stops? I’ve sufficiently stretched myself, thanks, I think I’ll move on now. To what, I don’t know.  I function like a well-oiled, efficient machine when anhedonic; motoring on like something that only needs itself to function. I don't show symptoms anymore. It's like a phantom illness, one that doesn’t reveal its tell-tale signs, so it can’t be diagnosed. Who would know that something is changing you under the surface? You can’t x-ray a mental state. It's hard to recognize the magnitude of it. I have trouble defining lines. I think I am on a numb path, and I'm surprised I still have any pure love left. I still love people I don't know. The homeless in New York, the children on the Starbucks line, my mother, still, somehow.  Yesterday on the train I was thinking heavily about things I’d long buried. I harshly told myself to push the thoughts out, but it was too late. In my lifetime, do you know how many times I’ve cried on a train? So many strangers bore witness to my most sanctified vulnerability, not theirs to see. I unwillingly gave it to them, to take with them. On three separate occasions, three kind souls have reached out and taken my hand, literally and figuratively. One told me: listen to the head, dear, not the heart. They understood that grief does not wait until we are in a private space to place itself on us. I think of people who have been through much worse, and I wonder what my reason is for becoming like this. As if we need reasons for things that just are.  Maybe being in therapy is slowly bringing this out. We barely talk about the trauma itself, at least not yet, but it could be that the act of drawing connections is making all of this come, unsolicited, to the surface. The realization that we are a product of our pasts and everything we have ever been through, is making me feel everything that made me what I am.  I am, by this logic, also a product of the aftermath. What the person I’m with has of me now, is someone who is more of something else, less of what used to be. Our experiences can make us so drastically different. It takes strength to hold on and I chose not to. Instead, I chose a similar path to a friend I made in college, and now I live more like him. When we first met four years ago,he said he never wanted to be married. I said what? why? He told me. I listened. And at some point, beneath a surface that existed beneath the surface I was aware of, it shifted from listening to understanding. Years later, only after I became it, did I fully understand. It is not strength. It means you've been hurt so badly that you can't imagine how that cookie-cutter life, whatever your concept is of it, could ever fit you. It can't. It can't fit what you turned into. Maybe it doesn’t need to--that’s what I learned in all of this. We are free to choose our paths, and they don’t have to look anything like what we’ve grown up thinking they should look like. I think this is why I am trying so hard to nurture whatever creativity is left in me; I don't want to die entirely.  Because even if you find that one person to love for the rest of your life, it ends in death. And I can't get past the cynicism of that. I lost whatever God was. There exists an atheist in me, who just exists. 

#this is the most honest #d #thoughts

[letterstotheone-whomilovemost]

09/04/2020 (10 months, 5 days after the event)

You know. You would think that almost a whole year later, that maybe.. just maybe it would get easier.

but it doesn’t. there isn’t a day that i don’t think of you. 

there isn’t a time that i don’t try and picture your face.

I moved up here, thinking it would be easier. And it’s not. It’s worse now, I have no where to run to when my mind gets to heavy. I’ve fallen ill again, unable to eat, sleeping all day long.

I’m anhedonic and nothing feels worth my time anymore.

I never got the closure i needed, and i just, don’t quite understand... why you of all people, the one I loved  ,aha, was the one to fuck me over completely. I don’t understand why in the end, it was you that you never cared. 

you didn’t, you couldn’t have. or so i tell myself, to try and move on.

but god it fucking suuuuuuucks. I literally fucking can’t get over you and I’m getting so tired of it. I literally love(d) you so fucking much...

I have to try and resist my feelings, because the shit you did to me just wasn’t acceptable. 

I’m so exhausting, of feeling like shit because i love you.

why did this have to happen to me?

#dear love #dear lover #letters to the one i loved most #to you #letters to the one i love most #i love you

[anhedonicauthor]

Last night for some reason I was thinking about this time with my first ex that I remember fondly and I feel like sharing.

Also trigger warning: self harm and rape mentions.

Story time with the Anhedonic Author.

So I’ll call my first ex T as a pseudonym, because it’s a bit tiring referring to my exes as my first ex and my second ex. So T and I had been dating for maybe a month or two, I honestly can’t remember as it’s been nearly 4 years. But at this point I’m madly in love with her. So one night T messages me on iOS messenger just profusely apologising. Naturally I wonder to myself “Why is she apologising?” I honestly can’t remember how I was feeling, probably sick with worry because of my anxiety, but also because I loved her. She’d been fighting with her bipolar, binge drinker, probably alcoholic, verbally abusive mother. I ask her what she did, but I think she was reluctant to tell me. She never did “tell” me, I think.

But she sent me a photo of the insides of her thighs, raw and red with quite a number of fresh, horizontal cuts over a small area on both legs. It was the first time she’d self harmed in a while, she told me, the first time since we’d started dating. I was her reason for not self harming anymore. She was so disappointed in herself. I remember she told me she was crying. God, all I wanted to do was hold her in that moment, and kiss her, and tell her everything would be alright. Unfortunately I couldn’t drive at the time, not having a license or car.

I can’t remember what day it was that happened, probably a Thursday because I can’t remember anything from then to what I remember next. So every Friday I’d get to go to her house after school. We went to her house, into her bedroom to hang out as we always did. I remember sitting her on the edge of her queen sized bed, and I knelt down in front of her. I think I remember her asking me what I was doing, I don’t remember if I replied. I lifted up her skirt, she wasn’t wearing any stockings that day, I spread her legs, and I moved my head between her legs to kiss the now healing scars on her thighs (they were still raw, but thin, probably made with a razor blade I’d bet). Then I told her I loved her and probably kissed her lips (her mouth lips.)

That was honestly my favourite moment with T. She was my mildly toxic ex, but I still have fond memories of us, even if she did mistreat me at critical moments in our relationship. Maybe having been more mistreated by someone new makes me feel less angry towards her for what she did. But too be fair, we were young, we made mistakes, she probably didn’t see what she did as wrong (not that it makes it okay), I’m mostly over all the mistreatment, and she had a really shitty life so her behaviour was probably a bit different to someone who had a stable upbringing and good parents from whom she could model good relationship skills (T only had her abusive mum, her dad walked out when he knocked her up because he didn’t want kids. The next closest thing she had to a dad was the piece of shit step-dad who raped her for years), I’m not holding any grudges I mean.

But yeah, I was just thinking about that time, and not to pat myself on the back too much but I felt very sweet. I miss having intimate moments like that, I miss the emotional vulnerability.

#love #relationships #romance #cuddle #cuddles #cuddling #hug #hugs #hugging #kiss #kisses #kissing #sweet #memories #fond memories #self harm

[shatteredresiliency]

Tarot card questions

The Fool: Tell an embarrassing story.

Oh lord I have many. But I guess one that comes to mind right now is a day or two ago now, my mum was driving me into work when a Certain Someone called me, and proceeded to make me get all blushy and stuttery by the end of the phone conversation and then my mum proceeded to heckle me for the rest of the way into work. I dont really think thats embarassing but. Oh well. I don't have much to hide.

The Magician: Do you have a special talent?

I dont think that I do? Although ive been told patience is extraordinary so maybe that i guess.  ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯

The High Priestess: Are you good at keeping secrets?

Hahahahaha no. not at all. My face gives me away.

The Empress: What do you desire most?

For the next few month's to fly by, becauae I'd rwally like to get back to living my life.

The Emperor: Do you have any family traditions?

Not really anymore. That I remember, anyway.

The Hierophant: What is/was your favourite school subject? My favourite subject was actually English.

The Lovers: What qualities would your ideal partner have? Honesty. Loyalty. nerdy. Committed. Affectionate. (I die without affection). Tenacious; because jesus christ he'll have to be to deal with me.

The Chariot: Have you ever had to fight for something?

Ive fought for many things in my life. Some of them I won, some of them I didn't.

Strength: What gives you strength?

The fact that every day is a new day. The support of my cats, and loved ones. The fact of I'm too stubborn to call it quits yet.

The Hermit: Could you cope with living alone?

I lived alone for the better part of a year and loved it.

Wheel of Fortune: If you won a million pounds, what would you do with it? I'm gonna concert that to a million dollars. So, a million bucks. Id get both mysrlf and my mum out of debt. Once were out of debt, Id buy my mom an African Grey, while myself would get a new car. The rest I'd turn into stocks.

Justice: If you could be a super hero (or villain) what would you call yourself and what powers would you have? Ive never been big on the idea of superheros. I'm my own superhero, so.

The Hanged Man: Would you sacrifice your own life to save someone else's? Depending on the person, yes. Depending on the person, maybe. Depending on the person, Not a chance in hell.

Death: If you were able to reincarnate, what would your next life be? I hope.it would be happy. And that my reincarnation would learn from the mistakes ive made in this life.

Temperance: Do you have good self control? Emotionally? For the most part. Physically? Dude my body barely cooperares with me on a good day.

The Devil: What do you think your worst quality is? My worst quality is that I'm loyal to a fault. I can be literally shown evidence that someone ia doing something that would hurt me, and Id stuck around anyway. Until someone else op3ns my eyes. I usually don't see what's bad for me.

The Tower: Describe your dream home.

Large. A farm, likely. Just a hobby farm. With a proper barn, and paddocks. Varieties of creatures roaming the property. The house is an old farm house, big and brick. It's woodstove heat, and has eloquent design on the wood pieces. Theres a living room, dining room, etcetera. Then theres the garage, abd then we go upstairs to three bedrooms, and a large bathroom. From the master bedroom, you can see the paddocs with horses.

The Star: What inspires you? Beauty. Art. Anger. Emotion. Heavy, heavy emotions. @boywonderben, @anhedonic-slut , @boxthissideup, @xoxmygirlxox, @acroardent @greg-the-di. A few other people. I aee inspiration in everything.

The Moon: Describe a dream (or nightmare) you've had recently. This dream that I had recently was that I was en route to Sudbury via bus. I was going to see Alex, and we were about a half hour away from Sudbury when the bus like, exploded. Everyome was fine but they all relied on me to get them to Sudbury because I was the oldest and had the best sense of direction and I called Alex, pretty much in tears, but all he said in the dream was to close my eyes and rest and suddenly I just felt so at ease.

The Sun: Describe a childhood memory.

I don't have many, sadly. But I do remember sitting in the car with my grandpa one day, and he and I sat and talked about everything under the sun. That day, when I was 7 years old, I told my papa that I wad a boy, not a girl. The bravest man I ever knew looked me up and down and started crying, because, though I didn't understand it at the time, he was terrified of the torment id go through.

Judgement: Have you ever done something that you were really ashamed of?

Yes... Quite a few different things. One in particular being that I went back on my qord and wasnt there for a friend of mine when she needed me most; I was far too selfish that day, and I'll never forgive myself for losing her.

The World: What country would you most like to visit?

Greece!

#ask meme #answers

[wintermelonmilktea]

May was a quiet and hard month. I was never diagnosed with depression, but I do have ‘episodes’ of depression where I get sad for periods of time. How do I know it’s an episode? I just feel anhedonic and rarely feel good about much. I try to stay positive because good people do come my way and I know a lot of people face this, but it’s just hard. You feel so alone, want to ask others for help, but at the same time, you don’t want to drag anyone down.

In May, I tried to let go of what hurt me, like I mentioned in April. I’m trying to work on my jealousy issues and focus on making myself a better person. I actually read my old journals and saw how happy I was years ago. I felt nostalgic and wanted to return to pre-teen Karen times, when my confidence was off the charts, my heart unbothered, and my bubbly personality was uncontrollable and annoying. I was a different kind of happy.

I can’t explain it, but there’s something about fresh teeny boppers entering high school. They have this light in their eyes and a hop in their step. Their self-esteem is crazy and they feel they can face the world without any help. They’re so brand new and unexposed to heart aches, adult responsibilities, and their happiness is unmatched. Then over time, heartbreaking situations knick us from left and right only to break down our facades, and all is left is me feeling vulnerable at 21. BUT, it’ll get better.

Memorable events this month include:

Celebrating my little bro’s 19th birthday @ Bucca di Beppo + old karaoke

Voting for BTS every day from the start of May to the 21st

Finishing our school project, a Children’s Book about PTSD

BTS winner the BBMA’s

Swooning over Kim Sanggyun from Produce 101 ♡♡♡

Goals for June include: get real close to finishing my digital art piece, sort out my educational journey, continue working on my issues, get better using make up ♡♡

DISCLAIMER: Y’ALL IT’S JULY NOW AND UH, MAY WAS DEPRESSING. READING THIS IS MAKING ME FEEL AWKWARD SO DON’T THINK I’M AS DEPRESSED ANYMORE. BEEP BOOP ~PS, I didn’t include all the drawings I made in May, which were mainly from my Children’s Book~

#may #graphic art #digital art #art #graphic design #illustration #reflection #reflectionmilktea

[scientia-rex]

Got a call from an old friend today and had to go through the usual Quick Crash Course Of Why I’m Angry All Of The Time Now, aka Medical School: no it is NOT like undergrad or grad school only harder, unless your grad school kept you awake for 30 hours straight every couple of days, yelled at you if you had to pee, worked you 80-hour weeks and made you study on top of that, and then capped it all off by making you watch people, including babies, die.

It just makes me so angry when people who aren’t in med school pontificate about med school. YOU. DON’T. KNOW. YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND. So don’t give me some shit platitude, and don’t tell me if I’m looking for meaning in my life, “Well, there’s always Doctors Without Borders,” like I didn’t just do two straight years in the classroom, thanks, I have heard about Paul Farmer at least 8,000 times and you’re unintentionally suggesting, there, that my life is less meaningful if I don’t haul my ass overseas, which, no, thank you, you are painfully wrong, there is gripping horrible need overseas to be sure but there is also need here, anyway. It feels a lot like being judged by someone who has no idea what the deal is.

Med school is traumatic. However you slice it, no pun intended, medical school is traumatic. Sleep deprivation, seeing death, the aftermath of abuse, there are a lot of opportunities for trauma. I’m getting through it as best I can but no fucking wonder I’m depressed!

So it’s not that I don’t care about the problems in her life. I do. But I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to contribute anything real to that conversation. I don’t have space in my brain for my patients and me and my husband and this friend I haven’t heard from in at least a year if not two. She told me about her dad’s hemorrhagic stroke--my knee jerk response was to want to ask if he had a-fib and was on anticoagulation, because it’s so much more common to have an ischemic stroke. It wouldn’t have mattered, it wouldn’t have helped, in that context, but I spend my days and weeks and months training to ask questions like that; I’m not going to be able to have a normal conversation about someone’s medical problems at this point.

Anyway. I’m pissy and anhedonic from a combination of depression and too much caffeine earlier in the day, and I’m about to start another week and even though it’s a short week for the first time this year I’m still feeling a little bit like I’m dying, just thinking about walking back into the hospital tomorrow, seeing my patients, neither of whom are going anywhere. Who knows, maybe we’ll release my suicidal teenager, he’s insisting he’s fine now--will I still be here the next time he comes through? Or, more likely, will I just never know what happens to him?

I spend most of my time these days either at the hospital, or sleeping, or if I do on occasion socialize, it’s with other people who are also in medicine. Because it is so much simpler than trying to talk to people I no longer have anything in common with. No, I can’t remember how hard it was to work a 40-hour week and get paid actual money for it, are you nuts? I said to my husband earlier, “If I could trade out the entirety of medical school for getting hit by a truck, I wouldn’t even have to think about it, I’d say yes, yes, fuck me up, instantly.”

Med school: any idealistic notions you have about it get cauterized out of you by halfway through third year. Pass it on.

#med school dead school #this is the LEAST negative I've been about med school in MONTHS by the way

[mitchipedia]

"Musical anhedonia"

Inside the Heads of People Who Don’t Like Music [Divya Abhat/The Atlantic]

Allison Sheridan couldn’t care less about music. Songs of love and heartbreak don’t bring her to tears, complex classical compositions don’t amaze her, peppy beats don’t make her want to dance. For Sheridan, a retired engineer, now a podcaster, who owns 12 vinyl records and hasn’t programed the radio stations in her car, “music sits in an odd spot halfway between boring and distracting.”

Despite coming from a tremendously musical family, Sheridan is part of the roughly 3 to 5 percent of the world’s population that has an apathy toward music. It’s what’s referred to as specific musical anhedonia—different from general anhedonia, which is the inability to feel any kind of pleasure and which is often associated with depression. In fact, there’s nothing inherently wrong with musical anhedonics; their indifference to music isn’t a source of depression or suffering of any kind, although Sheridan notes, “The only suffering is being mocked by other people, because they don’t understand it. Everybody loves music, right?”

Researchers at the University of Barcelona checked people’s brains as they were listening to music, and found what happened to musical anhedonics’ brains when they were exposed to music: Nothing. Normal people’s brains lit up, music lovers’ brains lit up like Christmas trees, musical anhedonics just went on about whatever else they were doing.

I expect musical anhedonia is a spectrum, and I’m toward the end of it. I do like some music — but not much. I go months without choosing to listen to music. I don’t have a streaming audio subscription. I have a meager iTunes subscription and don’t touch it anymore.

I think the last time I went to a concert was in the 80s.

I just don’t care about music most of the time, and I’m more likely to find it annoying than enjoyable.