Life's too fast to play it safe.

Angels in America.

It has been some time now, that I watched the movie - and it takes time to digest it and suggest it to others and try to understand only half of its scenes, pictures and dialogues.
A group of us, here in San Francisco watched it with the director of photography, Stephen Goldblatt, who would stop between the scenes to mention some of the emotions that were happening behind the scene whilest shooting the movie.
Kushner himself, the writer, lost most of his friends in the early age of the AIDS discovery in the U.S., it is phantasy and reality in one. Well, isn't that often so?

If any of the below touch or move you, you should see it..

Harper: "This is the very threshhold of revelation sometimes. You can see things . . . Do you see anything about me?"
Prior: "Yes, you are amazingly unhappy."
Harper: "Oh, big deal. You meet a valium addict. You figure out she's unhappy. Of course, something else, something surprising? . . . Well, I don't like your revelations. I don't think you intuit well at all . . . I have to go now. Get back. Something just fell apart."
Prior: "I usually say f*#@ the truth, but usually the truth f#@*s you."

Louis: "It should be the questions and shape of a life, its total complexity gathered, arranged, and considered that matters in the end. Not some stamp of salvation or damnation which disperses all the complexity in some unsatisfying little decision."

Belize: "Thadeus, real love isn't ever ambivalent."

Harper: "Your breasts and your genitals, they're amazingly stupid like babies or faithful dogs. They don't get it."

Wife: "Can I come with you? This isn't working anymore, I'm cold."
Departing Husband: "I wouldn't want you to see."
Wife: "You think it's worse than what I imagine? It's not."

Angel of America: "The body is the garden of the soul."

Bitter Lady of the Plains: "You ain't stupid. So don't ask stupid. Ask something for real."
Harper: "In your experience of the world, how do people change?"

Harper: "Nothing is lost forever. In this world there's a type of painful progress, longing for what we've left behind and dreaming ahead. At least, I think that's so."

Excuses for Inaction.

I will be going to a lecture in Berkeley tomorrow - the Rwanda conflict and its history. Some comments of others, while preparing for it, if that is even possible..
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After my experiences with Darfur, I suddenly became an expert at hearing all of the excuses why one should not do anything about it. I made a list of seven reasons I was told when I came to London, Paris, Washington, and many places I went to when I was the U.N. Coordinator in Sudan.

The first reaction people had was, 'The situation is not as bad as you make it out to be, surely it cant be that bad.' The second excuse was 'You are being too impatient. Give them a chance to sort it out, the best thing is let them find their own solution to their own problems.' The third excuse was 'It is very difficult, Sudan is not a tiny country. If we were to intervene, it would only make matters worse.' Fourth, 'Why should we do it? Let the someone else do it, then we'll join in and we'll all do it together.' Another excuse was 'We've got other problems to solve. Let's solve the other problems first, then we'll deal with Sudan.' Another reason was, 'We've already brought this problem to the attention of high-level officials, and it's been discussed at the very high level.' Another excuse, which someone gave me yesterday, was, 'We can't intervene because we have to get a proper framework for intervention, then discussions must take place, and then we have to do this and that.'

The truth of the matter is, it is not just a question of instruments, and it is not just a technical matter; it's not just a debate about whether we need 6,000 troops in Darfur, or whether we need 12,000 troops; or whether we need to find a different financing mechanism; or whether it needs to be the U.N. or the African Union. These are reductionist and technical arguments, and these are not the arguments which the leaders of the world should be arguing about when serious evils are being committed. Serious evils require serious actions.

unique.

mail from our principle today..
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Hi folks - I just got this very importent information from my good friend Bapu (old indian guy living in Washington D.C.)

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be:

01:02:03 04/05/06

That won't ever happen again.

Uffe

ingrid bergman.

"Happiness is good health and bad memory."
Have a good weekend, everybody!