Uncanny resemblance 5

...or maybe not?!

Leaving Las Vegas

This film is more about loneliness than anything else. How human beings feel, behave and react when they are lonely, and how miserable they become in that state. It is very sad story of loneliness in the shadow of all that extravagant Vegas life; a grave and yet attractive contrast.

Why are we build that way? Why can't we just bear loneliness? Why does it drive us crazy? And above all, why are we all so god damn lonely at the end of the day?

Roy is gone, King is in

After a turbulent and mostly disappointing couple of months, the man I once labeled "the best manager money can buy" left and King Kenny was brought in to induce some adrenaline in our wrecked ship. While he is yet to win a game after 3 matches, I personally believe that we should have stayed with Roy a bit longer and given him some time to make his impact. Kenny, however very popular among hardcore fans, has been away from the scene for too long and doesn't seem to have his mojo these days, unless he performs some magic right off his sleeve.

A good analysis of short reign of Hodgson can be found here at Phil McNulty's blog.

Depressing times nonetheless, we just have to hang in there and not lose our faith; not the easiest job.

It's not you...

Scene from the episode "The Lip Reader" of season 5 of TV series Seinfeld.

[Setting: Monk's coffee shop]

Gwen: I'm sorry George.
George: I don't understand, things were going so great. What happened? Something must have happened.
Gwen: It's not you, it's me.
George: You're giving me the "it's not you, it's me" routine? I invented "it's not you, it's me". Nobody tells me it's them not me, if it's anybody it's me.

Gwen: All right George, it's you.

George: You're DAMN right it's me!

Into thin air

1. Go to control panel, select add or remove programs, a window with a list of programs installed on your computer shows up. When selecting each program, it also states how often that program is used. So is the same with every man's character or soul or whatever. Everyone has many sides, facets, programs into his being, some are used very often and on daily basis, some are used occasionally or rarely. Nevertheless these sides are still there until being uninstalled completely.

2. Mountains and climbing them is one of the sides of me which I seldom use nowadays. Being born and raised at the foot of Alborz range, I have always had a deep passion and a high respect for the mountains. I used to watch the mountains, which laid to the north of the city, and dream of being on top of them. This spiritual experience materialized even more every time I laid eyes on Mount Damavand (5610m) whenever clear air allowed the naked eye to see the ceiling of the world (gonbad-e giti) from a 60 km distance.

3. My late grandparents used to escape the heat of the summer in the city and go to their village which was in the higher altitude (compared to THR) somewhere inside the Alborz range. When I visited them during summer vacations, my grandfather use to take me to the nearby mountains and their peaks which surrounded the village. These hikes, or climbs as I used to call them back then, were at times demanding for me and more importantly, very long. We could have spent a whole day in the mountains just wandering around or chase a mountain deer in vain. When we sat down at our camps or top of the peaks, we started some fire to make the smoked tea and we drank it with grilled local cheese and bread. At the end of the day, I was completely spent (I was visiting them from early age until I was a young teenage or something) and normally passed out after dinner. My grandfather was avid hiker. He always took these long hikes in the mountains, even in the city he walked everywhere. Very seldom did he take bus or cab to get to his destination. He walked. I guess I took his passion for nature and mountains during these hikes. My father also took me for hikes in the nearby mountains almost regularly during weekends. When I grew a bit older (and so did he!), I continued this activity with friends for the fun of it for many years.

4. The pinnacle of my mountaineering was a ascend of Mount Tochal (3964 m) which I did with 2 close friends. We started in the evening from very bottom and slept at 2 story building which served as a sleeping camp for climbers. We attacked the peak at 6am in the morning after and we were on the summit by 9am. It was beginning of the fall and the first snow had landed on the slopes. We left the main route intentionally to save time and climbed a glacier instead. We were poorly equipped for any kind of ice work i.e. no ropes or ice axes or any rescue gear, just the not-so-watertight military boot and crampons and some extra clothes and food in the backpack. It was indeed the most difficult and the most satisfying climb that I have ever done in my life. After spending a half hour or so on the top, we decided to descend to another side, and not having a compass or map, we got lost several times and we ended up hiking for 6 hours or so until we reached our destination. Stepping through a knee deep snow with nobody around, we slowly sank into a state of mental trance; we stopped complaining to one another and we moved on silently for hours. It was an unforgettable and sacred experience.

5. In 1996, Jon Krakauer was sent by Outside magazine along a commercial expedition to climb Mount Everest and write about it. A series of unpredicted events led to the fact that the worse tragedy in the history of climbing this mountains unfolds and Krakauer tells his take on that in this book. In the beginning, he tells a little bit of the history of climbing Everest which at first sight, seems kind of boring but it is very interesting and worth reading at the end. The book is filled with a number of interesting parallel stories as well as thoughtful quotes at the start of each chapter in the same manner as Into The Wild. It is obvious that he has done a good job in conducting a systematic research on the subject especially when some of his errors came to light after his piece was sent to press in Outside (he wrote an article for outside first right after coming back from Nepal but then he realized that he has failed to pay his dues to the tragedy so he wrote a book with more details and concrete research).

6. I have very seldom encountered any book like Into Thin Air. I can only think of Papillon by Henry Charrièr in this category for the time being. However, I must emphasize that my fascination to this book is in a whole new level. I was staying with a friend for a couple of days and he had a very bad cold. He could barely do anything, lying in bed all day with doors and windows shut tight at the end of the summer making his small studio flat a sauna. All he did during that time was to read this book. This rose my curiosity so I started reading that book a while after and I finished it in 2 weeks. I don't remember that I have read any book so fast. By now, I have read this book 3 times, each time I got it more than the previous one. I suppose not only I am attracted to the style of writing and the way the story is being told but it somehow touches some sides (read programs) of me that I rarely use these days and brings that old but not-died-out passion to the surface.

7. I know I can go on and on and write about this book and my fascination with the subject matter and yet feel that I haven't done justice to it. Hence, I decide to leave it as it is - unfinished - and just wrap this up with an extract from the book:

"...Mountaineering tends to draw men and women not easily deflected from their goals. By this late stage in the expedition we had all been subjected to levels of misery and peril that would have sent more balanced individuals packing for home long ago. To get this far one had to have uncommonly obdurate personality.

Unfortunately, the sort of individual who is programmed to ignore personal distress and keep pushing for the top is frequently programmed to disregard signs of grave and imminent danger as well. This forms the nub of a dilemma that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you are too driven you're likely to die. Above 26,000 feet, moreover, the line between appropriate zeal and reckless summit fever becomes grievously thin. Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses..."

Laugh, clown!

"Ridi, Pagliaccio,

sul tuo amore infranto!

Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor!"

Words by Ruggero Leoncavallo.

At the bottom of the hole

Source: swipelife.com: Inappropriate Golden Books: Movies R, Fun by Josh Cooley

Tourani letters

Back in the days, my father had a book in his library titled "The letters of a father to his daughter" by the great Indian statesman Jawaharlal Nehru. I never read that book and I regret that deeply. I know now that he wrote about 30 letters to his then 10 year old daughter, Indira Gandhi teaching her about life and everything else. The idea of writing letters to my daughter from this early age i.e. 5 months old is per se very interesting and most tickling. However, my dear friend BT, who wrote a letter upon her birth developed this idea further and one email and a reminder in the PS after, he started a blog on these letters. The main drawback, in my opinion, is that not until you have taken long walks after a hyper exciting and controversial basketball match with him on the way home* or spent time with him in worn-out and dirty student dorms on basketball tournies, it is a bit difficult to FEEL these letters, I suppose only a handful of people are in that circle.

*The philosophical exchange of 'BS fiction' nature after the climax of a sparked game, in some cultures, can be regarded equal to joy of a fat J on summit after a long climb.

Re: Into the wild

I finally finished reading this book on the way to and from work on the bus. Like the other book by Krakauer, it is well written, well researched, rich in meaningful and deep quotes and very enjoyable book. Despite what I was thinking, the film still stands well as a good adaptation as far as the story of the boy is concerned. The book however includes a very detailed insight to the matter as well as many parallel and similar stories. I particularly enjoyed the story of the solo climb of the writer to one of the peaks in Alaska. I suppose one could roughly claim that the touching music and beautiful scenery in the movie are analogous to the interesting and thought awakening quotes in the book, something which I have to return and study again and again.

My original post on the subject can be found here.

Long necked deer

Once upon a time, in a far away land, there was a large savanna where many deers lived in. This place was so beautiful that no one had ever seen a more beautiful one. There were so many deers living there that no one had ever seen so many deers in one place, it was filled with green and sweet grass and there were so many water fountains that no deer was ever thirsty.

Every year, many deers were born in the herd and the herds grew larger and larger. One year, a young deer was born with a long neck. The news of this unusual birth was spread everywhere very quickly and groups of deers came to visit and mostly, they laughed at the long-necked young deer. The parent of long-necked deer were very sad but they couldn't do much about this. So they took their child and went away from the herd to find a quiet place to live so that their child will not be bothered anymore.

Times past and the young deer grew bigger and bigger and her neck grew longer and longer. When her parents noticed that she was old enough to take care of herself, they left her and went to join one of the large herds. The long-necked deer lived alone for a couple of days but then realized that living alone is very difficult so she decided to enter a large herd. A couple of big deers with long horns stopped her and the biggest of them came forward and asked, "What do you want here?" Long-necked deer said hello politely and said, "I have come to live with you guys." Before she had finished her sentence, all the deers laughed at her loudly. The long-necked deer became unhappy and thought to herself, "What a rude bunch of people! Probably all the deers in this herd are like these. I don't think I would like to live with them." So she continued and went to find another herd but it was the same story. When she asked them why they were laughing, the big deer said laughingly, "You want to live with us with that long neck?"

Long necked deer said, "Yes, may I?"

The big deer frowned and said, "We will never let you live with us because other deers will make fun of us and we will be embarrassed and be forced to move out of this place."

The long necked-deer said, "Which herd should I join in then? There are deers in every one of them and I can not live alone!"

The big deer said, "With that long neck, no one will ever let you in."

The long necked-deer said, "But I am a nice and kind deer, I will keep quiet and work even harder than everyone else."

The big deer got mad and while he was pointing his sharp and long horns toward her said, "We will never ever let you in our herd and if you come close to us one more time, we will hit you with our horns!"

The long-necked deer was very sad and left them while thinking, "There are many other herds, one of them will eventually accept me..." but she had no success. Everywhere she went, she got rejected and at the end, she went far away. So far that there was no other deer around and she settled by a small body of water. She was very lonely and there was no one to talk to but she had to put up with all these hardships. She never let go of the thought of living among other deers however.

Many years passed by and many deers were added to the herds and no one remembered the long-necked deer anymore until one year, there was no rain. Days passed without any rain. Fountains and pools became less, the grass turned yellow. After a few more days, all the water dried and the grass burned and yet, no rain. The deers were hungry and thirsty. At first, they thought that only one part has dried but the more they looked, the less they found food or water. Many of them died because of thirst or hunger and the large herds became smaller and smaller.

The deers were looking at the clear blue sky until one day, a very large and black piece of cloud showed up and since he was tired, he stayed there right above them and went to sleep. The deers were very happy to see the cloud but the cloud was tight asleep and no rain came. The deers gathered to see what should they do. The wisest of them all said, "We have to ask the cloud to give us the rain." Everyone accepted and then, the wisest deer turned to the cloud and said, "O dear cloud! Could I ask you to give us some rain since without it, we all are going to die from hunger and thirst." But the cloud was asleep and couldn't hear him. The deers screamed their request all together, the could was still sleeping. The deers looked if there were any hills or mountains which they could climb and make themselves heard, but there were any as the field was flat. The all got very sad because if the cloud would wake up, he would leave without giving any rain and everyone would have died. Suddenly, the oldest deer remembered the long-necked deer and said, "Do you remember the long-necked deer who wanted to live with us and we didn't let her?"
"Yes, we do. What can she do for us?" replied the deers.
"If we find her, she can talk to the cloud with her long neck." said the old deer. The deers were all happy and asked him to find the long-necked deer.

The old deer accepted and went on to find her. He went and went and before finding her, because he was too tired and too hungry, he passed out in one remote corner. When he woke up, he saw long-necked deer with some water and grass sitting beside him.

He was very surprised and asked, "Are there still any water or grass around here?"
The long-necked deer said, "Where you live, there are many deers and they eat up all the food and water. Since I live alone here, there is still little left for me." After eating his food and water, the old deer said, "It's true that we have not treated you kindly, but we need your help." The long-necked deer said, "I like you all and I am ready to help you but no one had ever asked for my help before."
"We need your help now." said the old deer and told her the story of the cloud and the drought.

The long-necked deer thought for a while and then stood up, turned to the cloud and shouted loudly, "O dear cloud! give us some rain please!" The cloud heard her and was awake. Looking to long-necked deer he asked, " Who are you and why did you wake me up?" The long-necked deer went closer and told him the story of her life.

When the cloud heard that no one let her into their herd and she has been forced to live alone, he felt sorry for her and cried. He stayed there for a couple of days and nights and cried. Instead of tears drops, big rain drops fell over the field. The fountains were again filled with water and green and sweet grass started to grow again. The deers were sorry for the way the had treated the long-necked deer and went to her and asked for forgiveness. She forgave them all and they all live happily ever after in the big beautiful field.

Story (in Persian) by Jamshid Sepahi
Drawings by Youta Azargin