That Time I Arrived in Beijing to Begin a Six City Tour of China

Grill work from a door 

in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

In the Summer of 2017, we took a month-long tour of China. Here is the first post of that journey:

I feel relieved and at peace today.

It's been four days since we landed in La Guardia after a twenty-one day, six-city tour of China.

Coming home on the Sunday before the Fourth of July, we first landed in Detroit, went through
immigration retrieved our luggage and grabbed our connecting flight home.

Monday was the Fourth of July. You'd think I
would've been journey-weary; but, I scooped up
whatever energy I had left and watched Macy's fireworks on the East River with my age-old buddy Anthony Charles who was in town for work.

I hadn't sorted through all the photographs we'd taken, ticket stubs, leftover RMB notes, and select tchotchkes bought and packed, but sitting in the park before the fireworks started, I told Tony about our trip.

Self-Portrait at the Simatai Portion of the Great Wall of China: Photo Post

It was friggin' hot that day ... just saying (at the Great Wall at Simatai in China).

Squinting at the Great Wall of China 🇨🇳.
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#asia #nature #china #simatai #thegreatwall #beijing#instatravel #travelling #travel # #chinatravel #사마대장성#travelgram #traveltheworld #만리장성 #thegreatwallofchina#greatwallofchina #visitchina #heilongjiang #greatwall#travelphotography #trip #chinadestinations via stonesoferasmus.com

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Photo: I Wish I Were the Camera's Eye

A straphanger is focused on his phone as he waits for a subway train in New York City

I wish I were the camera's eye. I would watch the world the way a film camera surveys its filmic world.

I would be a rare film, one that danced when it surveyed the world, but rarely seen, not distributed like a Hollywood classic.

I am a fan of the long take. Maybe it is because I admire the way some filmmakers are able to capture a moment for as long as it can last.

I'd be the eye on a Max Ophul's film-watching Madame wind a staircase. Or, I'd be the eye in Raiders of the Lost Ark, inventorying lost treasures.

I imagine the camera's eye is lonely and I'll admit I don't agree well with loneliness - who does? - but every once in a while I just want to zoom out and take on what the philosophers call "The God's Eye View."

I'd catch myself in a frame shot - kind of like what happens when I dream. I see myself in the corner of my eye. It's me. In my own dream.

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Location: Brooklyn, NY
Photo Credit: Greig Roselli

A Monster Calls (2016) - Movie Review

A boy learns to face his fears (© Focus Features)

Wanna see a movie that gives us a twenty-first-century version of a Grimm's fairy tale?

In the book Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim lays out a psychological argument that fairy tales are useful in helping young children understand adult fears. Fairy tales are couched in childlike verse, but beneath the surface lies deeper, troubling psychological truths.

For example, why is every stepmother in fairy tales evil? Well, according to Bettelheim it is because it is all about the fear children have that our parents don't love us. But. This is too much to bear for the children, so the storyteller replaces this fear with a substitute - the stepmother.

In J.A. Bayona's fantasy flick, A Monster Calls, the logic works similarly. However, the metaphor is not as thickly veiled. There are no evil stepmothers; but, there is a strident grandmother (Sigourney Weaver).

The story, based on a novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, centers on a young boy named Conor (played sensitively by Louis MacDougall), a waifish boy attuned to the visual arts but prone to being bullied at school. He is dealing with the impending tragedy of his mother's death. 

While his family seemingly falls apart all around him, Conor falls deeper and deeper into a sullen depression. In one scene, he destroys his grandmother's sitting room, tearing the furniture apart. The boy is distraught and anger is an easy anodyne.

In order to help Conor deal with the reality of his grief, every night around midnight an anthropomorphic yew tree monster voiced by Liam Neeson) uproots itself from a nearby cemetery to dole out three fairy tales to the lad. The tales - à la Bettelheim - are meant to help the young boy deal with the very real fear of his mother's death.

That's all fine and dandy. There are lots of films and books that help children deal with the reality of death - take My Girl and Bridge to Terabithia as potent examples.

A Monster Calls is a little different because the plots rend open a deeper and more destructive fear. The inevitable death of Conor's mother also triggers within Conor a kind of death drive. The yew tree monster's stories are meant to help the boy realize his own wish to die and to counteract this drive with a life-giving "yes" living.

So it's intense material. I won't go into the content of the tales - but suffice it to say the film's visuals are stunning and I think the movie succeeds in driving home its central psychological thesis.

I am not one to censor films; however, I would caution against viewing this film with young children. I think the deeper themes of destruction and not-so-subtle hints about suicidal ideation should give parents pause. However, if parents know the content of the film deals with these themes, it could prove to be an enriching experience for both child and adult.

If Bettelheim is right, then fairy tales are meant to ease the more horrific facts of life - death, murder, suicide, decay, entropy, and estimated taxes - and, thus; films just may be our twenty-first-century version of sixteenth-century Grimm's fairy tales.

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A Monster Calls (2016)

Focus Features

Directed by J.A. Bayonna

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones, and Lewis McaDougall

Written by Patrick Ness (Screenplay) and based on his book.

Bird Bath / Zongzi Lady

The video is of birds in a fountain in Lower Manhattan - near the Museum of Jewish Heritage and New York Harbor.

The video is of birds in a fountain in Lower Manhattan - near the Museum of Jewish Heritage and New York Harbor.

The audio is from a street vendor on Grand and Chrystie Street in Manhattan selling her portions of sticky rice wrapped in bamboo (Zong Zi (粽子)).

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Greig Wakes Up After Reading the Last Chapter of The Sound and the Fury

Discovering filters late in the game, I am all agog.

Do you ever wake up with an intense dream that fills your morning with a rather bizarre metaphysical tone about it? I know - I studied philosophy - so I am not sure if I am alone - but I have a hunch that most of us have had this experience - if not once - then quite possibly a hundred times, even more. 

It goes like this. It is a particular kind of dream. I wake up and I am seized by a memory from my childhood. I am in the backseat of the car on the way to swimming practice. Or I am a kindergartner turned around in my chair looking at mom in the back of the classroom. Or I am being stung by honeybees on a Summer vacation to Pass Christian, Mississippi.

The memory has a connection to the dream but it is not the content. The memory springs from the dream. The dream is often abstract. A silhouette of a man. An empty room that needs to be swept. I wake up and I am seized by the memory. What follows next is melancholy. I become so sad because the memories seem so far away from the current moment. Who was that person sitting in the back seat of the car? I can remember myself in the car but I cannot occupy the self of that person - of that other individual who is me but because either it was so long ago I cannot rewind the moment - or that I have become so different from that kid on his way to swimming practice that I can only archive the memory rather than inhabit it.

What follows the memory is a sharp intonation of mortality. I realize that I will die and I am again saddened by the passage of time. I know. It sounds morose. And it is cliché to say - "We're going to die." But I think when you feel your mortality in the morning after you wake up from this kind of memory sensation it heightens the feeling. It is more intense.

What follows is I think about how I am alive right now with many other people who are alive who share my timeline. People who were born at the same time as me; also, those people who were already alive and I have merely joined in - late for the party. Or, those who have recently joined us here on earth to have cake.

It's like the whole human race is a collection of dim lights that go on and off slowly - seen from above it would look like a slow-motion version of an air traffic controller's control board. As each light brims into existence, its light glows slowly to a fierce yellow then dissipates. But other lights are also coming in and out of existence. Once the light is gone it is gone forever. And there is not much variation - except the duration - because one light may brighten longer than another. 

It's probably because I have spent the weekend reading Faulkner. Like at the end of The Sound and the Fury, Luster takes Benjy on a furious ride around the Compton plantation on the family's horse and buggy - but very fast and in the direction Benjy is not used to taking. When Luster goes left - instead of right - Benjy groans and moans - roars! - and there is a horrific sense of the order of the world turned over. Of course, order is restored in the end and the world becomes "serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place."

It's like how at school kids always sit in the same place at lunch. Or how a broken clock can send a sharp sense of anxiety even in the most sensible of person. Or the feeling of dread when someone walks across the street and is almost hit by a careening bicycle. Composure is rattled. Like my morning awakenings. But with time everything regains composure and I am once again enveloped in the rhythm of the turning world.

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Quote About Boredom by a Fictional Anthropological Personification

A quote about boredom and human beings from Terry Pratchett's character Death from the Discworld series:

“Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom."

- Death in The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

Production still from the Hogfather (2006)

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