Welcome to this week’s 5BF: the happy-sad reality of life,
the conflict of foods, Tom Hardy plays a Russian MGB officer, an Afghan cuisine
treat, and more…
1 – articles I read
What should we eat? @aeon – like everything else which came
under the influence of science, food too evolved, for better and for worse. From
extracting only the proteins and vitamins from our food to give our bodies just
the required fuel and doing away with meals all together, to eating wholesome
food in their natural form – man’s experiment with his food has become
confusing.
Huxley’s ‘Island of Universes’ @brainpickings – ‘every human
group is a society of island universes’, and only through ‘our own bereavements
and humiliations we can condole with others by putting ourselves in their places’.
Popova extracts the meaning of Huxley’s book ‘The Doors of Perception’, a book
about understanding ourselves and each other.
The ’melancholic joy’ of living @psyche – an uplifting
article that truly depicts the infirmities and beauties of life, and how living
is always contradicted between the sadness and joy, making a ‘melancholic joy’.
We should at least be grateful for the experience of having arrived here,
whether we like it or not should be a latter inquiry.
What to do about William Faulkner @theatlantic – an American
writer of American slavery, Faulkner’s famous books differed from his own
personal life. ‘Faulkner couldn’t escape the burden of race’, but it is for his
shortcomings that we should read him today.
2 – movies I watched
Child 44 (2015) – Leo Demidov, played by Tom Hardy, was an escaping
orphan from the starving town of Gulag under Stalin’s horrific in Russia, who
then becomes the iconic officer that raised Russian flag during the WWII in
Berlin, Germany. This movie is about his life as MGB officer and the case of
conditioned ex-soldier who’s hunting down children near the railway tracks.
Spirited Away (2001) – rewatching this masterpiece, I realized
I didn’t at all remember what this movie was about, which made me appreciate it
all the more. Chihiro and her parents visit a ghosted hill town, and as the
night falls, ghosts come to life. Now, she has to save her parents who’ve
becomes pigs because they ate ghost-meals. Both metaphorically illustrative and
otherwise just a stunning work of animation and creativity.
The Ritual (2017) – a group of friends in their early thirties
plan a hiking trip in the Swedish hills. On their way back, one of the guys
injures his knees and they decide to take a shortcut through the jungle. Little
do they know that this shortcut would cast them a lot. One of the better
suspense/horror movies.
Arctic (2018) – Mike Mikkelsen plays a stranded air-officer
in the arctic waiting to be rescued. A helicopter does come to rescue, but only
to crash itself. Now, he has to take care of one the surviving pilots and take
themselves to rescue. A movie about nature and man!
3 – what I watched (on YouTube)
I do this every Tuesday (Vlogbrothers) – in this week’s
vlogbrothers video, John Greene talks about his ritual/routine of making a
video every Tuesday for a about fifteen years now. He talks about how an
inconsistent him came about doing such a prolongingly consistent thing, and
what it has taught him and meant for him. I heard early echoes of my own ritual
of writing 5BF in this video.
An Afghan feast (PickUpLimes) – I love Sadia, the beautiful
lady of this channel, for her calm and soothing face and manner of talking.
There are channels which doesn’t relate to me in any way, yet I follow them just
because of the people running them; this is one of those channels. In this video,
Sadia shares a bunch of Afghanistan’s famous dishes in effort to consolidate and
help the Afghan people distressed by the recent Taliban takeover. And yes, she
speaks Farsi in this video! Touched my heart!
How US drone strike killed the wrong person in Afghanistan(NYTimes) – in this episode of Visual Investigations, a series where NYTimes
team visually regenerates and investigates certain crucial events from all over
the world, the team investigates into the recent drone attack in the area near Kabul
airport, Afghanistan. The drone attack was supposed to kill ISIS terrorists,
who had recently bombed the Kabul airport, but instead a killed an innocent
family, children included. Gives you a lot to think about.
4 – The Rock at the rock-bottom
‘The best thing about rock bottom is the rock part. You
discover the solid bit of you. The bit that can't be broken down further. The
thing that you might sentimentally call a soul. At our lowest we find the solid
ground of our foundation. And we can build ourselves anew.’
Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)
5 – this week’s quote
‘It is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My
heart is broken’.
C.S Lewis (The Problem of Pain)