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Empire of Light

This week I flied over to SF for a one-week get-together. I almost forgot how flying is, really, but it was way more relaxing than I thought. The security in Munich was a bit funny. As I waited in line, a uniformed, blonde girl in her twenties winked me up, introduced herself as security officer and started to ask very detailed questions about what I do for the living. That dialog started off a bit like a first-level job interview with a realitvely fresh HR colleague doing some sanity checks on ones resume, but then it veered off unexpectedly.

“But what exactly do you do? What kind of software are you working on, precisely?” she asked.
Well, this question often elicits a surprisingly inadequate response from me. What is this exactly that I do? Is this what I should be doing? Why am I doing this at all? Why not am I doing something else? Why am I here in the first place? This internal monologue invariably kicks off and takes valuable seconds away from the short window of opportunity to give a coherent, timely answer without veering into morose retard territory.

“Ok, off you go”, she said with some tiredness in her eyes and winked me through,

Anyways, the 12h flight passed through without any major incident.

I watched two good films and one really great one.

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent bugs relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.


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Immortality

Its hard to say what makes this “game” so scary.

I had some challenges grasping the rewind concept (playing on PC with the mouse) so I got to The One rather late, during a Two of Everything scene where she (it) swooshed in full black&white size on screen and scared the shit out of me since I wasn’t really expecting anything after so many attempts.

The layered and complex story seems to be impenetrable at the beginning, but as you progress, the pieces fall nicely into place – for a deeply sad, tragic story of the immortal spirit caught (willingly) in the violent fire of humanity.

Its one of those very rare situations where sound, cinematography, story and acting all fit together for an exceptionally charismatic and (scarily) memorable experience. I always had this tinge of a feeling that VCR rewind was a bit uncanny, a bit unsettling to look at, but telling to “rewind this tape slowly and you might see something strange” puts for quite a different quality of creepiness to that.

Funnily, to explain what this .. game.. is about and to do it a credit it deserves by that explanation is almost impossible. I tried to enthusiastically explain it to a few friends but I think they thought both myself and the game don’t make any sense.

This image alone gives me chills
(eerily, it looks as if she is looking straight at you, but she actually looks above the camera, I think, – rotate to see)
“Your candle is burning”, The One says

There were so many clips worth rewatching just for their own sake, I dont remember which one I liked best. But one is clear: the actress playing Marissa Marcel is simply phenomenal and I should keep an eye on all her future works. To be fair, just as everyone else from the Immortality team.

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“Into The Wild” OMG

What a strong movie and story – its impossible to forget. The film is perfect.

I think I understand Alexander.
A few years back I trekked and hitchhiked in Iceland feeling really like a homeless bum, I felt how some people looked at me, after 200km of walking, but it took me only two weeks of that to really be done with “freedom” and just want to get back home to the family.

Its a funny thing though to be really dependent only on oneself, but simultaneously also on the kindness of strangers.

On several occasions I lost my way in the rainy Icelandic landscape and on one day ended up walking up a wrong mountain. As I was scrambling to find the way down some unknown gorge a heavy and cold rain set in, so as I finally managed to come down having broken one of my walking poles I put up a tent and spent 3 days in some huge valley, full of water, rivers and mist until the rain was gone. I lied on my back in satisfaction, looking at the grey tent heavy with moisture, now and them wobbling under the wind and letting drops fall down, my spriritus heater on slow burn warming up the air inside real comfortably. I wrapped myself in all the clothes I had, put the sleeping bag over and mostly slept, rested and did nothing until ultimately the sky dried up and I decided it was a time to go. It took me another day to walk to the ring road, and a bus next day early morning brought me back to Rejkjavik.

I’ve had enough of adventures for that time.

And this guy did it for .. 2 years. He must have had a lot to let go.

“Happiness only real when shared”
How true.
If only he could have crossed that river…
..or had a map..

What a sad thing, really.