I went to see the Ukrainian animated movie “Mavka” today. Very unusual feelings about it in a lot of different ways because of many different reasons. There’s a war going on. Right now. In my country! And yet Ukrainian movies are getting released, Ukrainian culture is being born/created/shared with the word. I’m here, in the middle of that war, sitting in a cinema, watching a Ukrainian movie. Like, my choice to spend my limited free time seeing a movie given the circumstances is weird!...
I know that for a person that’s spent the last year talking about “fuck cars — ride bikes” getting a car is kinda hypocritical. So, what follows is a bunch of reasons (excuses?) why I’m getting one: Uhm, there’s a fucking war? Gotta keep escape options open. I have two cats now, and getting them to the vet kinda necessitates a car, because cabs were a bit troublesome with one cat, not to mention two....
I’ve been finding myself feeling like I want to have some sort of output. It’s like a restless feeling of wanting to have something to share with the world. Or, like, rather, to have some thing stop taking space inside of me. It’s an anxious feeling, and not one that’s conductive to “making” things, so actually acting on the feeling and doing the doing is extremely difficult. It feels like being sick to the stomach but not able to do anything about it....
I got a new cat! Her name is Charli, and I love her very much. :) My girlfriend and I wanted to get a second cat for a very long time, but things always came up. First there was the fact that we didn’t have our own appartment. Then there was a global pandemic. Then russia invaded UKraine. Eventually we agreed to get a new cat either when Ukraine wins, or when through some serendipitous turn of events a “perfect cat-getting situation” arises naturally....
First of all, I’ve encountered too many people who have “learned” the theory behind something, but fail to perform even the basics of what they learned in practice. Hell, I’m one of those people! I learned a lot in film class and I’ve watched a lot of tutorials on how to make YouTube videos, but I suck at both. Meanwhile, people with no formal “film” education whatsoever are making masterpieces just because they picked up a camera at home when they were 15 and never put it down....
I wrote about this in my journal, but basically we decided to go to the Karpathians this past week because there’s a higher-than-we’re-comfortable-with chance that the fucking russians are going to launch an extra aggressive offensive that week. We booked tickets, packed some clothes (in addition to our “Emergency Backpacks”), put our cat in its transpoter, and headed out on a 13-hour train journey. At this point, our cat is pretty comfortable on trains....