the last good country

Ce pays n'est qu'un vœu de l'esprit, un contre-sépulcre.

[thelastgoodcountry]

Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree), Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018

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"Afară-i toamnă, frunză-mprăștiată, Iar vântul zvârle-n geamuri grele picuri; Și tu citești scrisori din roase plicuri Și într-un ceas gândești la viața toată."

(Dehors les feuilles fuient dans l'automne et le vent Qui couchette les carreaux de noires goutes de pluie ; Ces lettres aux enveloppes usées que tu relis Te refont, en une heure, vivre toute une vie.)

— Mihai Eminescu, Sonete (Sonnets)

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Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree), Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018

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Noce blanche, Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1989

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Montparnasse 19, Jacques Becker, 1958

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It is thus not without pride that I say that my one attempt at waitressing ended up in me getting fired.

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So do I, Nadja.

Nadja à Paris, Éric Rohmer, 1964

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“And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left.”

— Mary Oliver, Don't Hesitate

It is summer now, and what else does one do in summer but read outside cafés? Much like Mary Oliver I found myself thinking of the concept of possibility. And when one thinks of possibility, one reads Sartre's Being and Nothingness. The tension between facticity and transcendence is where life becomes a work of art.  Or to put it in the words of Mary McCarthy: "the whole concept of transcendence […] was very close to my heart, the concept that man is more than his circumstances, more even than himself." I certainly will always aspire to be so.

[thelastgoodcountry]

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

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“We shouldn’t know everything. Just know what you need, that’s enough. What’s the point in knowing more? God gave us two ears instead of four. Because you can hear with two ears, too.”

I took a break from my study of Husserl to go watch Kasaba (1997), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s debut feature film, in cinema. It tells the story of two children whose little world is both entwined with and marred by the complex world of the adults around them. During a scene in which the adults are having a discussion, one of them makes the aforementioned and rather comical remark.

I'd have to agree with Husserl, however, and how he wrote that philosophy bears within itself “the responsibility for the true being of mankind”. Then again, I might just be the ultimate thought daughter.

Now, back to reading Husserl.

Kasaba, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 1997

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Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

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Un Beau Matin, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2022

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Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2021

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"We had short, & to me, very intimate talks; intimate in the sense that he will understand from the sight of the tail what the whole body of the thought is in one’s mind. These thoughts were for the most part about books; but books include a good deal of life."

— Virginia Woolf, journal entry on the 5th of April 1918

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Vivre sa vie, Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

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La Carrière de Suzanne, Éric Rohmer, 1963

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La Notte, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961