Biutiful

Not to exaggerate, I'd call it the first honest and kind (even despite of some cruel scenes) movie that I saw for several past years. Many thanks to Sr Alejandro González Iñárritu.

70

That love is all and love is everyone...

Black Cat

Several days ago I was walking down the street. One middle-aged lady carrying two heavy bags in her hands appeared far ahead. We were walking towards each other, getting closer and closer, when suddenly a black cat appeared in the middle of the distance between us and began to cross the street.

I really love cats, you know, I like to talk to them, that's why I smiled when I saw her and accelerated a bit to take a closer look (she was a beautiful shiny one). Suddenly the lady raced on, panting and shaking her enormous bags as if they were two fan blades. I was a bit confused at first, but in a moment I got the idea. Some people in our country consider black cat as a sign of bad luck. If one crosses your way, something bad and terrible will reach you sooner or later. That's why they try to omit such situations wherever possible. The lady happened to succeed in her undertaking, and the frightened cat failed to reach the opposite side of the street and jumped out to the bush. Having the victory in her hands, the lady put her bags on the ground and stopped, continuing to pant. Obviously, she has just rescued herself from a mortal danger.

I was thinking about different sides of this situation on my further way home. First, it appears that we have more signs of bad luck than signs of good luck. Moreover, bad luck signs are much more ordinary, easy-to-come-across ones. Bad luck is guaranteed by broken mirrors, ladders, empty buckets, Friday 13s, scattered salt, ravens, owls, left feet and that poor black cat. Good luck by four-leaf clover (anybody seen that?), horseshoes, coins found on street, rainbows, ladybugs... is that all?

Second, there is no problem in trapping into something bad. Lack of attention, misunderstanding, memory failures, wrong estimations and simply a bad mood often lead to unpleasant consequences that can be treated as caused by bad luck. Life ain't easy, and in many situations we get not what we expect to. It is natural for a man to be mistaken, but those mistakes are often considered as a crook in the lot.

So what we have? We have a huge number of bad luck signs and are open to various bad things due to the nature of our world. There is a high probability that another fault comes soon after a sign of bad luck... confirming the latter. Good luck signs are just too rare to affect something. A good environment to build a loser from everyone.

Thence, accepting bad luck signs is a wrong strategy. Instead, it is reasonable to invent various good luck signs and let them make you think positively. The bad things are going to occur independently of whether there were bad luck signs or there weren't; and the good luck signs bring you in good mood, making you feel confident and easy. Luck is something that can be built, and we should care about building it in the right way.

A major difference between USSR and western rock music of 60-80's is that most of the Russian bands never really cared about the music (yes, I know that USSR != Russia, but as the majority of the bands sang songs in Russian, I will use that term). There were many reasons for that. There were no money, there were no good instruments, there were no good recording equipment. There were no sponsors. There were no local musical heritage, and getting discs with western music was a challenge.

However, even though the music was recorded on handicraft hardware built from spare parts of three different machines, even though the guitars and processors sounded as a mix of Nirvana, Chuck Berry and Bach, even though a drum machine beat the same boring 4/4 far-from-reality rhythm through entire song, even though guitar solos were as simple as in guitar beginner's guide, even though the rehearsals were performed at someone's apartments or (in better case) in underground studios, even though in many cases there were no official discs available, so the listeners had to use their tape recorders to spread records, even though... Despite all of that, Russian bands played the rockest rock I've ever listened to. Every single song was an inexhaustible source of energy, love, truth and wisdom. It may sound oddly, but probably the poor quality of the music was one of the compartments of the inspiration made by the songs... Good enough music would just have prevented the listener from feeling the spirit they carried.

When I was younger, I did not like smoking girls. The fact that the girl smokes was quite definitive for me; every such girl used to immediately get to the "black list" (or "uninteresting person list", no matter) without any possibility of becoming a close person in future. I don't know the exact origins of such attitude; it is likely to have been built from a number of sources including viewpoints introduced by the parents, books, movies and own [poor] experience.

However, the attitude has changed drastically when I was about 16. I was forced to spend a continuous period of time with a girl who smoked hard. Though the girl obviously had to get to the "black list" at once, she was someone quite different from all the smoking girls I have ever met. Actually, in all other aspects she was very close to my understanding of what the ideal woman should be like. That was really a challenge, something to what practicing psychologists often refer as a "pattern breach".

That case made me reconsider my viewpoints a lot. Basically, it has given me an understanding of two things, (1) it is stupid and extremely unwise to sort out people and things into black and white just on the basis of their particular feature or features, (2) if something does not fit into the existing viewpoint, it is very likely that the viewpoint is wrong and should be revised. Since then I am trying to be more liberal and intelligent when forming my opinion on particular person or object.

Really, being too unloyal is non-productive and even insulting sometimes. Don't you hate your neighbour just because he snores too loudly at night? Hasn't your coworker become an enemy for you just because he always occupies your parking place? Haven't you stopped buying goods in a nearby supermarket just because a cashier has once shortchanged you?

You know, snoring is always a symptom of some disease. The neighbour does not snore intentionally to annoy you; he is likely just not be unaware of such "feature" of his organism. He is also likely to be a smart and friendly person in all other aspects. The coworker is likely not to know that you have chosen that parking place for yourself, in turn, he also dislikes you because you are occupying "his" place. The SM cashier might have had a sleepless night that day because of her daughter's school exam and just got mistaken when calculating the change. Yet, a smoking girl is neither a devil nor a criminal. (Yes, most of the criminals are smokers, but you can hardly state the opposite). Maybe, each of them is worth giving 'em a chance?

It is very exciting to fight with your own mind. My today has begun with a bunch of minor and major negatives. First, I failed to get in time to a bus to carry me to a gym (20 seconds is not a delay for an appointment but they are vital when you are trying to catch a bus ;)); the subsequent bus had no free seats, so in addition I have lost 30 minutes of morning reading. Finally having got off the bus (the driver obviously used to drive road rollers in his best years), I found one of the pedestrian traffic lights on my further way broken, resulting in yet another 5(000) minutes of waiting for traffic to let me cross the street. And it was only 7:15.

The dawning day gave me another missed-on-the-edge bus, enormous queue in a bank, broken lock of the outer door, discharged battery on the mobile, and three or four broken or postponed (for various reasons) work plans.

Yet going in the first bus, I understood that it’s simply an another “unlucky day”. Such days - consisting of a shower of misfortunes and sad mistakes - occur from time to time, and in most cases I just accept them as they are, trying to avoid doing complex or critical tasks. However, for some reason I decided to fight my mind today and to do my best to remove the “unlucky” sticker from the day :).

So, having got off the bus I began to search for positive stuff around to fix my karma. Funny dogs in a park, clear blue skies, an accidental green wave I’ve got into, a small smiling girl didn’t help. Next, mad race in a gym to squeeze negative energy out of my mind. A little better, but still far from the ideal. Okay, 10 minutes of relaxed park walk; an exchange of smiles with an ice-cream seller (I’ve tried all the sellers around); another chapter of a book; a cold shower; some funny Internet stuff. Nope. Fixed door lock. No avail...

And finally I did it! To be exact, the sound of acoustic guitar, harmonica and Bob Dylan’s voice coming from my PC’s speakers did that. And the mind has suddenly become clean and positive; I realised that it would be even better to alter the work plans in the way I was forced to do in the morning, and there’s nothing fatal in missed buses and absence of habitual morning book. I also realised that I’ve just lived (and continue to live, as it was something about noontime) a brand new day of my life, - a wonderful day, full of new experience, knowledge and feelings. You bet, I have just fought down my own mind!