Last Samurai

Last Samurai

Had a really extensive entry on the viewing of this film, Last Samurai, and then something happened to the window I was working in. It shut down, and about 1000 words vanished into cyberspace, yet once again. I keep telling myself to work on a word processing program and copy and paste into blogger, but it's just not the same working that way!

So here's just one word, instead of a thousand: honor.

Mr. K. and I didn't get to meet again yet, but we did have a good lengthy convo, starting from the mundane things and then to more trancendental things. One of the things we touched was about life after death. Not really about our lives after death, but lives of others after our own deaths. Ideally, we'd live forever (or as I like to say, live young forever), but for the time being, that isn't quite possible. Sylvia Plath, above her poetry (which is very good itself), is remembered for sticking her head in the oven. How many of you would like to be remembered for something like that?

Mr. K. said that something like blogs and journals and date books and such things can provide insight to people (inquiring minds), especially if you're dead and can't be around to explain details of your life yourself. For many artists, it is the case; they write/create brilliant stuff, they die. But no one knows what kind of breakfast they would have, or if they had trouble potty-training their first born, or perhaps suffer from depression. It is these little tidbits we leave lying around that gives people a perspective.

I, personally, would like to remain anonymous. Well, not so anonymous, but at least mysterious. Perhaps like Shakespeare. Maybe people won't even know when I was born (this of course is assuming that people are inquiring about this after I am dead). They will do research on me and go on excavating trips to study my life. One can only hope!

In the 7th grade, we dabbled in the field of archaeology. We were given a sample of our teachers' trash (we were in cores, and students in the same core shared the same instructors), and we were to go through it and deduce some things about the teachers. What kind of food they ate, what brand of cereal they had for breakfast, and if they used quilted toilet paper or generic, and so on. The trash, of course, was artificially produced (nasty banana peels and rancid food products and such were not included) for the lesson. However, I learned that the things you have, and even the things you throw away, give quite a bit of insight on who you are. You are not what you eat. You are what you toss away. You are what you stock on your bookshelves.

So what do your possessions say about you? Mine? Well, from an objective point of view, I'd say that I am a person who loves books all too much; however, I don't nearly as much love reading them, as most are in perfectly new condition. No dog-eared pages for me. Also, aesthetics and visual pleasure is of great importance, because I possess many things for their outwardly appeal, rather than their function -- for example, I have a CD holder (one of those binder-like things that holds about two dozen CD's) that looks like the head of a stuffed monkey doll. It's adorable. The fact that it holds two dozen CD's is a plus. My cat is placed on a pedestal. While I sit on a simple wooden chair (my butt is aching), my cat is enjoying herself on my large black executive-style chair (plenty of cushions). You can tell she sits there quite a bit, because of the abundance of cat fur which doesn't seem natural to the chair's condition.

Perhaps this is why A always asks to see a photograph of my desk and room. And perhaps for the same reason I deny him this glimpse, because it holds secrets about me that I, myself, don't even comprehend fully.

There isn't an easy way to sum up this entry. I had already written a good 1000 words and here I have produced another 700 words (thanks, word count!) digressing about many things. Well. The Samurai's would like to be remembered for their honor, for their uncompromising sense of panache. What would you like to be remembered for?