Currently Reading The Dirty War By Anna Politkovskaya see related

Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006)

In regard to the murder of a Russian journalist: An idea can't be killed. 

Her indefatigable courage and uncompromising stand for justice heap unending shame on the culprits of this atrocity.

'“Anna was, in my opinion, a glimpse of hope,” said Tatyana Ivanyenko, a doctor from Moscow who attended the funeral. “And now there is none.”' - New York Times, October 11, 2006

This woman was trying to make the world better and in their unfamthomable corruption they killed her.  I am overwhelmed and outraged.  And my heart is heavy.  The supremely self satisfied and cynical words of Camus seem more true today than ever - "But let's not worry!  It's too late now.  It will always be too late.  Fortunately!"

Currently Listening Strange and Beautiful By Aqualung see related

I have, of late, experienced a resurgence of creativity.  This extends to the literary, musical and culinary realms and on its account I am well pleased.

It has been my good fortune to have read some excellent books.  Their splendor is concentrated by my plowing through them, and this out of necessity.  Today I also rented a violin from the wonderful Long and McQuade.  The financial arrangement for this is so incredible that I feel as though I've stolen it.  How can such inspiration and gratification come at so small a price?  And finally feeding myself has become something of an adventure.  A stomach tube would still certainly be more epedient, but I no longer advocate the theory of it the way I once did.

Does all this coincide with my having become a temporary pseudo-vegan?  It could very well be.

Grad school has seduced and abandoned me.

Currently Watching Fateless By Marcell Nagy, Béla Dóra, Bálint Péntek, Áron Dimény, Péter Fancsikai see related

I first heard of Imre Kertész in 2002, upon his winning the Nobel Prize for literature.  A professor of mine mentioned this in a Holocaust Lit. class.  Since then I've obtained a copy of Kertész's 'Kaddish For a Child Not Born'.  It's a tiny book, but it sits on the shelf unread due mostly to its ungainly grammatical structure.  Then again, as preoccupied as I am about the subject, I am invariably daunted by forays into material that I know will so strongly impact and grieve me.  Hence my reluctance to watch 'Fateless'.

This film is beautifully done, subtle and profound.  Having finished, I feel at once both inconsolable and hopeful.  My class in '02 was a night class in which I knew no one.  I came away every week feeling heavy and isolated.  I lacked the means to debrief everything.  Just as now, even if there were willing ears, I don't have the words.

During an interview in 2002, Kertész said "Auschwitz is my greatest treasure.  The closeness to death is unforgettable.  Life was never so beautifu as in this long moment."

There will be incidents that stop you short, that will make everything else you hold them up against seem artificial.  And you will want to stop time, to climb into them and to dwell there.  They will encase an inferno inside of you.  You will search without success for a way to memorialize them and honor them.  But ultimately you will be estranged from them while you still carry them inside you.

This is what Kazik's memoirs have done.