Fujiko Suda / Reflection

While on the subject of Movie

My aquintance in Nagoya loves movies. I lent him my Galaxy Quest DVD, and he loved it too! Of the movies I watched over the last few years, Galaxy Quest is very high in ranking. Great story, parody of Star Streck but had good solid story line of its own, great actors, actresses, great CG. Action, laughs, feeling of satisfaction about plot and flow of the story.

Shaolin Soccer, Shrek, The Fifth Element, Scorpion King, Emperor's New Groove. These are my favorates. In my DVD library, my other favorites would be Moonstruck, 6 Days, 7 Nights, Blues Brothers 1 and 2. I watched these DVDs more than half a dozen times each. Of old movies, my must have DVD would be the Black Stallion. I read the book when I was 10, and it was a story I could not forget. When I saw the movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola (I was 20 years old) I was captured for life. I have the video tape, but since I will probably watch that movie for many, many more years to come, it's time I get the DVD.

I don't know if any of my kids will ever share my tastes of books I read, but it's great that I am sharing my tastes of movies with them.

Last Samurai - Return of the King

The first impression after seeing the Last Samurai is that it remided me of Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves. Tom Cruise is cute. He can act. But as much as I like happy ending, I had to roll my eyes when I saw him going back to his love in the old village. Like Kevin Costner came out as the sole winner in the movie Dances with Wolves. Somehow this perception of the winner takes all bothers me.

I did enjoy the Last Samurai. It was thoroughly entertaining. But what got me totally excited today was the preview for the Lord of the Rings, Return of the King before seeing the Last Samurai. From the very beginning of the preview to the end, I was on the edge of my seat, tears in my eyes, lump in my throat, yet ready to shout for joy. The scenes were almost exactly as I experienced when I read Tolkien's book. Some descrepancy of story exist, but scenes and expressions are as I lived reading the book. Mount Doom, Minus Tirith, Eowyn and Merry in the great battle, Aragorn and his sword re-forged. I was knocking on Eowyn in the movie in the Two Towers, but in the preview of Return of the King, she was the Eowyn I remember in the great battle. I vow to go see the Return of the King as soon as it opens in next February. But before that, I think I will go see the extended version of the Two Towers at a movie theater.

Merry Brandybuck If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Merry, Hobbit, heir of the Brandybucks and a friend of Frodo's. In the movie, I am played by Dominic Monaghan. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

Lighten up!

By chance, I stumbled onto Achikochi, vincentvds's blog tonight. Nice blog! I particularly enjoyed his Who? section. "Age: Cannot believe it myself. ...Old enough to know better?" Just cracked me up! "Hobbies: ... reading books knowing that I forget everything after one month, ...In one word, my whole life is one futile, useless hobby." What a way of looking at things! I totally agree. "Personal Bio: Lost in Japan since 1997" Come to think of it, I have been lost for god knows how long.

I love reading writings that express clear perspective of life and things through humour. That's why I often visit Isaoblog and Shinjuku 2 Chome ... (in Japanese). Re-reading my own writings over the past few months, I've found them dreadful. Most of them read like religious sermon. Even in some of the rare writings in lighter tone, there seem to always be a moral to it.
One of the big reason I married my husband is that he has a great sense of humour. With the family and with my friends and colleagues, we laugh together a lot. Phew, what a relief. Time for me to lighten up!

Learning from Carl Gustav Jung

This journey started with my blog based conversation with Sou-san. We started out talking about Pat Riley which lead me to read The Winner Within, then that book lead me to read Joseph Campbell Companion, and now, I am reading Carl Jung in The Essential Jung: Selected Writings. It's going to be another pleasurable, long read. I am not talking about the length of the book, but about the length it will take for me to weave Carl Jung's teachings into my thinking process.

Today, the following entry in the book excited me:

Introduction

Jung's major contribution to psychology, therefore, lies in the field of adult development.

...

The patients who interested him were those who had already freed themselves from the past sufficiently to become established in their own right; who were often successful in worldly terms; but who, in the mid-period of their lives, found that the world had become stale and unprofitable. Such people were seeking a meaning to their lives; and Jung's aim was to guide them along the path of individuation. Jungian analysis, therefore, was, and is, primarily oriented toward the patient's future.

This seem to me what my coaching friends are striving for. And although I have not yet become "successful in worldly terms", at the stage I am in my life, this is precisely what I have been seeking. Just a little conversation between me and Sou-san stimulated my curiousity, and I followed that curiousity. The trail has lead me to this path which I am walking now. It has become a journey to know myself. Wyuki-san talks in her blog (sorry for the reader who can't read Japanese! Her blog is all Japanese) about how we are not really aware of the exact moment when change happens in ourselves. This must be it. A little inertia born from trusting someone, then momentum picks up, and we are on our way.

Chance to start over

Another thing when my "cool" coach and I talked about during our dinner the other night was our mutual friend whom we admire very much. We both know he is the way he is because of the characteristics he was born with, and the family he was born into. We feel he is the way he is now because he over compensated for his weaknesses.

I was thinking of how he kept all the things that he cared about, things he collected during the course of his life. He moved from Kansai to Tokyo, but he brought with him just about all the "stuff" full of his past. How can he hold onto his past so much, and be able to embrace now and future with abandon? If he wants to live and love freely, he has to let go of his past. But I realized it requires herculean effort for him to be able to do that.

Looking back, I realize it was easy for me, because I didn't have any choice. I couldn't keep the stuff that reminded me of my past, because I had to move on without my precious things like momentos, books, diaries, records, photographs. First was when my mother decided to run away from Kagoshima to Tokyo. One day, she asked me if I would die with her. I immediately said no. I felt from the way she was acting, this is really serious, and I'd better not mess around. Then she just said, "Let's go." I was 8-years old, so I just followed. The second was when we moved to England. I was 11-years old, and we couldn't take much with us. When I divorced, I left everything behind. When I came back to Japan with my son, I only brought with me minimal things. Now living in a cramped, noisy 90m2 apartment as a family of 6, we don't have much space to accumulate things.

Everytime I had to let go, I felt so displaced. It felt desolate and lonely. But because I had to let go completely, I had to create comfortable world within the new world in a hurry to stop feeling lonely. By doing so, I had no room to worry about keeping in touch with my past. What fit best with now? What mattered for me and my son's future? And that is how I ended up choosing where I am now. Maybe it can't even be called choosing. It was series of relatively easy selection process. If there was a rule in starting over, it would be to stay as true to my heart as possible. What is right or wrong by world's standard is "more like a guideline". What felt right for me meant whether my course of action would help someone grow, and would help myself grow.

I have been meaning to talk about this to Wyuki-san for a while now, about re-making the past experience. This is not about painting over the feelings I had in the past. It is all about learning of other factors in my life that made me who I am. In the case of starting over, each time, especially in younger years, I felt angery for having to go through it, dismayed with my fate. I just didn't know at that time it was a valuble lesson I was learning, in how to let go, how to make the best out of what has been given me.

My friend, not having had such experience as I did, would find it hard to take that one step to start over. First, he has to let go of the past and the present that is the continuation of the past.

My coaching friends and I talk about ... coaching. Would my story help someone in starting over? Would it matter?

Over compensation

My "Cool" coach and I had another great dinner on Thursday evening. We talked about wide range of topics while having home style Korean food. One topic we talked about in length was about over compensating for a weakness. People often tell me that I have a sunny personality. If you were a flower, my friends would say, you would be a sunflower. Although I think of drying, drooping big flower with lots of seeds when I hear such comment, evidently, they mean to say that I am always looking at the bright side of things. Well, I would like to declare that this is nothing but me over compensating for my sad, pessimistic personality.

I remember when I was five, attending kindergarten, I was a silent child. I hated excerting myself physically, and I used to love to just sit around, drawing or reading. I could not bare anybody other than my parents or grand parents to touch me. I felt extreamly uneasy being around other people, especially younger kids, because they showed their emotions, being angry or sad one minute, happy, laughing the in next.

When my friends and aquintances first hear about this, they laugh, saying, sure, right, uh-huh, what a great joke. But its the truth.

I am like this. So I could imagine these people who seem so confident, so talented, so whatever, might just be that they are over compensating.

What happens when I stop practicing

What happens when I stop practicing? First, I get rusty. Then, eventually, I wouldn't be so good at it. Then, I forget that I was ever good at it. That's what happened with my writing. Unlike painting and drawing, writing did not become painful as I grew older. The joy in writing grew as I grew older, at least the entire time I was in school. It didn't matter whether it was in Japanese or English, I loved to write compositions and reports. I loved the process of writing, reading what I wrote, making corrections and adjustments, then reading, repeating the process over and over until I felt like the work is finished.

I've recently started reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser to improve my report writing skill. The moment I started reading it, the book reminded me of the English classes in high school days, the English classes I loved so much.

The grammar lessons, learning new vocabulary words, writing compositions. I loved them all! And I used to take pride in myself for the understanding of English grammar, having good range of vocabulary, writing neat compositions. What happened after not writing seriously for 25 years is that I have become unsure of English grammar, forgotten half the vocabulary words I learned, and I dread writing any sort of work related piece, report, letter, or e-mail.

Like learning to ride a bicycle, I haven't forgotten altogether how to write. But like everything else, sports, cooking, arts, any practical skill, once I stop practicing, I am going down hill.

The feeling started to come back since I started writing into my blog last February. The feeling started to grow, and by reading On Writing Well, I have come to realize what happened. One great thing about this re-discovery is that the feeling of enjoyment in writing came back. It doesn't matter if the language is English or Japanese. I know what to do now. Keep practicing. Don't stop.

Point of view

It's all relative. I was a bit worried with my skewed way of looking at things lately, but then its just a point of view. Fun to see things in a different way.

In Nob's blog, I recently came upon an entry on Michael Jackson. I've shared it with several people around me, and most people commented on how he looked, how he was tried and found guilty.

I thought of how many people made lots of money off of him. His managers. People who sold things to him. His lawyers. Musicians who played with him. Song writers. Music companies. Surgeons. The list is long. I thought of how these people might have thought in terms of their bank account savings, maybe not in term of Michael Jackson's personal happiness.

I thought of how much l enjoyed his music and music videos. He could really sing. He could really dance. Will he have any chance to find his true happiness? Maybe he already has it. What life he had so far! What life he still will have because people will keep talking about him so long as he does something, anything to get on the news. Whatever he does, he will have plenty of people around him who thinks in term of money.

I thought of how in today's science and technology, despite of best of plastic surgery, he could not stay beautiful, he could not stay young. In his 40 odd years of life, he went through painful surgeries for looks that was to satisfy his fans. If he lives on to be normal old age, say 80 something, unless there is new scientific progress, he will be just as old and look as old as any other 80 something year old man. I am a normal human being. I am not happy about how my age shows in my appearance. But seeing Michael Jackson in his current state made me think of what most of us suffers from, from growing old. It kind of cured me from being upset about growing old. Accept it, and life becomes sweeter.

Then, with the family, I watched a TV show, a program on Discovery Channel shown on a Japanese TV show. It was about a man who hijacked an airplane in US back in the 70's. He was a Vietman War Green Berret veteran. He hijacked a commercial airplane going from Newark to Los Angeles. He only asked for 500,000 dollars. He got the money, he escaped. Nobody was hurt, nobody was killed. He got caught, but at the time, he had not used the money at all. He then went to jail, escaped with several innmates. Other innmates robbed banks, and was eventually caught He also was found leter, but when he was found, there was shootout, and he died by a gunshot.

The story was told in a way that described him as a truly evil man.

I thought of how he might have had to kill innocent people during the war. I found it strange that how he never shot anybody, never wounded anybody in process of hijacking and jail escaping. I thought of how people who decide to go into war is never jailed if they were victorious. I thought of how some people do underhanded business for millions of dollars and are covered with minimum press news story.

Why was this man shown as so evil? All these Holywood movies makes people who kill, who steal as heroes. Why then is this man evil?

I thought, I wonder how many people thought this way? Maybe many. Maybe few.

It's all point of view.