July 21, 2012

11 rue Simon-Crubellier, 36 Chowringee Lane

[Being-toward-birthdays from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko
I once wrote that Melancholia provides the only possible answer for what to do when you know for sure you’re going to die and yet you still have agency up until that moment. In that situation, where every action would be meaningless, there are no good options — indulging in one last pleasure would be hollow, pretending everything is normal would be pathetic, etc. The only possible choice is to make a gesture that is consciously meaningless, like the building of the shelter at the end of Melancholia.]

[Life A User's Manual - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  By 1975, Bartlebooth is 16 months behind in his plans, and he dies while he is about to finish his 439th puzzle. Ironically, the last hole in the puzzle is in the shape of the letter X while the piece that he is holding is in the shape of the letter W. The Destiny of Percival Bartlebooth, or the Ultimate Truth of Jigsaw Puzzles 18 Nov 2011 – By Rastko Antic At the heart of ‘Life: A User’s Manual’ by Georges Perec is the destiny of Percival Bartlebooth, a foreigner with a secret — a secret long kept from the reader (revealed almost at the precise centre, like everything else about the book it is mathematical). THE BARTLEBOOTH FOLLIES - New York Times 15 Nov 1987 – LIFE, A USER'S MANUAL By Georges Perec. Translated by David Bellos. Like many of the other stories in ''Life,'' Bartlebooth's weird saga can be read as a parable (of sorts) about the efforts of the human mind to impose an arbitrary order on the world. Again and again, Perec's characters are swindled, hoaxed and thwarted in their schemes, and if there is a darker side to his book, it is perhaps to be found in this emphasis on the inevitability of failure. Even a self-annihilating project such as Bartlebooth's cannot be completed,]

Kant retired from teaching in 1796. For nearly two decades he had lived a highly disciplined life focused primarily on completing his philosophical system, which began to take definite shape in his mind only in middle age. After retiring he came to believe that there was a gap in this system separating the metaphysical foundations of natural science from physics itself, and he set out to close this gap in a series of notes that postulate the existence of an ether or caloric matter. These notes, known as the Opus Postumum, remained unfinished and unpublished in Kant's lifetime, and scholars disagree on their significance and relation to his earlier work. It is clear, however, that these late notes show unmistakable signs of Kant's mental decline, which became tragically precipitous around 1800. Kant died February 12, 1804, just short of his eightieth birthday.]

He wasn’t exactly abandoned and certainly not abused. He lived with his brothers in England so he did have some family life in that sense, in addition to contact via letters from his father. Lack of maternal love may have possibly left him withdrawn but I wouldn’t characterize that as trauma.

In Anand, just before he enters Ramesh Deo’s office, there is a close-up of the swinging door, and the crowd went berserk upon just seeing the door in Dushman, when he woos Bindu and tilts his cap, the entire cinema hall screamed; in Amar Prem, when he sings to Sharmila on the studio created Hooghly, young and old alike sighed… and with Waheeda again on the Hooghly, the real one this time, and the two of them as star-crossed as any lovers could be and in his thick sweater, he made a fashion statement which even the downcast beauty of Waheeda’s unbelievable eyes could not match.
He was my hero - always will be - it is as simple as that. The relationship between a hero and his fan is the most sacred relationship in the film world and for me, it will always be a late afternoon in early ’70, and David and I are cycling through the fields from Jagadhri to Yamunanagar to see Aradhana at Yamuna Talkies.

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