ジョージオーウェルの日記

７０年遅れで毎日オーウェルの日記をブログに掲載して行くという試みらしいです。８月からすでに始まっている。
http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/

とても変な感じだけど、こうして読めるということは、嬉しいと思う。なんだかすごいことなのだろうけど、こんなに簡単に。

日記の最初に１行に、タマゴの数が出てくる。その日採れたタマゴの数だろうか、その日食べた数だろうか。
これから確認します。
余談ですが、
こないだ自分のフリッカーに鳥のタマゴの写真（自然史博物館で撮った）を５枚ぐらい連続で載せており、"2 eggs" "3 eggs" というふうにタイトルをつけてたので、それがオーウェルの日記の冒頭の記述とあまりにも似ていて奇妙だった。

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93420286　より

Orwell's Diaries Go Online
Previously unpublished George Orwell diaries are being released online as a daily blog. The first entry, from Aug. 9, 1938, will appear online Saturday, exactly 70 years after Orwell wrote it. The diaries shed light on European history and Orwell's life.

この説明を読むとじーんとしてしまう。

Polly - vol.4

The reason why I started writing about my Polly is because I miss her. I don't live with her right now. But I will start living with her again in a few months. She will have to move yet again to my apartment which sucks for her but hopefully she will eventually like it here. At least she will have more space here than where she lives now and i can put her litter box in a more private space... I visit her current house once in a while and whenever I see her she still recognizes me, sits on my lap and purrs. Whew. I thought cats forget. Polly is my princess, and I made her one and she can never turn back to be a nice cat. She's evil and sucks my love. She gets 100% of my attention and then bites my hand. Cute thing.
The name Polly brought me a nice coincidence once. I got into Kurt Weill (composer) / Bertolt Brecht (playwright) stuff a while ago. Those guys collaborated on plays in Berlin during '20s and '30s. Both Weill, a Jewish composer, and Brecht, an artist blacklisted by Nazi, had to flee from Germany in the 30s. Their life stories struck me a lot as I started getting my hands on their songs and playwights. One of their famous pieces is called The Threepenny Opera. It's got many great songs. Anyway, one of the main characters in the play is named Polly. She is the bride of the main character, Mackheath. In 2006 I was fortnate to see a Broadway adoption of the Threepenny Opera. Polly was played by a singer Nellie McKay, and Mackheath by Alan Cumming. Cyndi Lauper played pirate Jenny. It was great, totally an unforgettable show.
So that's my Polly coincidence. http://www.threepennyopera.org/

Polly - vol.3

So... where was I... ah yes. about moving.
Polly hates moving. I mean, who doesn't, especially when you are a cat, but she really really hates it apparently. Nervousness. Lack of appetite. Hatred. Sorry Polly... In her 3rd apartment in Greenpoint, she hid underneath the bed for her first 3 days. She didn't even eat anything. She usually loves this kitty snack that i bring back from japan... (dried thin slices of fish cake, crab flavor) but she only reacted a little bit to it. the situation seemed quite awful.
Polly also has a big hatred towards being transported in any circumstances. She would cry non-stop like crazy. When I first took her to a vet I carried her on subway and her whining was just insane. I never forget sorryful eyes of people around me on the train. Yes I am with this awful cat and she is with this awful person who creates a horrible mood on the train.
And what she hates the most in the world is the vet. I will never ever forget... one day i brought her to a vet for spaying... and when i came back there to pick her up... what an unhappy face her veterinarian had... The vet just said to me, "she (polly) was very unhappy" and handed me the carrier with this angry black furry thing in it. She was hissing at me. Her eyes were wet. Of course i immediately thought she had cried. I still dont know much about animals crying in tears, but it was just so obvious that Polly shed some mad hot tears. I took a cab home with her and i had to cry on the way.
Anyway now her thingy was gone... and instead she was given a crown. This plastic collar thing. So she wouldn't mess with her scar. Personally, I love seeing her with this thing around her neck. I know it's rude but it's just damn cute. She had it on for a week or so, but her belly scar didnt seem to get better. One day i held her very carefully and tucked her whole body on the floor (which was so hard), and had a good look at her scar. Um.... what's this little hole here... oh it's still open. shit.
I took her back to the vet the next day, and all she got was this disinfection jelly thing on the scar (even the procedure was performed in front of my eye) and we were sent home right away. As if Polly was on their black list. Whatever. it might as well work. Oh I should also mention this, you know, she had her belly shaven which was very cute.
Her scar healed eventually, and she never went back to that vet again. Nor took subway.

tbc

Polly - vol.2

So the new kitties were born. Six of them. Not four. How should we find them homes? Hana-chan and I were both in school, and we knew some kids who'd take a cat as a house mate. So we managed to give them all away to people we knew, and my boyfriend that time and I decided to take one of the kittens, as i was about to move into his apartment. I only wanted a black one. Having a black cat had always been my dream. So we took a black female one. When i moved into Ran's (my then-BF) place the black kitten was only a month old, so we waited another couple months or so till we adopted her. She moved in to our place on Grand Street in April 2002.
Now, what should we name her. We had a housemate named Tom. Tom totally got attached to the cat right away and he named her Stella before we came up with our own idea. I mean, wtf, stella? My idea was Kuromame. It means "black bean" in japanese. But someone told me it sounded like a piece of poop. It made sense to me. So "Kuromame" was out.
One of Ran's best friend Roni used to have a cat that Ran and she really liked. Her name was Pollyanna. She had passed away a while back. The name Pollyanna came from an Israeli band called Pollyanna Frank. They were a cool band. We liked their music too. So why not, in honor of Roni's Pollyanna, we named the black cat Pollyanna. We called her Polly.
I honestly don't really remember her childhood in the Grand St. aparment. We used to toy her a lot, and she used to hide in the desk drawer a lot, and... oh now i remember... she ued to go down inside this hole on our floor. The floor had a hole that fit your knuckle and half your arm. There was so much unidentified stuff in there, just random stuff on the floor falling down in there. It looked filthy. Polly would to go in there and dissapear for a while, and she would usually come back up with some dust and weird objects attached onto her fur. That's about all i remember... Polly was very small and adorable.
Then, about a few months later, we decided to move to a different place. The Grand St. apartment was such a shithole, a used-to-be store front which was forcibly devided into 2 floor "duplex". It was becoming too small for us. We found a room in Greenpoint. It was just a room in a 2-bedroom apartment, where we would share the house with a housemate. But we would have much more space, much more space for Polly to run about, too. So we moved. But Polly had to experience her 2nd moving. 3 different houses before she turned a year old... Poor thing.

to be continued... maybe.

Polly - vol.1

マイスペに書きはじめたポリ記（うちのねこ）です。

Winter 2001

When I just moved with my friend Hana-chan to Sunset Park in Brooklyn, I found a black cat on the street on my way home. A female cat. She seemed very friendly as i went close to her with my right hand carefully trying to reach her. It did reach her quite easily. It was amazing. Then my instinct told me that she needed ME, not just any home but me (you know how you dramatize your situation when you are alone in a foreign place). I told her if she came home with me i'd give her canned tuna, and i started walking... She followed me! I looked back many times to make sure she is after me, for about 5 minutes till i got home. What a girl, when i reached my apartment door she even showed an interest in getting into my door. With those eyes looking up at me... Hey, welcome... I told Hana-chan right away and she excitignly agreed on takin her in, and that black street cat was our cat from that evening.
Hana chan and her then-boyfriend named her Eames (like that designer) pff but we called her Im-chan. Im-chan rapidly won our every attention possible in the house with her gorgeous look. She really had beautiful facial features (she does to this day) and her posture was simply divine. Hana chan and I started idolizing her and she filled our lives with happiness. We both had wanted a cat so badly, and the angelic Im-chan landed on our floor from the sky.

However, she did have ordinary cat's behaviors. One of them was being in heat. She started making weird whining noise day and night, and wanted to go outside from out little windows. (we lived on a half-basement level which only had small windows on higher parts of the walls) There was an access to the backyard (just wild, not tamed) from hana chan's window, so she started letting Im-chan out for a while every now and then. We thought she was just playing in the wild - which seemed to us where she used to spend days and nights, but one day Hana chan witnessed a rather shocking scene - there were other cats hanging out there with her. Male cats! yaaay! The news was both shocking and and amusing. I remember a great deal of giggles in the house. Needless to say, Im-chan's belly started to grow after a few weeks of her wild foraging.
After 2 months - around the beginning of February 2002, Im-chan's behavior started to look alarming so I brought home a cardboard box to make her a little house. I think she was in there for the next couple of days. On the evening of February 4th, when i came home from school, I had a peek in her box from its small entrance - expecting it might have happened - and i saw these funny little things movin in the dark - kittens. Kitteeeens! The babies were born! In our very own livingroom! wow. How many? i didn't dare to count just yet. Then Hana-chan came home, and we celebrated in such an excitement. Later we carefully looked into the box - there were 3 black ones, 2 gray x white ones, and one tri-color (black white and gold)... six kittens. You did it Im chan.
It was so overwhelming. Cute precious things in our living room, we held them, praised them and took too many photos of them... and got shocked to find six huge nipples on the belly of our idol - Im-chan was now a mama...

to be continued.

make-a-dream vol. 01

a group of elephants and doctors collaborate to create a sculpture of a banana made of concrete that is eating a monkey. on a desert. they are listening to eric satie performed in scat by a local evangelical choir, and a tour bus of a rock band passes by, blasting out loud music and splash of whipped cream out of their windows, in order to ridicule the choir. an old man in hooded robe try to hit the splashing whipped cream from the bus with a baseball bat but he receives the cream on his chest instead, creating a huge stain on his chest that melts and eats up his skin, ribs, and intestinal organs. because what looked like whipped cream was in fact butter cream. too bad. but it's not too late. about 200 meters away there is a group of gastrointestinal surgeons on vacation, lying on the sand, sun-tanning, but fully-equipped for surgery. their wives have been sharpening scalpels since the morning. so the old man is going to be ok, soon.

Waltz with Bashir - バシールとワルツを

イスラエル人監督による映画を観に行ってきました。

１９８２年、レバノン戦争の最中に、ベイルートのサブラ・シャティーラ難民キャンプで、パレスチナ人の大量虐殺が行われた。イスラエル軍に協力したレバノンのキリスト系（ファランジスト）の軍隊によって、少なくとも８００人（wikipediaによる）のパレスチナ人（ほとんどは一般市民）が殺された。
この映画はその戦争に加担したある一人のイスラエル兵の記憶を辿って描かれたアニメーション作品。

そのイスラエル兵とは監督Ari Folman (アリ・フォルマン）自身で、彼はレバノン戦争を経験してから、そのときの記憶がなくなっているという状態にあった。レバノン南部で加わったあらゆる戦闘のことを彼はまったく覚えていない。虐殺が行われたキャンプに行ったときのこと。虐殺があった日、自分がどこにいて何をしていたのかも。
レバノン戦争から２０数年経ったある日、フォルマンは軍隊時代の友人に誘われバーに出かける。お酒を交わしながらした会話が、その友人が夜見る夢の事。レバノン戦争の記憶の断片が悪夢となって彼の夢に現れるのだという。その夜、フォルマン自身もレバノン戦争からのフラッシュバックが夢に現れるようになる。
そこからが映画のはじまり。

レバノンでわずが１９歳だった自分は何をしたのか、何を見たのか。（イスラエルでは男子は１８歳から２１歳まで、女性は１８歳から２０歳までの徴兵がある）
フォルマンの見る夢は、ベイルートのビーチで部隊の仲間と一緒に裸で海に浸かっているというもの。ゆっくりと海からでる彼らの目の前には、高層アパートがそびえ立つ。絶え間なく打たれる夜間灯がまるで花火の様。でもその光景そのものにはなんだか現実味がない。
えーこれ以上は書くとネタバレになるので。。。
ちなみにこの映画のタイトルの元も、映画をみればわかると思います。

この映画全体として思った事は、ある戦争の悪や陳腐さを描いた「反戦映画」でありながら、一兵士の経験に焦点がおかれ、決して「他者」（ここではレバノン人やパレスチナ人）の側にスポットを当てるという公平さが無い事。これが実はこの映画のポイントになっていると思う。わたしがこの映画をとても好きになったのもそれが理由だと思う。フォルマンの個人的な記憶の作品になっていることで、ある若者がある外国の戦場で経験すること、そしてそれが人間に対していかなる結果をもたらすか、ということの重みがよく感じられると思う。上映前に監督が、「この映画は、イスラエル兵だけに限らず、過去に起こった戦争に参加したあらゆる兵士の話にもなりえるし、今イラクにいるアメリカ人兵士の話にも、そしてある日故郷から遠く離れた異国の街で目覚めて『ここで何をやってるんだろう、自分は』と自問する人の話にもなりえる。」みたいなことを言っていた。
この映画に出てくる兵士や軍人たちの姿も、おそらく事実に限りなく近く描かれているのだろうと思う。アニメーションなんだけど。ある種のドキュメンタリーでありながら、アニメーションという表現方法。映画をみながらそれぞれの場面で、「今時分の見て聞いていることは？」、とはっとなる瞬間が沢山ある。そういう意味で「楽しめる」映画ではあるけれども、何よりもこの映画は、戦争の真実をかなり忠実に伝えているのではないかと、私は思います。誰が死んで何が壊されて、というだけが戦争ではないということを確認できると思う。

ちなみに、オリジナル音楽はMax Richterサンです。
Waltz With Bashir 公式サイト