The Taxi Driver, continued

I've just seen Stranger than Fiction. And it dawned to me again, the irreparable and constantly forgotten inconsistency between life and literature. Or film. Or music videos. Or commercials, of all the genres which dispose with the means of presenting everyday life, ergo they pretend they do. And I reminisced on my taxi driver, both the one I met and the one I created, his life and his story.

As part of a novel, a character who, for his old age becomes full (leisure) time engaged in picking up unaware hitch-hikers, for the sake of a once had job, which was invented for solitary and hurried people, making him also solitary but at last with all the time on his hands, but not being able to spend it... - as a character, his life seams greatly open to symbolic interpretations on the condition of modern times and life in general. As for a real life person, this seams more likely an unfortunate course of events, to lead to an unfortunate course of life. The difference, of course, being: deliberateness. While a character, by definition, has a purpose in a novel (film etc.) in this case, making the readers realize the futility of such a life; for a living person, such realization hardly ever occurs. There exists, no question about it, a type of narrative which can be put over a human life to give intention to it, and for the European culture it's Christianity which is often (mistakenly) read as the easy way out of responsibility over one's life and purposefulness ("accepting" it that whatever happens it must be for better, but at least occurring with our Lord's consent). On our case, however, not even this pretence can be pulled off.

We have to realize that we live in a world, where, as I quoted in an earlier post, our means of socialization have greatly diminished. A person with an average job and personality, as part of the western civilization, has every possibility of ending up alone at their old ages. We simply miss the common places (this expression doesn't have a double meaning for no good reason) where people can meet, gather around and be together. Of course, we do have new ones, virtual rooms where time and spacial differences disappear and we get united by our common interests no matter age, gender, race or other stereotypical identity-setter, but in their physical reality, meeting new people just doesn't happen any more.

In an age when, as Jókai's naively visionary but in some parts painfully accurate science fiction novel stated, running around for our personal business without having the time to get to know out interlocutor has become our basic survival instinct, or because of the apparently increased mobility and simplicity in making new contacts naturally given spacial and familiar relationships get torn apart without a second thought - deliberateness gets a new importance. Immanuel Kant thought that religion and lack of education made people remain immature, (in Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?) but after two hundred years, taking one's faith in one's own hand is still a challenge - our taxi driver's story could have this elevated and outlying interpretation.

So, as a literary character, he would be a symbol of one of the aspects of a postmodern(?) way of life, as a blog entry he's just an interesting guy in a new event. But taking control means also deciding on the source of our inspiration and lessons, even if we can't wait until we start hearing a narrator voice speaking about our lives (getting back to our previous subject, deliberateness in Stranger than Fiction - for those who just didn't get it).

Hand made jewelry

One of my favorite pastime...

The Taxi Driver, not at least like the movie

Quiet, cool summer night. Coming back from a confectionery "girls' evening out", I'm leisurely walking home, enjoying the overcoming peace and darkness of this so often gone crazy town. Suddenly there's a honking behind me. And when i turn around, another one. I resist the urge to take another look, the taxi is clearly waiting for someone, and other reasons can't have, after all, I'm wearing plain blue jeans and a buttoned up cardigan, nothing a crazy, famished lorry driver would appreciate by these means.

Just when my thoughts begin to settle back to their original course, the taxi arrives to my line and the driver winds down the window. Knowing what his suggestion might be, my refusal anticipates his offer: "No, thank you, I'm walking." To my surprise, he tells me he doesn't want any money. I ponder on his offer, bundling off the overcoming images of tomorrow's newspaper headlines on which "raped", "killed" and "unknown taxi driver" come out in various fonts and combinations. Finally gotten in the back seat, my curiosity is bigger than my fear or cautiousness. To my question, he confesses that he liked how i was walking and nothing better to do, he decided he'd give me a ride. He's a man over his fifties, talkative and fat. By the time we arrive to my street, I already know that he's retired from driving, he doesn't usually drive at night, but sometimes at twilight he would jump into his old-friend car and drive around town picking up interesting-looking people, preferably young girls, I guess, just to have a talk while giving them a lift. I can understand the time reference: the moment when the day has come to an end, while the night takes over his dominion, daunting with the perspective that it would never be morning and sunlight and pure happiness again - that's when so many of us feel the loneliest, it's the easiest to become depressed, it's the most melancholic part of the day.

He tells me that his other joys in life mostly revolve around television.

(to be continued)

Modern párkeresési problémák a 19. századból

"Amily mértékben népesednek a nagy metropolisok, éppen úgy nehezül a férfi és nő közötti tartós viszony kötése. Kinn a falun könnyű az ismerkedés: a legény a leánynak s ez viszont amannak minden jó és rossz tulajdonát kiismerheti, megtudhatja minden ember a másik vagyoni állását, rá is ér, hogy szerelmes legyen, s van akitől tanácsot kérjen; de egy másfél millió, hárommillió emberi ábrázatot összefoglaló quodlibetben, amilyenek a huszadik század fővárosai, ugyan hogy találjon rá Ádám a magához való oldalbordára? Az emberek nagy házakban laknak, ismerősök félmérföldnyi távolban egymástól; akik szomszédok, egymásnak a nevét sem tudják, s ha egyik évnegyed alatt annyira mentek, hogy ismerni kezdik egymást, a másik évnegyedben már odább hurcolkodnak, s soha hírét se hallják többé egymásnak. Aztán senki sem bízik egymáshoz. Minden ember cifra, s minden ember közül kétharmadrész adós a cifra ruhájával. Különösen a szép ifjú hölgyek irányában igen nagy az optikai csalódás. Az ember nem tudja, hogy hercegnő-e az, vagy balett-táncosnő, akinek a hintaja után bámult, s a lesütött szemű kisleány abban a kartonruhában azért jár e olyan szegényesen, mert az erénye nagyon drága, vagy azért, mert nagyon olcsó? És elvégre az ember nem ér rá, még ha célszerűnek találná is, hogy az utcán, a bálban, a színházban válogassa ki a magához való élettársat, hogy ezzel töltse az idejét; hivatala, boltja, üzlete van; lótni, futni, ülni, firkálni, kalkulálni, veszekedni, dolgozni kell egész nap, az ember futtában eszik, futtában szeret, siet fizetni, s szalad a dolgai után."

Jókai Mór: A jövő század regénye. (1872–1874)

sic, sec, sucks?

A már bejegyzésével is nagy port kavart Székely Nemzeti Tanács, bizonyítandó, hogy létezésére igenis szükség van, újabb indítvánnyal állt elő a napokban. Ezek szerint, ha már a román állam nem hajlandó teljesíteni a Székelyföld autonómiás igényeit, "megmutatjuk mi a magunkét más fórumokon"-alapon az internet virtuális terén próbál több sikert és megértőbb szíveket találni.

A ".sic" mint ötlet nem rossz, és talán végre el is találtak vele egy olyan médiumot, amelyet nem a politikai vagy gazdasági többség irányít, szinte bárki számára hozzáférhető, és az érzelemre tett hatásnak is nagyobb hatalma van. A probléma a részletekben rejlik, és abban a kellemetlen szájízben, amit maga után hagy a dolog ideológiai színezete. Bármely, egy kicsit is elgondolkodó honfitárs számára egyértelmű ugyanis, hogy a ".sic" domainnév felvétele nem az erdélyi összmagyarság imidzsét promoválja, hiszen a székelység még ennek a kisebbségnek is csak egy bizonyos hányada. Ezzel tehát ugyanazt a szekularizációs törekvést vezeti tovább, amelyet az MPP az RMDSZből való kiválása is jelölt, és amivel a román politikai közvélemény is gyakran megvádol bennünket - főleg az autonómia-cirkusz óta. Azzal a különbséggel, hogy ez a kezdeményezés most nem a román többségtől, hanem a magyar, de nem székely többségtől próbál elhatárolódni.

Másrészt, ha a méltányosságát el is fogadjuk, akkor is felmerül egy-két szépséghiba. Mi az, hogy" sic", például? Ki használta valaha is a székelységgel kapcsolatban ezt a kifejezést? (Magyarul székely, románul secui, németül és angolul Sekler, még folytassam?) Kit érdekel egyáltalán az, hogy ebből a latin szóból ered... mi is? A "székely" elnevezés? Hisz az már a latin térnyerése előtt megvolt. Vagy talán a Székelyföld mint "tartomány" elnevezése? Száraz hivatali terminus. Egyszóval: vannak mindenhol ismert és használt latin szavak - ez nem az.
Na és ki az, akinek nem egy sokkal közelebb álló képzettársítás ugrik be erről? Hiszen azt a kedves honfitársaink elfelejtették, hogy az internet nemhivatalosan hivatalos nyelve az angol, ahol a [szik] kiejtésű "sic" beteget jelent. Hiába, a román nyelvtanulást el lehet odázni ideológiai szólamok alapján, de az angoltudás ma már sajnos a politikusoknak is eléggé kötelező. Másképp felettébb érdekes lesz a dolog kimenetele. Főleg, ha majd kiderül, hogy ugyan az interneten engedélyezik a kétértelmű domainnevet, de ember legyen a talpán, akinek van annyi humorérzéke, hogy használja is.

This is the First Page of the Rest of My Blog

I've just seen Confessions of a Shopaholic. The movie. Pirated version. Cam. Pfu. You want a spoiler? They will end up together. Of course they will, that's part of the American-Western European dream, that "love conquers all" and "without you I am nothing at all" and so on. But this time, the girl who gave up her dream-job to prove that she's not that into fashion (God, you'll never gonna watch the movie after this, will you? Don't worry, it's like you've seen it already) and got an auction together with her Shopaholic Anonymous friends to sell her clothes, of course - will get the man of her dreams, who, by the way, I'm not sure why left in the first place, but anyway... At the last shot of the film she gives a wink to the seductively waiting mannequin wearing the charming little fashion-item, I have no idea which one it was this time. Cos after all, that is the only logical conclusion by which this movie could end. What other thing could its message be? You need to find love to survive your depression which makes the world look gray so that only a newly bought green scarf could bring its color back, but you can't give up shopping, because you live in the 21st century in a society where desires are made in the best possible improvement of Technicolor, and for the sole purpose of selling stuff with them.

So if you could accept that Love is enough to make you happy, who would be there to buy all those things by which we live producing? But the fact that you need to have the pink ribbon tied to the "the end"-sequence, shows that the propaganda is working - after all, what is love in real life, if there is anything like that? Two people's decision that being together is better than being alone. The rest is mystification, mythology, as we say it: mese habbal :P