Because I am trying to dismount the hamster wheel.

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Had a hot-dog party at Daniel Vai's place tonight with Sng, Nige, Ruth, Jem, Jon E, Tim John, Chak.

Was quite impressed that Vai's seemed to have grown up an awful lot in the last few years.

I am not alone involved with autumn.

Because this is all that separates me from being one of them. Filled with loathing and hate, and above all, willing to evangelize and spread this gospel of aggression, preaching that it is easier to persecute and destroy than it is to protect and create. The notion of a rich, miserable and cruel man is very real to me.

Because people are turning all around, and I'm wondering if I'm like a hippy of yore, talking and thinking in generalizations, and wishing with futility that the world would become a better place.

Because I notice the lapses in spelling grammar and reasoning that are starting to surface in my sentences that are beyond my control and which really REALLY frighten me... I feel like I have multiple sclerosis or alzheimer's... like my mind and body are betraying me. I hope I'm just burnt out.

Because I could focus on something neutral, like stocks and shares, or a hobby, or getting organized to distract myself from the all-pervading nullity that is work, from the insidious, creeping, nihilism that drags itself, dark and blotchy across the floor of the marketplace in through the back doors to our souls. But that would be selling out in a way that I would not be able to forgive myself for doing.

Because I have been redeemed for blood, but have misplaced this somewhere along the line.

Because I believe that there are good people who care.

My insides scream out that I should wish a curse on the plastic toys masquerading as people that I see everyday. But the Lord of my house only wants me to wish forgiveness.

I am in a quandry, still a boy scout at this age.

Just watched Oukashou, a short film (half an hour) that's part of 1 of 3 of Makoto Shinkai's brand new release, Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru (5 centimetres a second).

It's frantically, tragically, cathartically beautiful. First time I've teared watching something in the longest time.

Kumo no Mukō, Yakusoku no Basho (Beyond the Clouds, the Place Promised in Our Early Days) earlier this year was a let down (althought it received rave reviews from practically everyone). In it, Shinkai failed to achieve the same degree of emotional intensity, of universal (I'm being self-absorbed here, I know) resonance that he managed with Hoshi No Koe (Voices of a Distant Star), another film that had me bawling like a 3 year old.

In a sense, all directors are looking for resonance of a sort. For everyone to watch a scene of something, and feel a common, strong emotion. Humour, sadness, gladness etc. Largely an intermediate emotion is aimed for (e.g. if 4 varying degrees of the same emotion were sadness, depression and desolation, themselves garden variety emotions, the average joe director would aim for depression, which is more powerful than mere sadness, and less risky than desolation). It's not hard to do this.

Shinkai finds emotions that we can't even begin to struggle to find a name for, and (I think) makes almost all of us feel these emotions in unison, with loving and deft ease. His vehicle here again being kindred spirits reaching across nearly insurmountable barriers for each other. He strives for, finds and manages to bottle and reproduce powerful, raw emotions that we feel very strongly under very unique situations.

It sounds so cliched and trite when I say "kindred spirits reaching across nearly insurmountable barriers for each other", but how he does it is beyond any words I have. And he never cheapens it by taking the easy out (e.g. by resorting to intimacy arising from meaningless sex that so many directors succumb to, or deus ex machina in any form).

Shinkai's painstaking need to render the most mundane things true to life with perfection enhances the realism of his settings and situations as much as Miyazaki's need to render the most mundane things fantastical enhances the fairy-tale aspect of his settings and situations. The beauty in Shinkai's art lies in the nuances of each trembling reflection, hazy shadow, clanging siren which serves his tale perfectly yet is 100% true to life.

The powerful purity of his art shines through each centimetre of the film. Probably unsurprising that most of the films that he makes are really short. I think it would be impossible otherwise.