Hot hot heat

Oppressive heat has interesting results. It boils brains; it makes everyone flustered; it unifies everyone with the observation of, "It's so hot" (not that it needs to be said). It also makes us feel as if there is some great injustice going on, that we are forced to live through such conditions, even work.

I have had the great (mis)fortune of returning to work right at the beginning of the heat wave. The worst, they say, in 100 years. So hopefully we won't have to endure it again in 100 years - or perhaps not?

Saunas, they say, are good for you because, among other things, they purify us. And how do they do this? They bring all impurities to the surface.

Yes, this is a kind of sauna. We're living in a sauna. Perhaps, instead of complaining, we should try to live with it. Who knows what the results would be.

Ideas From the South (Island)

So Ideas From the North will be going on holiday again for a couple of weeks - not that you'd notice, because I've hardly been prolific in my blogging in recent weeks. But now I'm off for some camping, hiking and general sightseeing in the South Island of New Zealand. It's over ten years since I last went there, and was only 13 then, so it will be interesting to revisit old haunts, maybe see some new places.

I'm prepared, of course, to be quite dead at the end of the 4-day Routeburn Track hike, but hope to resurrect in time to write some thoughts/insights/rambles when I return. I'm expecting the whole trip to be a little easier than China at least. After all, they do speak the same language as us, just with a few funny vowels.

Who we won't be seeing on the red carpet

2008 was a pretty good year for movies, which means that my glance over the Golden Globe nominations for this year involved less annoyance and/or confusion than usual. Of course, there are always a fair number of films listed that haven't come out in Australia yet, or that have only just come out, and then the handful that are possibly quite good but I just have no interest in seeing. All this put together means that, in a number of cases, I just can't comment on how well-deserved the nominations are (although my cynicism does kick in with certain obvious choices - "Revolution Road" anyone?).

There were a few, though, that I was very happy to see listed - Danny Boyle's latest triumph, "Slumdog Millionaire", which, a few years ago, would have been my idea of a perfect film: a Danny Boyle movie set in India. And it was pretty close to perfect. There was also David Fincher's most recent offering, the odd, imperfect but dazzling "Benjamin Button" which stayed in my head for some time after seeing it. Nominations like this are so clearly well-deserved and completely unsurprising. Both films have been very well-received and are already in IMDB's Top 100 - which simply means a lot of immediate hype and excitement, but I suspect they'll both be stayers. Though I might be wrong.

I was also happy to see that one of the absolute highlights of the year for me, Ari Folman's animated documentary "Waltz With Bashir", got a guernsey for Best Foreign Film. The Foreign Film category has always allowed scope for odd, eccentric and arty films, and "Bashir" is all of these, as well as deeply, deeply disturbing. It got nominated, but it almost certainly won't win. They'll give it to something more inspiring - though another highlight of my '08 viewing, "The Counterfeitors", managed to win the Foreign Film Oscar last year, despite being far from inspiring. There's hope, I suppose.

Of course, you can't expect the Globes to really reflect the state of cinema. How they nominate what they nominate remains a mystery to me. The Oscars, of course, are notorious for the "campaigns" that they expect f0r films to be nominated. The wonderful Hal Hartley once said that he had absolutely no idea how to launch an Oscar campaign and no desire to do so. I doubt the Academy would pay any attention to Hal if he did campaign for his films, but it's nice to know that the feeling is mutual.

Another thing: the "major" film awards tend to like films that seem "important" or "worthy". They like films like "Benjamin Button" because they have star power, big studio money behind them AND the sense that they are artistically significant. In a few cases (ie. "Benjamin Button"), those factors all coincide to make a great movie. But they often don't. And there are many great movies, and very important and worthy movies, that don't have Sam Mendes directing them or Kate and Leo starring in them, that the Academy will pay no attention to, even if every Guild and Critic's Circle applauds them till their hands hurt. This year's great disgrace was Thomas McCarthy's magnificent film, "The Visitor". Films don't get much more "important" or "worthy" than this one, but it remains what it's main character is at the end: loud, earnest, righteously angry drumming that no-one stops and listens to. More's the pity. For me, it was the best film of the year.

A year of living tenuously

So 2008 draws to an end, and I can't say I'll be all that sad to leave it behind. I'm not entirely sure why, but 2008 and I have not been especially good friends. A whole mix of circumstances, at work, in my own life, health, etc., have made this year a more or less constant drain and challenge.

And yet I'm reminded of one of the terms that used to be used to describe AD years - "the year of grace". This year, more perhaps than others, has been a year of grace, where, in amongst everything going wrong, I am still able to see much going surprisingly right, and can say that, at the end of it all, I'm still standing, and still breathing, and still able to look ahead clearly to 2009.

I hope 2009 will treat me better, though it may not. But I suspect that, with grace on my side, I can handle it.

When all we have is taken

A general theme on my blog seems to be the need for honesty during times of difficulty or adversity. So it's no wonder, when you consider this in combination with my love of all things C.S. Lewis, that I was overjoyed over the weekened when I read his "A Grief Observed" and found myself reading a better expressed version of many things that I had thought over the past couple of months. Lewis once said that a friendship often begins with the comment, "Really? I thought I was the only one," or words to that effect. I suspect, based on the number of common thoughts that we have both had, that he and I would probably have been good friends.

For those who've never heard of it, "A Grief Observed" is essentially the journal that Lewis kept in the time after his wife died of cancer. It is by far the most honest and moving thing he ever wrote. The writing is amazingly personal, something we wouldn't normally associate with that fairly jolly, very academic and very British writer most famous for writing about fauns carrying umbrellas. It's the most heart-on-sleeve stuff he's written outside of "Till We Have Faces", and all the more for being about him, not a fictional character. And, at points, you feel like despairing along with him. The man who wrote one of the 20th century's most reasoned discussions of pain and faith seems, halfway through this small (but not slight) memoir to be on the verge of losing his faith, or discovering that, while God exists, He isn't very nice at all - a fear, I must admit, that I've had more than a few times this past year.

Of course, he doesn't lose his faith - if he had, we would no doubt have heard - but the resolution he arrives at by the end gives some fairly concrete assurance for those of us who still worried for a moment. And it's the kind of resolution that Job reached, before his fortune was restored, and that Habakkuk found when he was able to declare that "though the fig tree does not bud/and there are no grapes on the vines...Yet I will rejoice in the Lord". And it's only an acceptance that can be arrived at after a night of wrestling with angels and with God - not because God needs our anger to remind Him of what is right, but because dishonest rejoicing means nothing to Him. He'd rather that we told Him what we thought and then fell asleep in His arms than pretended to be fine but died on the inside.

Thankyou, Clive Staples Lewis, for once again reminding us all of what matters most.