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I'm getting 50 next Monday!
It's outrageous! Schocking! Depressing! Unbelievable!
So, cheer me up! I want, just this one time in my pretty unspectacular life, to have posted a LJ entry that gets so many comments that after a while they only appear as subtitles on the comments page.
So, give me this gift. Send people my way in cyberspace. Talk to me about everything and nothing - as long as it raises the count.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lhun_dweller might remember about that dream of leaving a supermarket with a full shopping cart - just once.
Yes, it's silly, I know. But honestly, it costs you not "a weary cent", as the Germans say, and I'd like to have this so badly, just this one time. And since it's highly unlikely that I'd manage to reach my goal by posting astounding fanfic or simply interesting topics, I have to use more drastic methods.
The audience room is open till October 9, which is my 50th birthday. Come in, have a good time and talk to me!
Edit: And if you want to know what are we going to eat on the RL party on Sunday, check out my next entry. *g*
So, cheer me up! I want, just this one time in my pretty unspectacular life, to have posted a LJ entry that gets so many comments that after a while they only appear as subtitles on the comments page.
So, give me this gift. Send people my way in cyberspace. Talk to me about everything and nothing - as long as it raises the count.
lhun_dweller might remember about that dream of leaving a supermarket with a full shopping cart - just once.Yes, it's silly, I know. But honestly, it costs you not "a weary cent", as the Germans say, and I'd like to have this so badly, just this one time. And since it's highly unlikely that I'd manage to reach my goal by posting astounding fanfic or simply interesting topics, I have to use more drastic methods.
The audience room is open till October 9, which is my 50th birthday. Come in, have a good time and talk to me!
Edit: And if you want to know what are we going to eat on the RL party on Sunday, check out my next entry. *g*
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Actually, you know what does cross? Our desire to write personal narratives. Not full memoirs all the time but just sharing thoughts, and if we were more talented than just simple bloggers or maybe more popular or luckier, then we'd be making money as nonfiction writers. Think of it this way: you are my primary news on Hungary. What you say makes a big difference in how I perceive the country. It's like being a reporter but less scummy and not doing it for money or to further a political agenda. It's just your own honest opinions. I was just reading about creative nonfiction and the person said that it was one of the unspoken promises in the genre. The dialogue may not be word for word what happened at that time, but there is an attempt to create the truth and reflect on it. So tell me a story of your childhood in Hungary. Here I am emailing you and taking it for granted that you know English, almost forgetting that the internet was new for all of us just a few years ago and that the WWW wasn't really released until 1994, only a dozen years ago!! Before that, email correspondences were in text only and we even made little text pictures that got forwarded. But that was only the realm of primarily college students who had access to email and computer facilities. I heard someone read his work-in-progress, and he was talking about dot matrix printers and text-based computer games. Ah yes! All that, so long ago and yet not at all. The kids of today will never remember a time without CDs and DVDs, when tapes were all we had if even that. I remember our little PC junior computer, state of the art at the time and a very expensive investment, but our father wanted us to have the best education possible because that's the only way to get ahead. I'm sure there are other ways, maybe marrying rich and then divorcing to get half, but we were pushed to get the education that wasn't previously possible in our family so that we could get decent jobs. I feel a little guilty that I'm not entirely doing that right now, that I'm not making as much money as I could be, but I have in the past and helped to support the family so I'll count that as paying my dues in part.
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So how was it like in Hungary when you were younger? I've been rewatching old Hong Kong martial arts films that I'd seen when I was younger. I wish there were more to be found, but I can't afford to go out and buy these right now. It's interesting because I realize just what I missed when I was younger. There were even attempts to reference history, and one was about a Chinese doctor at the turn of the century fighting Westernization even as he knew that China had to assimilate to some degree to participate in the modern world. In the movie, it's like a distant history, but then I realize that this person died in 1924 and that my father was born less than a decade later in 1932. There was no running water. Could I ever imagine a life like that? It's probably the same with these horribly rich Republicans who are ruining our country and sending people off to war. It's the same as people who have never experienced discrimination and so they can't entirely imagine it or perceive it when it happens. If we ever met, it'd be a happy occasion, but maybe it'd be a surprise too. I don't know how many Asians there are in Hungary. I'm sure there are some because Hungary's in Eastern Europe, and Budapest really is a big enough city to have tourists from all over the world. But at the same time, it's different _knowing_ someone. Suddenly things become more real. Something that is a page in the history books if it's even included becomes real. No, I'm no better than these other people. How would I know about the troubles in Hungary unless you mentioned them? Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't easily have the resources. But what makes it interesting is that I know you and am interested in your life and what happens in your country. After all, I could similarly be interested in the happenings of China, whatever those are at the moment, but I don't know anyone there. I don't correspond with anyone via email. And even with Hong Kong, I knew two young girls from Hong Kong, but they were so young that there was no sense of the place. Like you say about the youths in Hungary, there's a more normalized capitalistic culture. They're watching LotR movies and worrying about their exams and how tall they are. There's no sense of place for me. I could be emailing with Romulan teenagers and the main difference would be in the pictures they send or post online. One of the books I remember you mentioning was Spock's World. Yeah, books like that help paint a picture of a place. Beleriand, Middle-earth, and Vulcan all seem more "real" to me than Hong Kong or China. I've never been there. But through reading, I can experience something so I experience a little bit of Hungary when I read your posts and your frustrations. I can imagine 3rd century China better than I can modern China because I've read literature (in translation) referencing that time period. Can you imagine that when I first joined the LotR and Silmarillion world I didn't imagine meeting so many people from so many different parts of the world? Finch sent me a calendar with pictures of Netherlands once. Suddenly, it mattered and it was interesting to me. It's the same with Hungary. When I see pictures of Budapest, I think of you. My world has grown as a result of knowing you.
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I've mentioned it on LJ several times: the most impressive film of my entire life was The Gospel According to Matthew by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It was a black-and-white movie, with mostly lay actors and barely any dialogue, and what was said was quoted from the Bible by the letter. It was incredible. I saw a great deal of Bible-based movies since then, in colour and with great effects - I can't remember any of them. But when I close my eyes, I still can see the scene when Miryam, very pregnant and wordless, appears in the doorframe of the house, and simply looks at me, as if she would step out of the movie any moment.
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But you are right. Countries are constantly losing the very thing that would make them special, and soon we'll all be a big happy planet, full of McDonalds and Starbucks. I find it somehow depressing, actually.
When I was younger, Hungary was very different. We didn't have all those things young people throw their money for nowadays, but I believe we were happier, more content. We weren't exactly poor, not after we'd moved to Hungary from Transylvania, but life wasn't always easy, and I've learned to make a difference between things that were truly necessary and things I simply wanted.
I'm grateful for that, because it enables me to the present day not to live beyond my true possibilities, not to be in debt and to lead a content life, even if I can't always have everything I fancy. Sounds old and boring, I know, but I think I've more in my life than all those young people who have everything I couldn't even dream of at the same age and are still discontent.
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I think we get a lot of great chances that the previous generations didn't have, but we also pay a high price for it: the overall loss of personal relationships, trust and the chance to truly know each other, the courage to risk something for a person who's for some reason important for us... that sort of things.
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That much is true. My father didn't have running water when he was young. Some of what we've lost are things that we've romanticized, but there's definitely truth to it. I was never allowed to talk on the phone with my friends so I didn't develop the same closeness that they did to each other. I hear in Europe, instead of a flat local calls fee, there is a fee for every phone call made, even if it's just right next door or down the street. So they say that Europeans are more willing to get out of the house and just meet with friends over a cappuccino to chat instead of relying on the phone and thus lack of personal presence. Email makes things possible. There are some things that I say in text that I could never say in RL. That's part of the reason I thought I would write, to give voice to these unsaid stories and thoughts. I have seen people take risks. A high school friend met a Dutchman in an English-speaking bar in China while she was touring there, and she took a chance and decided to enter into a relationship with him even though it seemed doomed from the start. For the moment, they're married and happy.
But it is very different. Just to sit at the shores of the West Havens and look outward at the sea, feel the gentle breeze as we walk down the pier and talk about elves and slash. Or sit together at dinner and talk about how the Teleri would love the sushi but the Noldorin and Sindarin elves might find fish disgusting. I sometimes think about how it'd be like if I visited Budapest. You'd show me the main sites that tourists want to see, and I'd be curious to see how you live, the interior design and amount of space you can get for how many euros. I'd look curiously at your walk and stop signs to see if it had red and green men or if the green man meant walk but a red hand meant stop. It's so true. So many little things that are lost just by not being together.
You really should come one day!
Re: You really should come one day!
Awww, sweet!