watched werner herzog’s documentary about antarctica,encounters at the end of the world with ryan today. ryan didn’t care much for it (“god. i didn’t realize it would be about people. i just wanted to see a movie about penguins, goddamnit.”).
a secret: he likes to play the misanthrope when deep down inside he really isn’t.
like herzog, who delights in the restlessness (coughcoughcrazinesscough) of the human spirit (um. grizzly man, anyone?), i found the people fascinating. there’s a banker who quit his lucrative job to drive in the south pole, a linguist who abandoned a life in the academe to spends his days tending plants in a greenhouse, a 50something cellular biologist/ rabid science fiction fan who dives in icy waters and is simultaneously fascinated and repelled by that which he studies: the “horrible, violent world” below the ice. and the list goes on.
(“these psychos creep me out, maggie”, my dearest ryan opined more than once.)
you get the point. there are all these dreamy, philosophical nerds who are completely at peace in this vast & glacial & to me, at least–lonely– continent.
Q: what is it about these individuals that made them want to shed their former selves and live on this block of ice and subsist on canned meat and dried fruit? (seriously. one of the scientists was being interviewed in front of his cabinet & christ, the food selection depressed me. kinda reminded me of the astronauts & their freeze dried ice cream.)
i don’t know, man. there’s something fundamentally awesome and heroic about someone who can say aw fawk it. why not live in this strange,uncharted land that is plunged in darkness for 6 months in a year? why the hell not. and the even stranger thing is that they are geniunely HAPPY here. i admit it: i guess what i loved about encounters at the end of the world is that everyone here is a little bit off kilter. even the penguins.
i dare you to tell me that you don’t see a certain sad & bizarre poetry to this suicide mission. or that you didn’t see a part of yourself in this penguin. hay, mga dili maka himutang sa kalibutan! tara, let’s head for the mountains.
(be sure to bring more than dried fruit, though. i’m not the biggest fan of raisins.)
