“
Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me… “Norman, you like to write stories?” And I said, “Yes, I do.” Then he said, “Someday, when you’re ready… you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened, and why.
Conversation from Before Sunset
| Céline: | Have you ever spent some time in Eastern Europe? |
| Jesse: | Eastern? No, no... |
| Céline: | No? I, uh, remember as a teenager I went to Warsaw, when it was still a strict communist regime. Which I don't approve of at all. |
| Jesse: | (Sarcastically.) Oh yeah, sure you don't... |
| Céline: | No, I don’t. |
| Jesse: | No, I'm just kidding! |
| Céline: | But, anyway, something about being there was very interesting, I found. After a couple of weeks, something changed in me. The city was quite gloomy and gray and...but, after a while, my brain seemed clearer. I was writing a lot more in my journal, ideas I had never thought of before. |
| Jesse: | Communist ideas? |
| Céline: | Listen, I'm not... |
| Jesse: | I'm sorry, I can't...Go on! |
| Céline: | I'll send you to a Gulag! No...but it took me a while to figure out why it felt, you know, so different. And then, one day, as I was walking through the Jewish cemetery, I don't know why, but it occurred to me there, I realized that I had spent the last two weeks away from most of my habits. TV was in a language I didn't understand. There was nothing to buy, no advertisements anywhere. So, all I've been doing was...walk around, think, and write. My brain felt like it was at rest, free from the consuming frenzy. And I have to say, it was almost like a natural high. I felt so peaceful inside, no...strange urge to be somewhere else, to shop...Maybe it could have seemed like boredom at first, but it quickly became very, very soulful. It's interesting, you know? |
A Snippet From Pi, A Film
| Sol: | Listen to me. The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of game play are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. That is the truth of our world, Max. It can't be easily summed up with math. There is no simple pattern. |
| Max: | But as a Go game progresses, the possibilities become smaller and smaller. The board does take on order. Soon, all moves are predictable. |
| Sol: | So? |
| Max: | So, maybe, even though we're not sophisticated enough to be aware of it, there is an underlying order...a pattern, beneath every Go game. Maybe that pattern is like the pattern in the market, in the Torah. The two sixteen number. |
| Sol: | That is insanity, Max. |
| Max: | Or maybe it's genius. I have to get that number. |
“
In other words we’re talking about an underground, which did exist in a different way during the Dark Ages among the mystical orders of the Church. And the purpose of this underground is to find out how to preserve the light, life, the culture. How to keep things living. You see, I keep thinking that what we need is a new language, a language of the heart, languages in the Polish forest where language wasn’t needed. Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry, that’s the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is. And I think that in order to create that language, you’re going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass into another kind of perception, where you have that sense of being united to all things. And suddenly, you understand everything.
