WE TURN ONE ON 12.12.2010. WE HAVE 637 DAYS TO RUN TO LOOK FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE, before we die on the last day of the Nondon Olympics on 09.09.2012. That is the day we will cease our 1000-day quest.
One year ago, on 12.12.2009, we were born. Today, on 12.12.2010, we turn one. Before we die on 09.09.2012, we have 637 days left to look for a/ the Meaning of Life 3.0. We are Sagittarius according to our star signs – if you buy into / believe that school of thought/belief. To mark this occasion, we ran through the shopping districts of Nondon to the constellation pattern last month. But where oh where, on, or out of, googleearth might a/the Meaning Of Life 3.0 be?
We pondered on the question today, as we have for the last year of our lives. Needless to say we have arrived at no answer/solution/conclusion. Yet / hence, we are running as we have for the past year, and more so than ever before. It does not get easier, but we are keeping at it. We have also (more, or less) kept our hair uncut for the duration of the 1000 days, as a measurement of the passage of time, nodding to the 1-year performances of one of our favourite artists Tehching Hsieh.
To work on our grand(ious) question, and to mark this grand(ious) occasion of our birthday (DO WE HEAR YOU SAY THAT WE LOOK OLDER THAN OUR AGE?????), we decided to do 4 things:
1) To compile a list of things we have done in the past year. By no means exhaustive, this list proves that we have put in much effort (without much returns?), but, like any good road movie/quest, it is always the journey that matters. So we are getting there, or getting there there.
2) The second thing we did today was to listen to Sugarcubes’ Birthday.
3) The third thing we did today to mark our birthday was to visit our local cinema to watch Palme D’Or winner at the 2010 Cannes, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, by one of our favourite filmmakers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Even for a hardcore believer/follower/user/advocate of the law of non-linearity like us, we found this work challenging – which is also one of the reasons why we adore Apichatpong (for, what fun is there is things were too easy and obvious??). When, in a previous life when we curated his magical Tropical Malady in the ‘South East Asian Programme’ at the Cinema South Festival near the Gaza Strip in Sderot, Israel, we had a clear epiphany that Apichatpong’s films are best enjoyed when one is in the hazy, stony, liminal state of being semi-asleep-and-semi-awakeness. That is what his work does too – pushing one to (one’s) no-man’s land, in the chaosmos of realities, being at once exposed and vulnerable, as well as most lucid and mindful, in the chaosmos of feeling ill, and feeling ill with happiness, cruelty and beauty, predator and prey, a cat and a fish (and an ecstatic encounter with a catfish). This is what Tarkovsky, Herzog, Chagall, Bach/Glenn Gould and Garin Nugroho do to us. It’s appropriate to have this done to us, on our first year running within and across Lives 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.
4) Before doing all of that, we begin our day with a(nother) run. WE ARE ABSOLUTELY LIVID THAT ONE SECTION OF THE REGENTS CANAL IS CLOSED OFF DUE TO SOME RENOVATION/DEMOLITION WORK OF SOME SORT OR ANOTHER. So, no more canal-Victoria Fark runs for the next few weeks (or – horrors – months?!?!). We are back to loops at the Regents Fark.
Life goes on, or rather lives go on. As usual, if you have any advice for our quest, please DO write in. Contact us – click on comment here, or write to us at <dislocation@3rdlifekaidie.com>, become our friends on the evil FB, tweet us. There is more than one way to grab us.
Thank you for running with us in the past year. Are we ready to continue with the best run of our lifetime(s), this life, every life?
