Fortune

I've just gotten notification from Columbia Housing, confirming my accommodation for the coming year. I got my first choice, which is a single room in this building called Furnald. It's on the ninth level, right next to the lift, and though it's one of the smaller rooms available, it has an Eastward view, which I really look forward to enjoying each morning. And they also sent my mailing address at Columbia. It's a cheap thrill, I know - but it's an address on Broadway, ending with those magical words, "New York, NY". How many people can have an address like that?

Looking at it, and looking at my room assignment, I really cannot help but be totally awed by how things are working out. Getting into Columbia itself was already a long-shot. But getting into CUE as well, so that I can move in a week earlier and have more time to settle in, and getting my first-choice accommodation, and looking forward to constituting a double major in subjects that I actually want to do - all this combines into such a compelling, wonderful situation. And all this is a product of circumstances beyond my control. It is humbling; it is amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it is incredible (in the French sense, meaning to say unbelievable). Scary, even. I mean, do people's dreams and hopes really come true to such a great extent? I would really like to think so, but if not, then what have I done to deserve all this?

And while I look at pictures of Columbia online, and see the beautiful campus resplendent in the daytime and at night, it gives me a sort of vertiginous feeling to think that I may acutually be going there soon. I realise that, to a large extent, matriculating there is still pretty much inconceivable. I don't yet really believe this is happening for real. Could all this actually be happening?

*

Yesterday, went with Joel to see more Antonioni films at the museum. Watched The Outcry (Il Grido) and The Eclipse (L'Eclisse), the latter of which was apparently the last black-and-white film he made, and a somewhat loose sequel to The Night (La Notte). The films were, once again, breathtaking in their technical brilliance, and arresting in their message. All his characters, it seems, suffer from a surfeit of self-awareness, which prevents them from using the conventional tropes of communication, while not suggesting any effective alternative which can take the places of conventionality. And what we get are people that are extremely sensitive, but also extremely isolated, isolated by their inability to connect with each other. They know that the conventions are insufficient for them to accurately and truthfully express themselves, and they also know that their expressions of truth will not be comprehended and sympathised with by the other. And above all, their awareness of all this and of themselves compels them to try to achieve the latter no matter what. In their situation, connecton and truth are incompatible - and they must commit themselves to the latter, even if it means enduring a gnawing loneliness, a loneliness tha is pervasive and present even in the company of lovers.

And Antonioni also has a great eye for the possibilities of urban landscapes. His camera lens records scenes that are quotidian, that are encountered on a walk in the street, and that are therefore accessible to any city-dweller. But the scenes become so much more meaningful when he arranges them into his patterns; the superficial, inconsequential meanings that we encounter and discard on a daily basis are crystallised and purified in his lens, so that a passer-by's glance becomes poignant, and an overheard conversation portends deep implications. The last scene of The Eclipse is a superb example of this effect: the last seven minutes are made up only of scenes from a modern suburb of Rome, with people waiting for buses, acquainances or happenings. They are all waiting for something, staring off into the distance with expectation in their expressions; there is no dialogue. And you realise that these scenes that are being presented have appeared in the film before, as the setting for the rendezvous of a couple, except that now, the couple is nowhere to be seen. The scene ends with a crescendo of music that draws the anticipation out awfully, exquisitely - and that is all. A montage of modern architecture, construction sites, people and empty roads and skies, from which the feeling of anticipation is crystallised.

*

You know, there are some things that I will miss come August. On Friday night, met up with a long-lost friend from the days of CHS EDrama; I had forgotten how funny he was, and how easily he can disarm someone in a conversation. It was the easiest thing to play along, to join the conversation, even to reminisce, to some extent. And on Saturday night, went out with Joel after the films for a long talk on film, college, life, the universe - in other words, the usual stuff. Wandering along the wide boulevards along Prinsep Street in search of a cheap place to eat, it suddenly occurred to me that these things, these easy encounters based on a shared past, will become increasingly rarer as time goes by - indeed, as August passes.

Of course, things have always been changing. Things have already changed. I have already gone through two jobs; I have gone through an experience in the long wait in the Army that has profoundly affected me, but which I cannot explain fully to people who have not gone through it as well. And people have been changing, have acquired traits and behaviours that I had not thought them capable of. I always tend to remark on how some things don't change; but remember, that is only because constancy is so remarkable against a background of constant shifting.

But that doesn't mean that change becomes easier to accept. Easier to cope with, perhaps; one learns to isolate change, to manage it so that it disrupts one's life less. But not easier to accept. Sometimes, change is delightfully surprising; but always, there is a tinge of bitterness, that comes from the unilateral destruction of a shared thing. It may not be criminal, but it is still to be mourned. And, even as I look forward to August, a part of me is constantly and warily looking at the past, trying to see which parts will change, and which parts will be able to stay with me.