Portrait

my eyes were shut, my body weightless. i was told to imagine a place that was mine. mine and mine only. it could be anything, i was told. anywhere.

i saw it so well. a huge, well lit place with beautiful polished wooden floors and high celings. it’s perfectly square. the walls are white. gleaming, the sun is bright and warm. the floors are magnificent. i touch the wood and it is smooth, easy. the ceilings were so high and there were so many windows, so much so that they lined each of the four walls, the room was flooded with light. on the beams above, there were old fans and halogen lamps, aimed carefully in each direction.

there were mirrors, long, perfect mirrors, all on one wall. there was a barre, too. against the wall opposite the mirrors. outside my place, i could hear the rolling waves. i could see the blue, blue sea and smell the salt, feel the air. music was playing, sounding out with crystal clarity and resonating wonderfully everywhere. it makes my limbs move, it makes my feet dance across the wooden floors and it makes my arms lift up to touch the high ceilings.

when i look at myself in the mirror, i know what to expect. i see this person, all dressed in black, tights and leotard. her hair is pulled back very severely, out of her face, onto her head. when she moves, everything is reflected in the mirror, in her eyes. every ripple of each muscle, every crinkling of her skin. she can be happy here. because she is a dancer. a dancer.

1. Popcorn or candy?
popcorn. salted.

2. Name a movie you’ve been meaning to see forever
godspell.

3. You are given the power to recall one Oscar: Who loses theirs and to whom?
i could name quite a few here, i always disagree with most of the oscars. but, wait. sean penn should give up his 2003 best actor in a leading role academy award (for mystic river) to johnny depp (for pirates of the caribbean)!

4. Steal one costume from a movie for your wadrobe. Which will it be?
can it be a wig? natalie portman’s pink one from ‘closer’.

5. Your favorite film franchise is…
i suppose ‘the lord of the rings’.

6. Invite five movie people over for dinner. Who are they? Why’d you invite them? What do you feed them?
phew, i could answer this one in my sleep. first i would feed them good wine and baked crab. i’d invite : uma thurman, because she’s just gorgeous (in every sense of the word), quentin tarantino, because he’s intelligent and presumably very, very funny (and he won’t be bored because uma wil be there, too), johnny depp, because he is god, jerome robbins because he was my childhood infatuation and tom cruise, so i could poison him.

7. What is the appropriate punishment for people who answer cell phones in the movie theater?
take your goddamn cell phone, and since it’s so important, shove it up your ass and leave it there till the movie is over. and for every movie ever after.

8. Choose a female bodyguard:
i agree with arun completely, the bride from ‘kill bill’. maybe mi ho from ’sin city’.

9. What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen in a movie?
the first thing that springs to mind is the original ‘the exorcist’. and for all the scary moments in that film, the one i remember in stark detail still, is her face. her deformed, evil, bloodied up face.

10. Your favorite genre (excluding comedy and drama) is?
i guess i’m not too picky. all i look for is something that grabs me. these have varied in genre.

11. You are given the power to greenlight movies at a major studio for one year. How do you wield this power?
fire tom cruise from every leading role he had ever since he made ‘magnolia’ (this meaning, most importantly that he wouldn’t have made ‘vanilla sky’ and ‘minority report’.)

12. Bonnie or Clyde?
bonnie parker all the way.

and i tag : theena and rhythmic diaspora. is that enough?

i’ve been called a ‘child’ negatively in my life many times, mostly by my mother who thinks this is the worst possible insult ever (and perhaps it is!), and i don’t mind it so much because i think it can work as the best scapegoat sometimes. but i can’t be an adult and a child alternatively, when it is convenient for me. in the eyes of many, i am still a child. my mother thinks so, my family thinks so, my teachers think so. in the eyes of still many more, i’m an adult. my friends think so, my peers think so, my mother thinks so. it’s a difficult place to be in, essentially i’ve lived relatively very little, and therefore can only know a little more than a child, can only live a little better than a child. but i’ve also grown up in an atmosphere where independence was crucial ; think on your own, work on your own, do stuff on your own, and this has resulted in me becoming an adult far sooner than i expected. i’m not a very good adult yet, but i’ll be better soon. meanwhile, everyone has to remember that i am trying.

my life and opinions are not limited to this blog. there’s a lot i don’t record here, a lot that doesn’t go down in writing. but i think the information i provide here is sufficient for you to gather that i am not an idiot. i’m not, really. but i can’t prove this to those that don’t care to listen.

i’ve been recently perturbed by ashanthi’s responses to my posts ; particularly her last comment here, where she called me ‘child’, ‘brat’, ‘moron’ because she thinks she knows to enough to correctly assume those things about me.

there’s a few things i clarify time and time again, but let me do it now again, just to be sure.

a) i’m not a representative. i speak for myself solely. i don’t represent anyone else’s ideals or opinions. i write about how i feel, what i think, in the way that i want to write it. i don’t have an editor, i write and overlook my own posts and therefore, they are not always succinct and perfect. i have a tendency to get my emotions and passions about the things i address caught in the words i use to express them, and this usually dilutes their power and meaning. however, i try my very best not to misinform those of you that read here ; i don’t blog information unless i’m absolutely sure it’s accurate. so far, i think this has worked. tell me if you feel it hasn’t.

b) this blog is not a political commentary. you want politics? visit nittewa. he hasn’t updated in awhile, but that’s a good example for a blog that’s dedicated to political and current affairs. portrait, is not one of these. it’s a personal record, an online journal even, and whatever i blog is related to how i was feeling then and there. so don’t expect me to save the world from all it’s troubles, i do care, but i’m not the desginated saviour. i’m not a committed activist, i’m the child of one. this still allows me chances to do something in my own way, chances that i never pass up. and just because i don’t talk about them here, it doesn’t mean i’m not doing them or that i don’t give a shit.

so don’t judge me. i, just as any other human, have my own problems right now. these take time and effort to solve and solving these are my main priority. perhaps later on in my lfie, i can do more to help the pathetic situation we’re living in now, but for now, i’m doing all i can. don’t cricify me just because i’m not solving everyone’s problems or just because seemingly, i don’t mind the terrible way things are right now. i DO mind, i DO care. i may be a child, but this doesn’t shut my eyes to the world around me. this doesn’t spare me the knowledge that we are living in a time of war and terror.

now, forget it. move on.

it seems that no matter how many people i’ve met, there will always be those that just shock me. many say that this post (and this one, i can’t tell which is worse) shouldn’t be all that shocking, but i’m simply hysterical with just that : shock.

i’ve spent my entire life around people who’ve done and felt many strange things, people who’ve known other strange people and people who’ve experienced things that most of us never will. largely because of this, i suppose, i learnt early on that there is nothing that perfectly normal people aren’t capable of. but still, as much as i hear about the worlds disillusionment with itself all the time, as much as i hear and see people who are blissfully blind to a lot of harsh realities, there are still a few that manage to turn my head, and my stomach.

this guy seems to think that we all need to join hands in helping the poor homosexuals, the damn mislead sinners. sigh, what a pity. this guy not only insists over and over again that he does not hate homosexuals, oh no, but he only feels that they are sick freaks that need to be treated and ‘put right’. i especially detest the part where he compares homosexuals to drug addicts and claims that, just like drug addicts, they can and need to be reformed. he says further, that same sex marriages are abnormal and children shouldn’t be exposed to same sex parents.

as much as i call people like these bigots, i suppose in my own way, i am one too, because understanding people who think like that honestly is simply beyond me.

we’re still stuck in a rut, folks. homophobia is as bad as racism or facism or totalitarianism. its hurtful and regressive and destructive. it harms everyone; those that it’s directed at and those that it’s felt by. we shout about how we’ve come so far. we can clone animals and cure diseases and send rockets into space, but we cannot for the life of us accept those who choose differently from us. we live in an era of youtube and revolution, of poverty and war, of rapid progression and still many more problems, and we can’t deal with the simplest of things long enough to focus on the bigger issues. we want world peace and togetherness but we can’t stand those that sleep with someone of the same sex.

we try so hard to promote feelings of understanding and accpetance. we go out of our way to let those that have spent aeons being marginalized know that it’s ok now. but it’s not. we support them to come out of the closet in hope that they can live free and fruitful lives like the rest of us, but we’re helping them come out into a world of stagnation and moral righteousness, into a world where we still think god hates gays and into a world where there’s people that want to ’save’ them, not support them.

who gave anyone the right to tell someone else what to do, what to choose? who gave anyone the right to stop someone else from choosing, no matter how uniquely they choose? who gave anyone the right to define normality in a world of constant change? who gave anyone the right to stand on a moral high horse and not only condemn, but pity those that are different?

homosexuality is nothing new, true sri lankan. it’s been around since the beginning of time. go read up on your history. no one ever needed to be ’saved’ from it. they didn’t need it then, and they don’t need it now.

it’s not some disease. it’s something that makes millions out there happy, whole, complete. so what bit you?

as i stood, one face among possibly another two thousand, one person in a sea of people, and we walked and walked, i realized that raviraj’s wife is a teacher in my school. it struck me powerfully, this rather useless bit of information.

and so we walked, from one place to another. i was only there because my mother insisted that i was there, but at the end, i was glad to have been there. inconsequential as i was, just another face among possibly another two thousand, one person in a sea of people, i was glad.

this isn’t accounted for. a man, father, a husband, a son, is shot dead and there’s no one to be held responsible.

he wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. but we have to keep getting angry about it. we have to keep questioning it and asking for justice. every single time. because if we don’t, it means that we are accepting it, learning to live with it. it means we are making it a normality in our lives, we are no longer regarding it with surprise and shock. we have to keep caring and walking. we have to keep wanting to.

this is attempt number 2, for an essay that will be the right one to send with my applications for university. the majority’s opinion about the last one seemed to be that i wasn’t saying enough about myself exclusively. someone told me that i need to be more confident, boastful, even. that i need to tell them WHY they want me. tell me what you think about this. personally, as an essay i don’t like this as much as ‘the topic of my choice’. i really don’t know what the requirements are for an application essay : what do they look for? what do they want? what grabs them? another someone said that in an indirect way, the previous essay said more about me than this one does, even though this one is specifically about me. i couldn’t agree more, but that could be because i truly loathe writing about myself.

When I was 8, and needed, more than once, to write an essay on “Myself”, I found it sufficient to write nice, succinct sentences stating My Name, My Age, My Sibling’s Name. The need seemed purely informational and the task, simple. My understanding of an essay was a) stating fact and b) ‘sticking’ to the topic. It wasn’t about me, my writing, how I felt, what I wanted to say. It was about Myself. How much more gloriously convenient could a topic be?

However, now, as an 18 year old on the brink of university entrance and the threshold of all things unpredictable and exciting alike, I struggle to write an essay about Myself. I can’t decide. Which things should I tell you? Which things will engage you; give you a clue as to who I am? What do I think about myself? How do I express myself? Which things about me are more important, are nicer, and are better than the others?

I could tell you about how I love to dance; how, after being dragged to dancing classes routinely every Saturday by my mother, I grew to love it and wanted to do little else. How, from the age of seven, I have danced, and how, when I am onstage, I feel like I am where I am supposed to be. I could tell you about the all the shows I’ve danced in, all the very special teachers I’ve learnt from, all the times in which I’ve dabbled with choreography. I could tell you about how I love to talk; how, that love combined with my keen sense of opinion and expression, moulded me into a worthy debater at a young age. How I was the youngest ever student in the history of my school to be made the captain of our senior debating team, how my team went on to win many debates and how I was made ‘Best Captain’ once. I could tell you how I love the stage; how, I’ve acted in many different plays and worked backstage on numerous occasions too, how I’ve loved being stage manager as much as I’ve loved acting and how thrilled I am to have been cast in Enda Walsh’s Chatroom, directed by Tracy Holsinger.

I could tell you how I love experience; how, I’ve worked with children who were affected by the tsunami in my country, hosting art and drama workshops for them in their camps. How, I’ve shown films to female inmates in the Welikada Prison, how I’ve taught dancing to young, female orphans, how I’ve found so much in common with a six year old who could neither hear nor talk.

I could tell you how I love to write; how, surreptitiously, it is my one passion, it is the one thing above all else that I want to be able to do really well. How, I want everyone to know me as a writer and nothing else. How, I pray for the discipline and talent it will take to one day write something worth publishing. How, sometimes I struggle with the want to write when nothing flows, and sometimes I can’t stop the words, tumbling out of me in waves, unstoppable and elating.

This is who I am, perhaps, who I wish to be, perhaps, who I wish I am. Besides the dancing, the debating, the invigorating community work, the stage-addiction and writing, there is little about me that I could say in words. There is that immense passion I feel for those I love and respect, my friends and family, they who make my life what it is. There is that great vigor with which I can convince anyone to listen to what I am saying, that unshakable faith with which I believe in my perspectives and views. Underneath all that, there is that genuine enthusiasm for change, for admitting my wrongs and learning more. There is that fearlessness, yet that nostalgia, with which I face the future and leave the past behind me.

I am young, eager, determined and strong. I’m not eight years old anymore, and am no longer satisfied with telling you the basics. I’ll tell you what you need to know, but secretly I want you to really know me, not just the facts but how it feels. Secretly, I want you to look inside, not just at the name tag but at the desire to walk tall. And more secretly yet, I want you to like me, to respect me, not just the things I do, but who I am.

these are parts of arundhati roy’s speech upon accepting the sydney peace prize in 2004. she is an absolutely brilliant writer, and has written some of the most succinct, heartbreakingly true essays on the US invasion of iraq ever written. i think we all need to hear someone like this speak once in awhile, and in the light of the discussions on saddam’s hanging on various blogs, i thought it might be interesting to backstrack a few years to when the iraqi invasion had just begun, to when it first started happening. because we seem to have forgotten.

It might seem ironic that a person who spends most of her time thinking of strategies of resistance and plotting to disrupt the putative peace, is given a peace prize. You must remember that I come from an essentially feudal country - and there are few things more disquieting than a feudal peace. Sometimes there’s truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.

It has been only a few weeks since a majority of Australians voted to re-elect Prime Minister John Howard who, among other things, led Australia to participate in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it.

Until recently, while there was a careful record of how many US soldiers had lost their lives, we had no idea of how many Iraqis had been killed. US General Tommy Franks said “We don’t do body counts” (meaning Iraqi body counts). He could have added “We don’t do the Geneva Convention either.” A new, detailed study, fast-tracked by the Lancet medical journal and extensively peer reviewed, estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the 2003 invasion. That’s one hundred halls full of people - like this one. That’s one hundred halls full of friends, parents, siblings, colleagues, lovers.like you. The difference is that there aren’t many children here today–let’s not forget Iraq’s children. Technically that bloodbath is called precision bombing. In ordinary language, it’s called butchering,

Most of this is common knowledge now. Those who support the invasion and vote for the invaders cannot take refuge in ignorance. They must truly believe that this epic brutality is right and just or, at the very least, acceptable because it’s in their interest.

The UN’s Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said he found no evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Every scrap of evidence produced by the US and British governments was found to be false - whether it was reports of Saddam Hussein buying uranium from Niger, or the report produced by British Intelligence which was discovered to have been plagiarized from an old student dissertation.

So the ‘civilized’ ‘modern’ world - built painstakingly on a legacy of genocide, slavery and colonialism - now controls most of the world’s oil. And most of the world’s weapons, most of the world’s money, and most of the world’s media. The embedded, corporate media in which the doctrine of Free Speech has been substituted by the doctrine of Free If You Agree Speech.

Visitors to Australia like myself, are expected to answer the following question when they fill in the visa form: Have you ever committed or been involved in the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity or human rights? Would George Bush and Tony Blair get visas to Australia? Under the tenets of International Law they must surely qualify as war criminals.

However, to imagine that the world would change if they were removed from office is naive. The tragedy is that their political rivals have no real dispute with their policies. The fire and brimstone of the US election campaign was about who would make a better ‘Commander-in-Chief’ and a more effective manager of the American Empire. Democracy no longer offers voters real choice. Only specious choice.

Even though no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq - stunning new evidence has revealed that Saddam Hussein was planning a weapons programme. (Like I was planning to win an Olympic Gold in synchronized swimming.) Thank goodness for the doctrine of pre-emptive strike. God knows what other evil thoughts he harbored - sending Tampax in the mail to American senators, or releasing female rabbits in burqas into the London underground. No doubt all will be revealed in the free and fair trial of Saddam Hussein that’s coming up soon in the New Iraq.

All except the chapter in which we would learn of how the US and Britain plied him with money and material assistance at the time he was carrying out murderous attacks on Iraqi Kurds and Shias. All except the chapter in which we would learn that a 12,000 page report submitted by the Saddam Hussein government to the UN, was censored by the United States because it lists twenty-four US corporations that participated in Iraq’s pre-Gulf War nuclear and conventional weapons programme. (They include Bechtel, DuPont, , Eastman Kodak, Hewlett Packard, International Computer Systems and Unisys.)

So Iraq has been ‘liberated.’ Its people have been subjugated and its markets have been ‘freed’. That’s the anthem of neo-liberalism. Free the markets. Screw the people.

The real tragedy is that most people in the world are trapped between the horror of a putative peace and the terror of war. Those are the two sheer cliffs we’re hemmed in by. The question is: How do we climb out of this crevasse?

For those who are materially well-off, but morally uncomfortable, the first question you must ask yourself is do you really want to climb out of it? How far are you prepared to go? Has the crevasse become too comfortable?

If you really want to climb out, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that the advance party began the climb some time ago. They’re already half way up. Thousands of activists across the world have been hard at work preparing footholds and securing the ropes to make it easier for the rest of us. There isn’t only one path up. There are hundreds of ways of doing it. There are hundreds of battles being fought around the world that need your skills, your minds, your resources. No battle is irrelevant. No victory is too small.

The bad news is that colorful demonstrations, weekend marches and annual trips to the World Social Forum are not enough. There have to be targeted acts of real civil disobedience with real consequences. Maybe we can’t flip a switch and conjure up a revolution. But there are several things we could do. For example, you could make a list of those corporations who have profited from the invasion of Iraq and have offices here in Australia. You could name them, boycott them, occupy their offices and force them out of business. If it can happen in Bolivia, it can happen in India. It can happen in Australia. Why not?

That’s only a small suggestion. But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.

The point is that the battle must be joined. As the wonderful American historian Howard Zinn put it: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

her entire speech is available here.

i read two wonderfully different posts regarding saddam hussein’s death penalty on these two blogs : married with kids and lanka libertarian.

i have a lot of mixed up, confused feelings and opinions about capital punishment, particularly the hanging of saddam hussein. morally and principally, i am personally against the death penalty. i don’t believe in justice served through the execution of someone, no matter the crimes he or she is responsible for. i believe that those that have been wronged will never be served justice, even if the wrong doer is executed. i believe that the human does things for complex reasons, things are not as black and white as we make them out to be for our convenience. i think it’s just easy for us to say ‘he deserves to die’, rather than to analyze and accept what’s really wrong ; the system is flawed, we all contribute to this never ending cycle of mistakes and hypocrisy and selfish actions. i believe that a death penalty will not fix anything. it will only result in another death, another murder, another flaw in the system we create.

i am not pro saddam hussein. he has much more blood on his hands than i even care to think about. he was a selfish despot who would have let nothing stop him for getting the unadulterated power he wanted. he has committed too many crimes to ignore, and the whole world knows this.

but what about bush? are we prepared to ignore the humongous flaws in george bush’s plan? are we willing to ignore how selfish he is, how blinded he has become by his own victory, how thoughtless he has become through his own madness? george bush is crazy. there is no other explanation. but is anyone taking him to trial? are we investigating his crimes against humanity? how long can we ignore that the moment he has to, he will pull all his troops out of iraq and leave it in the care of another despotic (if not worse) government? that he never really cared about liberating the innocent iraqi people, that it was all about his private agenda?

everyone knows that bush has long been a proponent of capital punishment. during his six years as governor of texas, 152 convicts were put to death. he is paranoid and insane and obsessed with his own power game. there will be no stopping him, there already isn’t.

saddam’s death will not only cause catastrophic consequences internationally, it will fix absolutely nothing. it will not right any of the wrongs of the past, it will not justify the US invasion of iraq, it will not make everything ok.

its a vicious cycle ; saddam hussein will die but there will always be others to replace him. there will always come others who are far worse, there will be others who will shed more blood and cause more damage and we will never know why they do it or how to stop them. crime is a complex and many layered thing. suffering is unpatchable. it is easy to see things as we see easiest ; saddam is a monster and he deserves to die. but it is childish and disillusional if we believe that it’s going to make everything right, that it is going to serve justice. it is harder, but more right, to see things as they truly are.

i have a theory that all the best band names in the world are already taken. i think everyone that’s looking for one should either stop now or settle for the less awesome one, THE one is not an option anymore because someone thought of it before you did.

A spends a lot of his time trying to think of good band names. if it’s not one band, it’s the other. as you can imagine, i am never much of any use with regards to this matter and keep making the meanest of faces everytime he suggests something.

you may think that all there is in a band name, is that it ’sounds good’, that it sounds like something people can say easily and regularly. what we often forget, or just fail to notice, is that the name gives the band a lot of advantage or disvantage, all on its own. its gives it an edge, a dimension, makes it more interesting, unusual, exciting, or not. it all depends.

but did you ever think of how ridiculous ‘the backstreet boys’ sound? would we have taken them more seriously if they had called themselves something else? and to name another from that era, ‘boyzone’. what were the ’spice girls’ thinking, awesome as they were? what about ‘the dave matthews band’, he just couldn’t be arsed, or what? what kind of name is ‘the goo goo dolls’? how can we ever forgive train, fuel, linkin park, limp bizkit, staind, korn, take that, def leppard, hoobastank, audioslave, mcfly?

what does one do when the following names are already taken? (and sometimes, the band that got it doesn’t even deserve an awesome name!)

the crash test dummies
massive attack
no doubt
rage against the machine
yeah yeah yeahs
the fray
a tribe called quest
daft punk
crowded house
the chemical brothers
pink floyd
fatboy slim
elbow
red hot chilli peppers
cake
suede
blessed union of souls
blur
gorillaz
sex pistols
alice in chains
radiohead

my list could go on…stone temple pilots, queens of the stoneage, lost prophets…but, must i? you get my gist. trust me, it’s done, over. whatever it is that you think sounds just right? it’s taken.