startling banals

Celine from 'Before Sunset' is a character I think anyone will (and should!) fall for. Julie Delpy co-wrote the screenplay/script with her screen-mate 'Jesse' Ethan Hawke & director Linklater. In this interview she talks about her passions in life, how she lives and loves. A quick imdb.com check tells us that she is directing a few movies up for release next year. The plot for one of them - 'Two Days' is really interesting and I quote it here.

2 Jours - 2 Days follows two days in the relationship of a New York based couple; a French photographer Marion and American interior designer Jack-as they attempt to re-infuse their relationship with romance by taking a vacation in Europe. Their trip to Venice didn't really work out,--they both came down with gastroenteritis. They have higher hopes for Paris. But the combination of Marion's overbearing non-English speaking parents', flirtatious ex-boyfriends', and Jack's obsession with photographing every famous Parisian tombstone and conviction that French condoms are too small, only adds fuel to the fire. Will they be able to salvage their relationship? Will they ever have sex again? Or will they merely manage to perfect the art of arguing?

And it seems that she really put her future plans in Celine's dialogues.. She is going to India - not for working on pollution due to the cotton industry but to work in a film 'Bhopal'. The interview is really great and she comes out to be the cool person we imagine she is.

In this interview she talks cheekily about Ethan Hawke..

How has Ethan changed since the first film nine years ago?

I think he’s grown tremendously. I think he was a puppy in the first film – it really felt like that way. It’s true in your early 20s women have a certain maturity that I only realize now, and even as you get into your 30s. At the time, I thought he was a great person, but kind of sometimes immature a little bit. Now [he’s] totally not and our relationship is dynamic. Now we’re both immature.

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) was a haiku poet-wanderer-monk. Like the tradition of haiku, he too made haikus from the most commonplace yet striking events around him. Haiku doesn't need many words or adjectives. And Issa rarely wrote of his feelings .. we get just glimpses of his mind scattered through his beautiful haikus mostly about his natural surroundings and the projection of his emotions to insects, birds, animals, mountains - everything that he finds around him - the ones abt frogs & sparrows are my salvation. 'The essential Issa' is a free online collection of 500 of the translator David Lanoue's favorite Issa poems.

Chiyo-ni (1703-1775) was a woman haiku poet. I like her poems too and the first haiku I ever heard was hers. I was at a friend Bijoy's house with other friends and we had some nice wine & fish and he started talking about haiku. I remember the one he read to us. It was about a woman whose child was no more and she is thinking of him. Most probably it was Chiyo-ni herself.

In what windy land
Wanders now my little dear
Dragonfly hunter

A link to her haikus on this page.