ordimåry

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Happy new year everyone!
This month, we visit the movie that made me sleep with a chair behind the door.

Also, lots and lots of random thought processes…..

Old films were never my cup of tea. I used to find the idea of watching something filmed ten years ago utterly boring: the quality of the picture, the sounds and the set up.

I do of course appreciate most of the times the quality and how meaningful these movies are. All I mean is that I need some convincing beforehand in order to sit down and devote myself to it.  Over the weekend my boyfriend Matt managed to persuade me to watch the movie “the shining”; a Stanley Kubrick ‘80s thriller with Jack Nicholson in the lead role. I had never seen a Kubrick film before, but I know that he has the reputation of being surrealistically- time -travellingly weird and these are only a few things I want a movie not to have in order to watch it.

I admit, I just don’t easily get things. I get lost and finally sleepy.
But I agreed because I had no better suggestion and IMDB rated it with a generous 8.4. Matt has seen the shining before and had warned me it was “quite scary”. This intrigued me more. “I can handle it” I said looking quite confident.

We finished dinner and started watching this 2½ hour movie while enjoying a Cornetto ice cream. The plot is easy to follow:

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) becomes winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer’s block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and his son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who is plagued by psychic premonitions. As Jack’s writing goes nowhere and Danny’s visions become more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel’s dark secrets and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hell-bent on terrorizing his family

My first impressions were positive. As I said, the plot was simple and didn’t leave much space for getting lost. The photography was impressive, the hotel was iconic and at times the setting reminded me of Wes Anderson films.

After half an hour of commenting on all these I fell asleep. I  couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. This film wasn’t going anywhere .I pretended to be answering questions and commenting occasionally but the game was over for me.

1½ hours later I decided it was time for me to admit defeat to quality cinema and to drag myself to bed.

Sunday, I woke up and one of the first things I did is to suggest finishing this 8.4/10 movie over breakfast. Matt unwillingly agreed as he had only 30 minutes left to finish the movie from last night. We cooked a nice bowl of warm porridge and surrendered to the splatter of it.  Jack Nicholson grew crazier and crazier as well as his child. The wife was the only one that remained seemingly sane but to me she came across as the crazier of the two from the beginning.
What followed was beyond my imagination: chasing in a maze with an axe, blood and agony.

” Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. You didn’t let me finish my sentence. I said, I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in!”.

I removed the bowl of porridge off my hands  and I didn’t touch it again ( it’s pretty rare phenomenon for me , not to finish my food and even worse- my  breakfast ).

I hid myself under the t-shirt I was wearing and kept asking Matt how long we still had until the end. My heart was beating like crazy and when the movie finally came to an end I felt relieved.

“It was a really good movie” I said after a while, I could still hear my heart beating.  And it was.  Later that evening, when I came back to my room I locked the door and placed a chair behind it.
According to the movie, when one possesses the shining it means she/he can communicate with the other party who shines -without talking. Sort of the thing I sometimes do with my favourites or wish I could do more with friends when busy lives keep us apart. This movie has brought to the surface subconscious feelings I have forgotten about:

The simultaneous burst of laughter with your friends when you see something that reminds you of the past, without a word being said. Thinking of friends with whom you rarely talk to now while commuting, but they must know you think about them loads.

Shining is cool and I want to shine more. But now, on to the next one!

Image credits:Steven Lin

The story below explains…..

• why to never follow food trends
•  how to get over the  birthday blues

PS- I never went to a sex party.

 

I hate birthdays. Its the anticipation that something gigantic will happen on that special day (for months before it comes), secretly organised to  celebrate the existence of my life on earth *serious moment of self –adoration*  –  which lets me down so much and makes me look ungrateful to all my friends and family.

Everyone who knows me well enough, expects to hear a tearful /angry voice over the phone so they say what they need to say and try to hang up as soon as possible.

On the day, I am annoyed because they wished me too early, because they wished  me too late, because I didn’t get a MacBook, because I don’t want a MacBook, because I exist.

Anyway, that kind birthday feeling changed for a one off- time almost three years ago.

Three years ago, I decided to change many things.

Veganism and gluten free  diets were trending at the time and my body weight was trending (exponentially) as well. Hence I thought, that if I cut down meat, dairy and stuffed myself with organic artisan  tahini,  organic almond butter and artisan coconut jam  things would go back to normal (for the record, I never lost weight).

I knew very well though, that this couldn’t go on for ever, as one day I would go back home and my mother wouldn’t consider me as a full-time adult with own dietary requirements but would  forcefully impose her own rules.

Its easy to imagine the sequence of events in the island: Me announcing my decision to be a vegan—> her looking closely into my eyes and stretching them, deciding they look extremely pale inside—>  dramatically accepting I suffer from severe anemia and have extremely low ferritin levels —> grabs the phone and demands my father to top up the meat in the fridge.

My decision to become vegan wasn’t warmly welcomed well from friends and colleagues. To be honest, I struggled to accept it too. Many times, especially after nights out I found myself acting like a drug addict searching for the good stuff in the cupboards.  I knew damn well my flatmate always kept a good supply of biscuits and doritos. Quickly scanning the labels I could see “contains traces of milk” and then would quickly brush my teeth and go to bed. I always stayed strong to my new regime and that was giving me confidence.

The first week of December, I turned 26.  My friend from Paris decided to visit for my birthday and spend a long weekend in London. The day started with a surprise breakfast with all my friends and lots of presents , a nice crisp walk in  the park and plans for a massive night out( I never agreed to this).

I am not a “nights out person” simply because usually I’m passed out before the bouncer arrives at the club, or before the DJ decides the playlist for the night.  Before I had worked out what the plans were and how I could ditch them as subtly as possible – I found myself in a  fancy club full of people dancing.

Trying to get into the groove and adjust to the environment without freaking out , its a very hard task but surely becomes easier after a few drinks.

“This is a girls nights out, stop yawning and enjoy”, I was thinking while I could feel my tummy signalling how hungry I was.
Suddenly and out of the blue, a tall man approached one of my friends and whispered something . We all followed him without questioning and ended up in a secret area of the club  .Later we realised they were struggling to fill the VIP area and the reward for us was free alcohol.

The truth is that no one really cared about us that night. We were trying to figure out what the hell is going on when a massive plate of ribs arrived from nowhere. Without second thoughts, I attacked.

I attacked like a shark, quickly and ruthlessly, trying to eat as quickly as possible with my hands and not caring I was eating other people’s food. Just like an animal .
‘ I have never seen a woman eating so much meat’ – said a man to one of my friends.
I stopped when I was about to get sick and went to the bathroom to wash the grease off everywhere. Looking myself in the mirror I saw no feeling of guilt, just a pair of greedy full with satisfaction.

I returned in the room and found my friends hugged singing Abba in the karaoke room. I rushed to join them and after some time we were on the upper deck of a night bus-laughing all about it.

That night, I felt I got exactly what I needed. And as simplistic as this may sound I felt the happiness that no MacBook would ever give to me, soaking to my bones.

I woke up, with the certain feeling I should return to my normal diet.  Where there any lessons learned? Do these lessons relate to my birthday? I am not sure . Possibly I enjoy punishing myself too much, and why do so, since life is too short? ….. and why are the people working in health food shops always so rude?

And yes, I admit it. I missed Tesco’s all the way.

My name is Mary. Mary Ordimåry. Or as I used to call myself in notes I  wrote as a 12 year old, “a simple Mary”. My dad found them destroyed in the bin (what was he trying to find?)and read them out loud to me years later.

The last 4 years I have been living in the UK. The first one, studying in Edinburgh and the rest trying to survive in London. I studied economics but not sure why and how I completed this degree, I did study a lot but every day I am at work I keep challenging myself for my choices.  I still wonder why after 5 years of studying the sound of many words such as: stock, securities, bonds paralyse me.

I work for the British Government-and the classic line to this is “are you a spy/member of the Greek mafia?’’. I hate to respond to this, as much as I hate pronouncing my surname in public.

I am a slave to my routine and I hate to divert. Like to exercise, sleep on a specific time, not snoozing the alarm ,smile , being overly dramatic about life .But that’s enough about me .Ok, since this is my newsletter I will tell you two things I love and two things I hate and that’s it ( I always wanted to do that):

Likes:

• Anything healthy

• Music

Dislikes:

• Anything unhealthy

• Silence (not awkward silence)

Through this newsletter, I will try to communicate things as I feel, see and experience them. Is an opportunity for me to complain online, discuss on what excites me, embarrassing moments, trips, movie reviews, book reviews and much more.

To be on this mailing list you must:

1. be over 21 and below 80

2. be open to sarcasm and new life experiences

3. Every so often, enjoy reading while: taking your lunch break, commuting or being on the phone.

To the meaty part now, future discussion topics include:

• Trip to Japan and how I interacted with the Japanese

• Failing in an interview & how to deal with it ( or how to spend 2 months being depressed about it)

• Living in London & being unable to escape

• Starting yoga and being competitive

• Starting meditation

• Interacting with the Brits: what do they say and what do they really mean

• Learning the Ukulele

• Doing unnecessary socialising at a conference

• How to work on small talk or as my favourite Larry David says “elevate it to medium talk”: break the ice.

• Book and album reviews.

• Much more.