Author Topic: A Ninth Viewing Observation  (Read 258103 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #360 on: January 10, 2018, 07:43:43 pm »
Good question, and welcome back, BBM victim. For some reason, people equate the outer furniture with the inner furniture. I remember my aunt talking to my mother one time about a visit to my aunt's sister (another aunt). Apparently Aunt #1 was concerned about Aunt #2 who lived in Boston alone, so Aunt #1 rounded up another aunt or two and went off to visit. They were very impressed to find Aunt #2 living in a well-furnished apartment. But, when Aunt #2 went out of the room they snooped around and found that all of the furniture was new and still had price tags on it! This says to me that Aunt #2 was so concerned about keeping up appearances that she probably went into debt to give the facade that she had a prosperous and reputable life. That's just one aspect of furniture.

The other thing is what Ennis says next. He says, "When you don't got nothing, you don't need nothing." Which means, exactly, that when you lose the wish to win other's approval with your material trappings, then all of the other materialist cravings fall away. Ennis had truly learned the meaning of life, which is to love and be loved. And, that's it.  :'( :-*

Yes, I did see Manchester By the Sea. Yes, Lee is a real Ennis-like character, scarred by the experience he went through when he was young. I don't know if I could say more about it without spoilers. Another similarity is, of course, the presence of our own Michelle Williams, as a mother again.
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Offline BBM_victim

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #361 on: January 10, 2018, 08:41:32 pm »
Hey, Front-Ranger!

Hope you're doing fine :).

Thanks a lot for your story! It's really funny how i have not encountered this furniture issue anywhere else in my own personal life. This is probably also the reason why it stands out for me so much.

I wonder whether Ennis cared about materialist stuff at all. I think he never really pursued any of his own wishes or dreams. Did he have any at all? Meeting up with Jack seems rather to be a necessity which kept him alive than a "pleasure" event. Like eating after you have almost starved. Hope you get what i mean.
I don't know whether marriage and having kids was any dream of his - i actually doubt so. I think he was just fulfilling the norm, acting like he was supposed to be. I think he never had enough courage to even think about what he actually wanted in life. The man was living on auto-pilot and only felt truly alive when being with Jack. That's how i see it.

So, maybe the furniture thing was also kind of sign of his "awakening", giving up keeping appearances, living how he truly felt instead of fulfilling other people's expectations. What do you think?

Offline serious crayons

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #362 on: January 10, 2018, 09:31:46 pm »
I find this conversation fascinating because I once interviewed a furniture-less man.

This man had done time in prison, I'm not sure what for, but he'd been out for some some years and had spent that time trying to help his son, a young teenager, straighten up. The dad could see the boy was getting into trouble (and with it, potential danger) -- skipping school, failing classes, hanging out with questionable kids. The dad tried to get the kid to follow the rules with various tactics, including some that sounded overly harsh to me, but he obviously loved the boy and was desperate.

I was there because the kid, at 14, had been killed in a gang-related drive-by shooting.

The kid's mom, by the way, mostly refused to talk to me, which I'd never blame a grieving parent for doing. But she did say, very vehemently, that her son was a good boy and would never get into any kind of trouble.

The dad was very nice and open to talking and seemed to speak from the heart.

When I interviewed him, we sat in the living room of his apartment on those folding aluminum lawn chairs with the nylon webbing. They were just about the only things in the room.




Offline BBM_victim

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #363 on: January 11, 2018, 10:30:07 pm »
Hey serious crayons!

Thanks for joining in :) and thanks for your story, too :).

Well, but apart from the fact that his son was killed and he possibly felt guilty for it (which is horrible enough, of course) what do we know about his living arrangements? Maybe he was about to move or just moved in? And was his apartment consisting of only one room? Have you seen the others if there were more?

I have another story - still when i was a student ;p. I lived 6 months in Finland with my (Japanese) boyfriend (now husband) because i studied one semester at the university there. It was in a small town, kind of "in the middle of nowhere", you had to walk 15min through woods to get to the next supermarket. The apartment we lived in had two rooms and a kitchen (again, a build-in one). One room was supposed to be the living room, the other one the bedroom. But it was all too big for us. We spent most of our time in the bedroom where we had all our belongings and the living room stayed completely empty till the end. When we had guests we cooked for we spread some blankets on the floor and did kind of a picnic in the living room, but nobody felt funny :D.

Again, maybe it was the lack of money, maybe just the fact that we stayed there for 6 months only, or maybe we are some sort of "spartan" people, who don't need much to be happy [hey, is that what Ennis meant in a way??], but it never crossed our mind that furniture - or lack of it - might tell anything about our mental state.

When i think about it, i have a work colleague, who moved to Singapore for 1 year and he arranged one whole container for his belongings, where he also shipped his bed. When i asked him whether he cannot buy any beds in Singapore he said "That's my bed. I can't live without my bed."
???? I still don't get it.... But i guess it's only me...

Offline Corax

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #364 on: January 12, 2018, 02:22:41 am »
When I had finished university, I moved into a small flat in the center of the city. Since I didn't have much money at first, I didn't buy much furniture. I had a bed, a weird closet ( the one some people use in the attic as a second closet) and some cushions that I used as sofas. My parents were always bugging me to buy representable funiture. Me and my friends liked it that way though. It was okay.

Some years ago, friends of mine moved to the U.S. for 2 years. They brought  almost all their furniture to Boston. It was a very big shipping container that was full to capacity. Like BBM victim I asked them why they didn't intend to buy things there. They told me that they wanted to be surrounded by THEIR furniture. I really didn't get it, especially since they didn't sell their house and came back twice a year for holiday.
When they moved back to Germany, they had two shipping containers, a big/ normal one and a small one. The small one  included a car, a motorbike and three bikes. Funny

Offline serious crayons

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #365 on: January 12, 2018, 11:24:29 am »
Thanks for joining in :) and thanks for your story, too :).

I love the direction this thread is going (fast or slow  :laugh:).

Quote
Well, but apart from the fact that his son was killed and he possibly felt guilty for it (which is horrible enough, of course) what do we know about his living arrangements? Maybe he was about to move or just moved in? And was his apartment consisting of only one room? Have you seen the others if there were more?

This happened long before BBM came out, let alone MbtS, so I didn't make the direct connection between having no furniture and having grief and pain and regrets. Still, the fact that he had no furniture seemed important enough that I mentioned it in the story I wrote based on the interview.

I don't know how long he'd been in the apartment. Our conversation focused primarily on his son and their relationship. But it sounded like he'd been out of prison for a while (he may have told me, but I can't remember -- probably some years) and so probably had lived there, if not since then, at least for a while. If he were about to move out or had just moved in and that's why he had no furniture, I think he would have mentioned it, because that's just what you would do, right? If you normally had a fully furnished living room you wouldn't lead a stranger, a newspaper reporter, into a room with two lawn chairs without saying, "Sorry about the lack of furniture -- I'm moving to a different place" or whatever.

I also don't know about the other rooms, but I would be pretty surprised if the living room were that sparse but then the other rooms were lavishly furnished.

I don't know if he felt guilty so much as frustrated and in pain because he really had tried hard to turn the boy around. But I'm sure the fact that he had a prison record of his own probably made him feel somewhat more guilt than otherwise.

Maybe the furniture and the son had nothing to do with each other, for all I know. I just think it's interesting to recall this guy in the context of what you said about BBM and MbtS.



Offline BBM_victim

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #366 on: January 13, 2018, 08:43:19 am »
When I had finished university, I moved into a small flat in the center of the city. Since I didn't have much money at first, I didn't buy much furniture. I had a bed, a weird closet ( the one some people use in the attic as a second closet) and some cushions that I used as sofas. My parents were always bugging me to buy representable funiture. Me and my friends liked it that way though. It was okay.

Some years ago, friends of mine moved to the U.S. for 2 years. They brought  almost all their furniture to Boston. It was a very big shipping container that was full to capacity. Like BBM victim I asked them why they didn't intend to buy things there. They told me that they wanted to be surrounded by THEIR furniture. I really didn't get it, especially since they didn't sell their house and came back twice a year for holiday.
When they moved back to Germany, they had two shipping containers, a big/ normal one and a small one. The small one  included a car, a motorbike and three bikes. Funny


Hey, Corax :)
I think we're definitely on the same Wellenlaenge ;) 'cause i'm German, too.
Is our lack of understanding this furniture issue a German thing while making a point out of it an American one? Were your friends German? Really, my personal impression of my colleague is that it's kind of a status issue - "i'm moving internationally, i need a container for my stuff"  ::) I personally feel more free when i have little stuff around me. It has also all sorts of advantages, too - you don't spend much money, you don't spend much time on tidying it up, you have more room in your apartment / house... i just have more room to breathe when my place is not crammed with stuff.

Offline morrobay

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #367 on: January 13, 2018, 12:57:14 pm »
When I had finished university, I moved into a small flat in the center of the city. Since I didn't have much money at first, I didn't buy much furniture. I had a bed, a weird closet ( the one some people use in the attic as a second closet) and some cushions that I used as sofas. My parents were always bugging me to buy representable funiture. Me and my friends liked it that way though. It was okay.

Some years ago, friends of mine moved to the U.S. for 2 years. They brought  almost all their furniture to Boston. It was a very big shipping container that was full to capacity. Like BBM victim I asked them why they didn't intend to buy things there. They told me that they wanted to be surrounded by THEIR furniture. I really didn't get it, especially since they didn't sell their house and came back twice a year for holiday.
When they moved back to Germany, they had two shipping containers, a big/ normal one and a small one. The small one  included a car, a motorbike and three bikes. Funny


Just jumping in here...If I were to move overseas for two years, I doubt I would ship my furniture, only to ship it back to the US.  I think I could survive for a time without my stuff.   ;)

I don't know how old you are, or how long out of university...do you still have same setup?  I was perfectly happy having only bedroom furniture throughout my 20s and early 30s, as I was usually sharing an apartment in an expensive state, California.  



The other thing is what Ennis says next. He says, "When you don't got nothing, you don't need nothing." Which means, exactly, that when you lose the wish to win other's approval with your material trappings, then all of the other materialist cravings fall away. Ennis had truly learned the meaning of life, which is to love and be loved. And, that's it.  :'( :-*


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Offline Corax

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #368 on: January 14, 2018, 07:18:22 am »
Just jumping in here...If I were to move overseas for two years, I doubt I would ship my furniture, only to ship it back to the US.  I think I could survive for a time without my stuff.   ;)

I don't know how old you are, or how long out of university...do you still have same setup?  I was perfectly happy having only bedroom furniture throughout my 20s and early 30s, as I was usually sharing an apartment in an expensive state, California.  


This.

Another reason why I was a bit stunned was that they would have had the opportunity to rent a nice house complete with furniture there ;D .

I'm in my early 40s and of course I live in a house with a lot of furniture now
. With having children we bought more and more things over the years.
However I guess I'd rather leave some stuff behind than shipping it around the world and back.
And I'm still not the type to care about curtains, cushions, rugs, decorations and such. My daughter and my son have to do that  :laugh:

Offline Corax

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Re: A Ninth Viewing Observation
« Reply #369 on: January 14, 2018, 07:32:06 am »
Hey, Corax :)
I think we're definitely on the same Wellenlaenge ;) 'cause i'm German, too.
Is our lack of understanding this furniture issue a German thing while making a point out of it an American one? Were your friends German? Really, my personal impression of my colleague is that it's kind of a status issue - "i'm moving internationally, i need a container for my stuff"  ::) I personally feel more free when i have little stuff around me. It has also all sorts of advantages, too - you don't spend much money, you don't spend much time on tidying it up, you have more room in your apartment / house... i just have more room to breathe when my place is not crammed with stuff.

Hi BBMVictim,
Nice to meet another German member  ;D

Yes my friends are German. Since he works in an international company, they are going to move to Asia next year....

Some of my colleagues and friends seem to care a lot about how their house is furnished and decorated. Sometimes I think they only get it decorated for their visitors.
So I don't know if it is a typical German thing not to care so much about it.