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February 10, 2008
Inspiration and The Betrothed
The writers' strike ended today. I am no great writer, but I am happy to share my latest thoughts.
I spent about half an hour the other night trying to find the name of the woman with whom Michel Gondry worked in The Science of Sleep. The woman who made all of the lovely little props and soft sculptures. I was surprised to find her name so very hard to decipher from all the movie statistics out there. Lauri Faggioni. I browsed the images on her website and was immediately renewed in my ambition to create wonderful things. Things full of wonder. Yes. Recently (and oddly enough), I was also inspired by a portion of the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. The part where she moves into the little cottage and begins cleaning it up and making it home-- that part just got to me. I want to explore and uncover and settle and sort.
One of my favorite people at work is a friendly girl who does kitchen prep. Her name is Wazhma. She is beautiful and foreign and a little shy, but very witty and fun. She speaks with an accent and sometimes I can't understand what she says, although she is fluent in English. She works hard and goes to school full time and always has a smile.
Wazhma is leaving in a day or two with her family to return for three weeks to her home country Afghanistan. There they will be celebrating her engagement to a man she has never met before. An arranged marriage. He will move to the states in a year or so, and then they will be married. The idea of an arranged marriage is not new to me, but to see it happen today, to a girl I work with, here in Portland, just seems so strange. I feel for Wazhma. She is so young, just seventeen, and has told me she is nervous to meet Samir. But she is also happy. Even though she has spent most of her life in Portland, her family is very traditional, so she has always known this is how she would marry. I told her I was a little jealous because in so many ways I have always secretly admired arranged marriages. It means you don't waste away waiting to meet the "right guy." It means your family chooses someone for you who is stable, responsible and honorable-- someone who won't abandon you. I want this.
Posted by libbystokes at February 10, 2008 10:20 PM