'Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you' - Rashi.
The Coen brothers' film, 'A Serious Man' starts with this perplexing quote. Sounds pretty straight forward initially, but to me, the more you think about it, the more you can twist yourself up in knots over EXACTLY what it means.
As with the film. Billed as a comedy, there are some darkly funny moments, but overall it's way too bleak for such a classification. Whatever. It's fascinating.
It starts with an extraordinary folk tale, in which a woman stabs an old man who has helped her husband. Because she believes him to be a 'dybbuk', who will bring a curse on the house. We never get to find out whether she's right, and has averted evil - or wrong, and murdered an innocent man. We then move forward in time to the 1960s. The folk tale is never referenced or mentioned again. I was waiting for it to reappear (as anyone with basic story-telling chops knows, you expect something like this to be justified or reincorporated). It's brilliant that it doesn't. Because it introduces in the most unsettling way, the concept of uncertainty, which is the theme running through the film. One character even explicitly talks about having to 'accept the mystery'.
So I suppose that's the point. That however much we want to understand, there are rarely any clear and easy answers. All that remains is how you face the uncertainty.
It's been a long time since I've seen a film that got me thinking as much as this one. I've been scuffling around with it in my head ever since I saw it.
Which isn't exactly receiving with simplicity... Ho hum.
Breakfast in a multi-storey car park in Kingston. I do a lot of car park breakfasts. Mainly because I have to be places really early. 
(*This came from a Mighty Boosh interview with Jonathan Ross, where Noel was twirling and pirouetting, doing the tits n' teeth, and Julian was hanging back, all silent and hating being there.
Anyway - back to Jack White. Enough about his new five-star album. The real news is that he's re-opened his upholstery shop. Yes. His UPHOLSTERY shop ('Your Furniture Is Not Dead'). Imagine just walking in, to get your nan's old armchair re-chintzed - there's Jack White with a mouthful of tacks in a pinny. If I'd had to come up with a Venn diagram of rock stars and upholstery, I'd never have thought that Jack was the intersection. 
Bowling down winding lanes in deepest Hertfordshire, singing along to the radio and channel-hopping. 
On the M25 for a third time this week. Rain slashing down dramatically. On one of the bridges above the motorway I see a troop of hikers. I can tell they are hikers (as opposed to civilians), because they are fully kitted out in waterproofs, and they have big backpacks, and walking poles (professional). They doggedly trudge over the bridge, in a line of determination. Hoods up, heads down. No amount of Gore-Tex could be a match for this quantity of water. They must be very, very wet. 
