Disaster tourist in Oxford - Taste of Cherries by Abbas Kiarastami - Sitting on a kerb

Disaster tourist

I stood and looked up at the black burnt timbers of the one damaged section of the Randolph's roof. I wonder how long it will be before the structure is cool enough for a scaffolding roof to be put over it. When it rains the water will add to the water already poured in by the fire engines. I wouldn't like to be managing that building. Imagine the smell and the damp and the damage inside. My own house is quite complicated enough.

Taste of Cherries

Each time I watched further into the film, restarting from the beginning.

I found the pressurising attitude of the central character worrying. Was this representative of his internal problem? The soldier and even the birds rushed away from him. I don't know where to start with making comments. It's similar to engaging with a poem, the more I am in the zone of floating about with thoughts and memories, the more I could discuss any topic under the sun and relate it to or find it in the film. It would depend on the person I am talking with too and what they say.

I could give myself some sort of severe constraint in order to make myself write comments replying to my own self, based on and circling around the film. One small page of my note book, 3 words per line, fill each page, stick to one topic per page, keep going up til the tiny notebook is complete, then leave it, never to return. That sounds intransigent enough to produce results!

It's mulberries in the film anyway, so why put cherries in the title in English?

Kerb

I called my mother, she was in the car.

I told her 'I am your one and only daughter' when she wasn't quite sure who was calling her. Then she said I had sounded different, she hadn't recognised me, so I explained that I'd just finished work, so maybe that was it.

Then I sat down on a kerb, by a bike park. One or two people looked at me as if I were in trouble, but I wasn't, just chatting and listening carefully, blocking out the whole city.

My mother was looking on the bright side a little too much, so I said 'Things aren't 100%, are they?' which she agreed with. I could hear it in her voice.