Messy Lives

You know, it has been quiet around here for months now. I've toured the districts and come full circle. Back on the island and happy to be here. Well, happy isn't entirely accurate. But are words really accurate barometers of feelings? Behold  the slippery slope of semantics as I struggle to name the feeling and fail.

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing is to link to a profile of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is one of my favourite actors. I think of him as Capote and then as Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr Ripley and a whole host of other roles, and think how completely he inhabits his characters.

Here's a paragraph from it that I particularly liked:

"What’s so essential about this movie is our desire to be certain about something and say, This is what I believe is right, wrong, black, white. That’s it. To feel confident that you can wake up and live your day and be proud instead of living in what’s really true, which is the whole mess that the world is. The world is hard, and John is saying that being a human on this earth is a complicated, messy thing.” Hoffman paused again. “And I, personally, am uncomfortable with that messiness, just as I acknowledge its absolute necessity."