Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance

Directed by Godrey Reggio and with music by Philip Glass, the documentary Koyaanisqatsi -part of the Quatsi trilogy– feels to me more relevant than ever these days. I had the opportunity to re-watch it recently and somehow I find it closely connected to the 2021 comedy Don’t Look Up, which sometimes seem to be a documentary about the current state of affairs.

One of the Hopi Prophecies sang during the film is closely related:

A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.

Koyaanisqatsi was filmed between 1975 and 1982, and I really enjoyed seeing scenes from New York City, and other parts of the world, from that period.

Perhaps it’s because I am older now, with a family, so one of the many messages from the movie resonates even more inside me: This is a state of life that calls for another way of living.

Snow day in Brooklyn

Snow day in Brooklyn

We woke up to a snowy day here in Brooklyn. It started to snow in the early morning, and by 7 a.m. the neighborhood looked like a Christmas postcard. They had announced snow for last Monday, but we only got a few flurries here in Brooklyn. Today Thursday we got the real stuff, which makes it the first official snow day of 2022 in New York City.

Snowy house and street in Brooklyn

I’m glad I was able to connect to work from home, so I spent the day listening to some good music, like Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s latest album, Barn, and sipping some Marqués de Riscal Rioja Reserva in the evening. A perfect snowy day.

En un lugar de la Mancha

En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Así comienza el Capítulo I titulado Que trata de la condición y ejercicio del famoso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha de El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, conocido para muchos simplemente como Don Quijote. Esas palabras me sirven de inspiración, al mismo tiempo en que buscaba recursos en español de domino público. Así fue como encontré la Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, donde se puede leer una edición del Quijote de 1605, y la Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, perteneciente a la Biblioteca Nacional de España, donde cuentan con una versión titulada Célebres aventuras de Don Quijote, “El Caballero de la Triste Figura”.