the FIRST starbucks in Poland is opening 50 meters from my dorm... capitalistic infused coffee magnet, I tell you...

I haven't really left Wroclaw for the past three weeks, save for a weekend in a mountain village called Karpacz, and it's really wearing on me.  I've had to break further out of the Erasmus microcosm.  More though, I wanted to.  I know have four Polish friends named Michael that I have met in the last month, and considering that I've probably had conversations with 15 Polish guys at length (so that I commit their names to memory), 4 of them being named Michael is a pretty large percentage.  Maybe 20% of the Polish male population is named Michael and 20% (or more) of the female is named Kasia or Anna.

"If you're not named Michael, well... you probably are."

I'm starting some preproduction on a film that Michael III is helping me produce.  It's going to be challenging here, already has been, but more so because my stupid motherfucking computer broke... yeah, I'm on my roommate's for now... I'm actually really upset about it.  I have to travel to Munich to get it fixed or bring it with me to Holland... yeah...

We watched a Zanussi film in my film class this week, "Illumination" (English title).  It made me disrespect traditional lighting... eye light, maybe, but I don't know, that way of thinking seems to be such a victim to traditional interpretations of what is expressive.  In Parata (sp.) traditional Indian theatre, the realms of emotion are dictated by very precise concentrated movements to serve as representations, not actual manifestations of emotion in any way.  In the same way that the ancient Greek theatre used masks to visually emote, the use of eye light in contemporary film may be seen in the future as a vehicle to make the audience understand, feel.  The eyes are considered the most expressive sect of one's face in current Western culture, but who knows.. this may change.  Nostril flares, for example, eyebrow furrows, laugh lines, are these all not just as expressive, maybe more in some cases.  Keeping 75% of the face in darkness can allow accentuating of the "lesser" features.  Or maybe we shouldn't see much of anything at all.

It's finally getting warm her.  70's Fahrenheit!  Amazing.  All the students sit my Odra (the main river) and drink and play music and chill out hippie commune style.  Last night me and my german friends and Maly Michael (little Michael/Michael II/czecholada thunder) got into a beat boxing session with this homeless man who was collecting all the bottles.  He started a glass bottle symphony.