Sunday morning as I head to classes I pass many homeless sleeping in doorways. One of them is sitting up and blearily looking around. Next to him sits a small cat in a red harness, looking alert, well-fed, and calm. I grin at the cute kitty, and the man — in his wheezing, cracked voice…
Something I’d forgotten over the years: cities are NOISY! I sleep here in the hotel with earplugs on, but I can still faintly hear the roaring of engines, screaming and yelping of sirens, occasional yells and swearing and shouting, the constant low-level hum-throb of traffic… if I wake up around 4 in the morning it’s…
I’m in San Francisco, the City by the Bay, for the Women’s Spirituality Intensive Week — which actually goes from Saturday to the following Sunday thereafter. It’s going to be an 11 night stay, including all the extra retreats, welcome dinners, and caucus demonstrations. The actual classwork is indeed extremely intense, and my brain is…
Alas, it gets worse. The narrator rambles on in the same demagogic vein about the “mutant albino” crocodiles, ending with a close-up shot of one of the small white reptiles staring bemusedly back at us from where it floats in the water, behind glass. Herzog continues with his inflammatory nonsense, wondering aloud: “When” the albinos…
Closer in to the camera crew on the walkway we see swells of stone that half-shelter the pregnant mare’s niche. Painted on one is a herd of sturdy bison warily watching an even closer bulge of rock covered with a pride of lions. Interestingly, most of the animals painted are at side view, but there…
It is at this point that the absurd scene (mentioned previously) with the spear thrower occurs. Interestingly, nothing at all is said about the greater importance of gathering or scavenging for the survival of our prehistoric ancestors; the narrator mentions only finding spearheads in the shoulder blades of horses and aurochs. The (highly faulty) impression…
From the discussion of the little bone flute, we then shift to an outside shot with Wulf Hein, an “experimental archaeologist” who is wearing a fur suit of reindeer skin which he made himself, in order to try to experience how folks lived and used tools back then. I was a bit confused to see…
Also shown during the tour was a wall with a series of red rhinos with, underneath them, “positive” handprints (i.e. you paint your palm, then press it to the wall, just like near the original cave opening) and a partial circle of nine red dots. There was a niche nearby with torch swipes on the…
When I say Herzog is excessively artsy in the film, I wish I were just joking. At one point in the film he’s standing there and talking about a silence in the cave which is so profound they can perhaps hear their hearts beat. He asks everyone to fall silent and simply listen. Initially it’s…
The entire cave system is more than 1300 ft. long, and as mentioned earlier the original cave opening was a walk-in. Interestingly, deep in one of the first chambers at the former entrance — where the sunlight would never illuminate — there is a vertical wall covered with red dots, created by placing the painted…