A Dream in the Middle of the Summer

I forget how much I love plays when I don't see them for so long.

I have just finished this version of A Midsummer Night's Dream and reminded myself how charming it can be. Though I have seen it a million times over, Puck never fails to make me smile, Hermia and Lysander always make me feel like true love can survive, and Shakespeare makes me think that somehow, where we're not looking hard enough, fairies, fauns, and other creatures we claim not to exist are partying it up.

Warmness has flooded me. Feels wonderful, actually. I wonder at how the entertainment industry [which is such a nasty word] has become so ugly. Sure, there are still movies and music that inspire awe, but it feels like I am trudging for a tooth in the snow when I go to Blockbuster or to a record store. I feel like the world has become one monstrous, slobbering junkie, addicted to sex and drugs, constantly being kept alive by new technologies coming out every second.

It feels like there are no quiet places left, no families that dine together, no children that aren't taught about everything they shouldn't know by the time they are in the fourth grade.

Sometimes, I feel saddened by it, let down by how degrading the whole world is. But then I feel like I am making a generalized statement and remember that there are still Tibetan monks who sit and mediate for half of their lives in the pursuit of peace and happiness. I think of plains in Africa where air isn't clogged by lung-killing smoke, cottages in Switerzland, or some other exotic snow-covered hill where it seems like sound never existed and all there was and ever will be is white.

I want to travel to these places and feel full.

Get Happy

I'm Back In the New York Groove

I forget to get in touch with nature sometimes.

I get so focused on living inside, making sure I stay up-to-date, making sure I am constantly connected to what is going on in the world, that I forget there are individual blades of grass to be examined, leaves to be touched, wind to be enjoyed.

Tonight, I stood outside in a red-watch storm and remembered that I forget how powerful nature and God are. I'm such a tactile person that I have to soak my feet and freeze myself before I can establish in my head that there are giant forces swirling around me, controlling me. Or maybe not concerned with me at all. One of those.

It seems like I have become hypersensitive to anything around me. I want to touch everything, memorize textures and smells and colors. I'm leaving childhood behind me faster than a train, yet I still feel the need to stand outside and soak myself to make sure I'm getting a least a little bit of the message I'm supposed to.

Sometime later, maybe, I'll feel silly about it.

But right now, I'm just feeling relaxed.

Maybe I won't feel silly.

I like being childish. No one ever tells me to grow up though. I think it's because I'm childish in a subtle way. When I see the movie >Amelie, I am reminded of myself, but more like how I would like to be. Life should be as technicolor as I want it to be.

I get scared that I'm not living as much as I should be. Kate Winslet says in Eternal Sunshine, that she is terrified that she's not living enough and I connect with her completely. I guess I'm at a weird age where I'm terrified of growing older, where I want to stay where I am forever. I obsess about how I'm going to be when I'm older. Everytime I jump up and down, I think about how I'm going to be arthritic one day and am I enjoying this as much as I can?

It's morbid, but it helps me to realize that I really should slow down, really shouldn't spend as much time as I do on the computer, lie outside a little more often.

Think about how many reasons there are to smile -- babies, jello, awkward family photos, joke books, mud pies, Yankee candles, sloths!

The world is so depressing no one wants to think about any of these things. No one thinks for themselves, even if they say they do, including myself. Everything is here to guide us, to make our lives easier, and I'm not so sure they do.

I'm tired of complex and futuristic. It's such a big deal.

I want simplicity. Not a silk wrap-around, a cotton sundress, please.




On another note, watched A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints tonight. Shia Lebeaouf surpises me everytime I see him. And I really adored Robert Downey Jr. It was an intensely raw movie, very disjointed, about growing up NYC in the 80's and hating it. Shia plays young Dito, who keeps getting mixed up with the wrong gangs and getting in trouble when all he wants to do is be peaceful. He wants to go to California, but it would kill his father, who is completely opposed to it. Eventually, after his friend gets shot right beside him, he just goes and lives in L.A for twenty years before he has to come back and make peace.

I do this plot no justice. The acting made me plug into this completely.

Made me a little more scared of NYC though. I'm already frightened, but I have to continually give myself reality checks and repeat "You're eighteen years old, do you really want to do this?"

I got accepted to the School of Visual Arts in Manhatten, and also to the Chicago Arts Institute.

Congrats, me.

I got really sad when I read the letters, actually. No one in my house got excited about it. In movies, when you get accepted to colleges, people scream, there are parties. Here, everyone just goes to sleep and I just want to sleep, too. I feel like if I get happy, I'm betraying someone.

Silly.

おやすみ

No One Can Lay A Hand On Our Dreams

Had another dream the other night, needed to get this one down.

Dreamt I was in a house that was not my own, but was one that felt familar, a little like my house from childhood in St. Joseph. There was a giant set of glass sliding doors and I was sitting on the tile floor next to them. Outside was non-descript flora, quite out of focus, and a small chihuahua staring intently at me from the other side of the glass.

My grandmother was on the floor a few feet away from me, lying on nothing but a towel, with a few other people around her, but they were not important and I do not remember them [they didn't even speak].

I knew my grandmother was exceedingly ill and she looked like death, hollowed cheeks, sunken eyes, etc. I was scared for her. This dog was no normal dog and I began to understand that it was coming for my grandmother.

I knew that this scrawny dog was the Angel of Death and I had to keep it away. Everytime I turned to look at my grandmother, my panic rising, the dog would suddenly be through the glass without a sound. The creepiest thing was that it wasn't moving at all -- no breath, no blinking, no tail-wagging. It just stared at my eyes in a defensive position, like I had some power over it.

As the dog would attempt to "shift" closer, I would pick it up, open the door and try to hurl it out into the green blur of a backyard to keep it away from her. I could hear my grandmother gasping as I picked up the pooch and I knew just from it being inside it was killing her.

The dog moved and latched onto my hand, manuevering its little paws around my wrist and palm and growling while I waved my arm in every direction.

I would eventually throw it and it would land in some far off spot. Worried about grandma on the floor, I would go wipe her brow or give some other doctorly affection for about two seconds and the dog would be back at the door in pop, no sound, no movement -- just there.

This was repeated throughout the dream with just my anxiety increasing. By the end of the dream, I thought I was going to have a heart-attack.

The really strange thing was that I didn't really have any kind of attachment to my grandmother. It's like ... it was her, but there wasn't anything that I loved about her. She was just an object I was trying to protect for some reason. I didn't really feel like I knew her in the slightest. It just wasn't her time to die in my eyes and I tried through the whole night to keep her alive.

In here time, to the best of my knowledge, she's still alive and well, albeit a little lonelier. My grandfather dying has started taking it's toll on her.

I'm sad.

καλή νύχτα

Nite at thee Cinema

Movie reviewing time!

This past week, I went and saw some movies I want to remember.

First, I saw Will Smith's movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, based on a true story that would soften even the hearts of Nazis.

Pursuit of Happyness


The story is of down-on-his-luck Chris Gardner [Will Smith], a man who is trying to make it for his family with hare-brained gimmicks, such as spending his life savings on x-ray machines to sell to doctors, only to find out no one wants them.

His wife is pulling double shifts, and his five-year-old son, Christopher [played by Smith's son, Jaden], is confused about what's going on his parents' spiraling lives. Walking along the San Francisco streets, Gardner is inspired by all the smiling faces of stock brokers to apply for a job at human resources. There is an offer of an internship, which may possibly lead to a job as a broker, though it is very competitive [six months with 40 other interns; one person gets the job].

Gardner goes out of his way to impress the big-wigs looking at his application, and eventually impresses the C.E.O by completing the then new Rubic's Cube in the span of a taxi ride. He's accepted for the internship, but finds that there is no salary and this will take up most of his time, no spare moments for selling his machine.

Shortening the plot, his wife leaves him, he gets kicked out of his apartment, subsequently moves to a hotel and is booted from there as well, his car gets towed, he is arrested for no payment on his car tickets, and ends up having about $7.00 to his name after the government figures out he has no paid his taxes.

The most heart-rending scene of the entire film, in my opinion, is at a difficult part of the movie, the eve of Gardner's saddest day. After being kicked out of the hotel and with nowhere for him to take his five-year-old that is safe, Gardner finds himself in the subway system, lost and godless. He plays a game with his child to reassure him and they spend the night in 'The Cave', or the men's restroom in the station. Long legs splayed across a toilet paper mattress, Gardner sheds his only tears of the movie when an unknown begins pounding on the locked bathroom door, his son slumbering in his lap.

This movie tore me apart on the inside. Will Smith gives such an engaging peformance that I was sympathizing with him completely after the first ten minutes. At approximately 2 hrs, it is a little longer than I would have expected and as his trials continue to labor him, the movie drags the bottom a little. Other than that, the movie was fantastic, and worth the struggle Smith pulls you through by the end of the film. His son, Jaden, is absolutely adorable and attaches you to their pursuit even more.

This one is definetely worth seeing if you get the chance.

Also,

Night at the Museum


This one was amazing. I thought this was going to be more of children's slapstick film, but turned out it had a little more meat to it.

Ben Stiller plays Larry Daley, another down-trodden hero who can't keep a job and moves all the time, providing instability for his son, according to his ex-wife. She tells him that if he can't find a steady job, she's thinks it's time for him to spend a while apart from their son. With the new husband being a broker and perfect, Larry wants to prove himself and takes the only job human resources can give him -- nightwatchman at the Natural History Museum.

Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs are all old men who have guarded the museum for years, but have to give up their jobs because the museum is downsizing and only needs one, new guard. He's hired on the spot, albeit a little reluctantly and starts work that evening.

Much to his surprise, Dick Van Dyke leaves him a set of instructions that become vital in running the joint at night since EVERYTHING COMES TO LIFE. Genghis Khan is out for his blood, he gets caught in the crossfire of Civil War soliders and he becomes mixed up in a love between Sacagawea and Theodore Roosevelt.

Ben Stiller does a hilarious job and his supporting cast of Owen Wilson, Robin Williams, and Steve Coogan, and the aforementioned elderly gentlemen made this worth the cash I spent for the ticket because of the real, belly laughter I had throughout. Go see it :)

I'll post the movies I'm itching to see later.

Boa Noite~

Some People Have to Say Their Don'ts Before They Say Their Do's

Had a dream last night.

I woke up in a really dilapidated room made of wood and could see beautiful green trees through the windows with no curtains or glass. I panicked because I was tied to a post in the corner of this room, my mouth gagged with my arms bound behind me. I found a way to get myself loose and realized that I was far above the earth in the midst of these swaying trees and that an entire Japanese-esque abbey/shrine was on these massive stilts. The building was solid enough, but I still felt wary when I left the room. It felt like a shrine or a place where monks would be, but there was no furniture or any other signs of life, just empty rooms, with everything painted this stunning shade of crimson. The paint was chipping, but I still saw the color, and it contrasted perfectly with the green of the trees.

This place seemed to be in perpetual twilight, enough light to see around me, but not pure daylight. It was the light that shows up before a very big storm blows through. As I wandered around through these rooms, I grew more and more enraptured with the beauty of the architecture and the way nature flowed with it, like the builder loved the outdoors and left a lot of open spaces for them to sit in and enjoy the trees.

Soon, though, I recalled I had been tied up and scared, and began to wonder what had captured me to begin with. I remember stopping and looking around me and I knew that someone was watching me and that someone had let me free myself. Whoever they were [they had a male presence], they were amused and I knew I was being kept as a toy. This made all of the hair on the back of my neck stand up and while I knew this person would not harm me, I did not want to stay with them.

Somehow I reached the bottom, but there was no chase scene, no struggle to keep me in the place. The weird thing was is that I was actually half-way regretful to leave the place.

Just wondering what it meant... Typing and writing these things down give me room to analyze them.

Meet Me in the Loo After Tea

One of the most ridiculous things I've ever read:

Indian Tribe Bans Church Protests at Funeral

An American Indian got killed in Afghanistan and these dipshits want to come to his funeral protesting that the war is going on because America accepts homosexuals. At his funeral. With his family there. When this had nothing to do with him in the slightest.

I've seen these people on the news before and they are absolutely obsessed. They're a church made up of like three families of about 50 or so people and they go to funerals all over the country and protest at these places of grief where people can hear them and most of the time the funerals have nothing to do with homosexuality, especially since the families of the deceased are not going to be focusing on the sexual orintation of their solider when they're about to put him in the ground.

Speaking of death, just got back from my grandfather's funeral, my mom's dad. I didn't cry at this, but I did get to witness his death and I have to say it's the single most odd experience of my life. My family, one of my uncles, a friend of the family and my grandmother came to the hospital where he was heaving on a respirator for most of the day. We got there at 11 something, they gave him morphine and took him off of life support at 12:45 and by 3:30 he was gone. My brother was actually in the room with him when he passed and I'm wondering how much that fucked up his already crazy little head. My mother, father, and myself had stepped out of the room for a minute and were going to pick up his personal belongings at the nursing home, but we got called back. Strange thing is, there really is a death smell. About thirty minutes before he died, there was the most horrendous stench I've ever smelled in my entire life permeating the room, and I guess "death smell" is about the only name I can put to it. It smelled like decay, just not as stale yet. Like liquid decay, if that makes sense -- the smell was wet. Very digusting.

Also something to note, color leaves you fast. Five minutes before he was gone, he was the same color as me, if a little paler cause he hadn't seen sun in a while. When I saw him next when we were taking my grandmother from the room, he was pale as a sheet. Death pale is different than regular pale. It was the oddest, smoothest white, something else that I'm having trouble describing.

I'm sounding morbid, and I am sad he's gone, it was just a weird day.

On a lighter note, found a new genre of music that I'm absolutely infatuated with.

CHIPTUNE

Egads, it's beautiful. It's pure mad techno of the most creative kind - created by Gameboys and lo-fi synthesizers! And it sounds like a full symphony~

I found out about it through bOINGbOING, which linked to Blip Festival, a chiptune festival going on in New York for three days, including today. That page has links to all of the artists who are showing up, people from all over the world. So far my favorite is USK or Portalenz, a Japanese DJ who makes the most amazing music; he has free downloads of some of his stuff, so my personal recommendation is to download "Kill Me Sweetly", a song he wrote for his girlfriend ;)

To end on a funnier note, something else from BB:

Sexual Consent Video

Two kids are about to kick it bunny style, but they pull out legal forms for their lawyers to look through before they consent to anything - it's absolutely hilarious.

Time for the mad cleaning to get Christmas decorations up before the season is out.