Swim as the Ocean Swims

"The sea hates a coward"--Eugene O-Neill

Its now or Neverland

Every year all of us experience it, whether we look forward to it or simply can't wait till its passed its there for all. A birthday it seems so simple a thing. A thing that in some eyes seems as if it has lost its value; as if it is one a thing for children and eccentrics. But I say that it is not so.

It is a day in which we are almost able to measure time with. It is a day of rejoicing. But why? Are we happy that we are getting older? I say that we should be. Growing up has its pain but in the end it is worth it. But we are not only rejoicing that we are able to have the power to be strong and the wisdom to be wise. We are also rejoicing because we have been given the chance to live. We have been born! And so we must cry out to the heavens thank you! Thank you for this chance to live!

On the this day of our birth we are given gifts. But it is not the material objects that matter. Rather it is the fact that those around us honor us. It is a way that others say that they are happy that we are alive.

Stop the clock
Take time out
Time to regroup
Before you loose the bout
Face the thrill
Back it up
Time to refocus
Before they lap it up

Year's are getting shorter
The lines on your face are getting longer
Feel like you're treading water
But the riptide's getting stronger
Don't panic, don't jump ship
Can't find it, like taxes
At least it happens
Only once in your life

They're singing, "Happy Birthday"
You just wanna lay down and cry
Not just another birthday, it's 30/90
Why can't you stay 29
Hell, you still feel like you're 22
Turn 30 in 1990
Bang! You're dead, what can you do?
What can you do?
What can you do?

Clear the runway
Make another pass
Try one more hook
Before you're out of gas

Friends are getting fatter
Hairs on you head are getting thinner
Feel like a clean up batter
On a team that ain't a winner

Don't freak out, don't strike out
Can't fight it, like City Hall

At least you're not alone
Your friends are there too
They're singing, "Happy Birthday"
You just wish you could run away
Who cares about a birthday?
But 30/90, hey

Can't you be optimistic?
You're no longer eons of you
Turn 30, 1990
Voom! You're passe
What can you do?
What can you do?
What can you do?

Peter Pan and Tinkerbell
Which way to Never Never Land?
Emerald City's gone to hell
Since the wizard blew off passed the map

On the streets you hear the voices
Lost children, crocodiles
But you're not into
Making choices, wicked witches,
Poppy fields, or men behind the curtains,
Tiger lilies, ruby slippers
Clock is ticking, that's for certain

They're singing, "Happy Birthday"
I just wish it all were a dream
It feels much more like dooms day
What 30/90 seems

I'm dying for a twister
I don't see a rainbow, do you?
Turn 30 into 90
Look into my hands now
What the ball has passed
I want the spoils, but not too fast

The world is fallingIt's now or never land
Why can't I stay till
The forever end?
30/9030/9030/9030/9030/9030/90
What can I do?
What can I do?

It may be easier if I were a morning person

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.-E.B. White

Righteous Anger or Wrath

The Operative: Do you know what your sin is Mal?

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Ah Hell... I'm a fan of all seven. But right now... I'm gonna have to go with wrath.

The above conversation from the movie Serenity is the final confrontation between these two characters. Mal is driven by anger through out the movie and, although is is less overt, through out Firefly. This anger drives him to seek justice although it seems impossible, to stand up to tyranny although grossly out numbered, and to help the poor and weak, often at personal loss. In this scene the operative accuses him of being victim to one of the seven deadly sins. Yet Mal is unquestionably the good guy in this situation, and yet the driving force in his life seems to be an evil.

Wrath is one of the seven deadly sins. And yet anger is so often spoken of as, if not something good, at least something that can be channelled and used for good. When driven by anger a person is harder to corrupt, more difficult to bribe and almost impossible to dissuade. The Gospels tell us that even Jesus was prone to righteous anger, as the money changers in the temple could attest to.

So what is the distinction? Is it the source of the anger or wrath? Is it what you do with it? Can can two things seemingly so similar be so different, one a force for good and one completely destructive?

Freedom

"Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice." -G. K. Chesterton

Feed your people.

Last words. They combine the magesty, grace, and awe of speach with the glory, and the silence of death. Oh, truley, the power that they hold, it is austounding. The simple act of professing one's final thoughts right before the spirit soars to sublime, and there for all eternity the spirit shall reside.

With these last words we are given the chance to forgive, to defy, to profess our freedom. This does not differ from the chance we have with the use of all words save for the combination of these words with death, death is what allows these words to mean even more. This seems impossible as words within themselves already have such a power, but it is true.

But what can we do, for we can not plan our final thoughts. For, if we did, it would not be our last words. We can only act, we can only live ready for when the time comes. We must be ready for what is after this world. For death is not the end. Our last words will be our last, however they will not be our only ones. We have a whole lifetime to speak, a whole lifetime to make a difference. So we must not save our thoughts for the end. We must instead, merely speak without fear. From our begining, to our end, we must cry out. And all we can do is hope that someone will hear us.

Stop looking start seeing

Terry Pratchett continually uses the trope that people see what they want to see. When confronted with something too big, or amazing, or terrible or out of the ordinary the human mind refuses to recognize it, or amends reality till it comes up with something acceptable. In Good Omens the characters ignore the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, for acknowledging them, even when they are right in front of their face is neither convenient nor comfortable. "No one paid any attention to them. Perhaps they saw nothing at all. Perhaps they saw what their minds were instructed to see, because the human brain is not equipped to see War, Famine, Pollution, and Death when they don't want to be seen, and has got so good at not seeing that it often manages not to see them even when they abound on every side." It is what allows characters to function, to go about their day to day activities without going insane.

Fiction is the opposite of this panacea for life's madness found on Discworld. Good fiction is not escapism but the opposite. They use the wondrous, the fantastic, faerie land as an escape into reality. It holds a mirror up to our world, but a funhouse mirror that tweaks and twists what it shows making you pay attention to details never noticed before. As Chesterton notes in the Napoleon of Notting Hill, "Now, there is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time." This is what fiction is in danger of doing, of make us see the world instead of merely looking at it.

I know that I am returning to a topic I touched on shortly after the inception of this blog and I am sorry to be repetitive. But it is something I think about a lot, for the idea of "Classics" and a literary cannon have ingrained in me that some things are more noble reads while others are fluff. I do not believe this but every once and a while I have to justify my forays into the fantastic.

And there's this burning, like theres always been

"I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can."--Neil's journal