connection

How to have a super relationship-1

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Today I’m going to do something fun.

After all my Justice League related posts I’ve been anxious to do more, I have fun pulling things out of those old memories.

So, just to be different, I want to talk about superhero relationships. (Yes, that was a joke.)

Still the reason superhero relations ships are so fun is because they take the same problems real relationships have and blow them up to a much bigger scale.

Actually, a good rule of thumb when you’re judging superhero films and comics is to ask if the supers are dealing with common problems but on a magnified scale, like Spiderman/Peter Parker always is. I find that to be the most believable, because it doesn’t matter how may powers you have, you’re still human.

That especially applies to relationships.

I have two couples in mind today. I’ll be referring to the JLU show again, and the Mr. Miracle comic, because the similarity between these two couples struck me almost as soon as I read the latter.

I present for you consideration the power couples Batman and Wonder Woman, and Scott and Barda.

You may not like the Batman–Wonder Woman dynamic, but it’s the best one to serve my purpose so bear with me.

Over the course of the first two JLU seasons the writers teased the viewers with hints that Wonder Woman and Batman had, in their words, “a quasi relationship.”

I think it started from the moment Batman saw her take out some alien freaks in the first episode, and gradually they built up a mutual respect and trust, Wonder Woman somewhere along the line earned both his and Superman’s secret identity and became one of the big three. She keeps a good balance between the two more sober men.

But Batman eventually began to feel like they were getting too close and started saying he had no time for a serious relationship. Wonder Woman thought this was crud, but she couldn’t really force the point.

Scott and Barda I’ve already covered, they met on the hellish world of Apokalips, she saved his life, then followed him to earth, he saved her life, she stuck with him and it was a match made in heaven.

But if we were to take a closer look at these couples we could compare a lot of their stories.

Batman and Scott both share a traumatic past, losing their parents, and having few friends. They also share a talent for escaping and a love of justice.

Barda and Wonder Woman both share a fierce loyalty and a quick temper when they feel they or their friends are disrespected or threatened. They both were raised to be tough warriors, the best of their kind, and they both left that life, though for different reasons. (Not so different if we went by the old Wonder Woman, but the JLU one is not the same.)

They even look a lot a like.

But when we put these two couples together, there’s a huge difference in how they interact.

Wonder Woman did almost all of the advancing in the relationship, and not in what I would consider a bad way. Batman thought none the worse of her for it, I think he liked it. That was actually the trouble. Batman would not be honest about how he felt. Though on several occasions he showed a preference for her that was almost foolish, (and very cute,) he would never admit to it afterwards. She spelled it out as far as a woman can with any self-respect.

Those of us who have studied Batman’s character know the reason he was so hesitant. He is scared to be close to anyone, most especially someone he could really love, and more than that, someone like Diana who he could not control or intimidate, and who is not a criminal. She was his equal and that’s what freaked him out, because he couldn’t use any of his typical excuses not to let people get to him. (Which is always they are either too young, they work for him, or they are evil.)

How many men, and women, see themselves in Batman? They may date people, but they date people who are no good for them, who they could never marry, or whom they feel distant from. If they ever meet a person who would really challenge them, they back off because they’ve been hurt too badly in the past.

I think with Batman, and most of us, it goes back to being left alone and helpless by his parents, with neither him nor them being able to do anything. He is always afraid of the same thing happening again. And he knows even Wonder Woman is not safe from all his enemies, though his fear that they could go through her to get to him seems a bit ludicrous. She faces enemies just as bad or worse than his on a regular basis and nothing he could do is going to change that. If they aren’t after him they’ll be after her.

Wonder Woman herself seems to realize this is stupid and even insulting, but we never hear a satisfactory end to that conversation.

This is known as a dysfunctional relationship. Notice that Wonder Woman is mostly the functional part of it, she had a secure bringing up, though she couldn’t’ begin to understand what men are really like, and Batman knows it; but she’s at least willing to go there. She has a lot less issues then him, but he doesn’t want to mess her up. The thing is, he probably wouldn’t. It’s just an excuse.

That’s where we get to Scott and Barda.

Scott takes a similar path to Batman, but he starts it when he’s a lot older, though young in doing the right thing. Scott also realizes that relationships should not be avoided, though he does not take them as seriously as some. He quickly makes friends with his assistant Oberon, and with other people he meets. He is similar to Bruce Wayne in that he has an older and (inferior in ability )servant/friend. And that eventually he has a young prodigy.

But Scott wants to involve Barda in his life and his work almost as soon as she shows up. When she first saves his life, his one regret is that she would not come with him. Perhaps from the beginning then Scott learned that you can never be quite satisfied when you leave people you care about behind.

The best men in real life, and women too, are the ones who bring their friends and family along for the ride. They are willing to show them what they do. But they aren’t pushy about making them join in. They invite and encourage but they don’t force people to be part of their lives.

I’ll close with Barda and then the rest will have to be in part two.

Barda is by nature a small circle person. Like Diana she often is the one to advance the relationship, not by trying to however, just by being herself and being honest. What you love about her is that Barda never wastes words. She says what she feels plain and simple.

She’d jump down a shark’s mouth for you and never expect you to thank her for it.

Barda, to put it succinctly, does not over complicate. She is not catty. She doesn’t nag or do things for selfish reasons. I’ll get more into this in part two.

Until next post–Natasha.

 

 

 

Absolutely.

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We all have heard of absolutes, but I’ve noticed that there seems to be a lack of general understanding about what exactly an absolute is and how we can tell it is there or isn’t. So I thought I would attempt to define it.

I can give you an easy example of a material absolute: Suppose I was sitting next to a table lamp. I can touch the lamp, I can see the lamp, I could even smell it if I wished. The lamp is a material absolute. No human being could change the fact that the lamp is real.

Now suppose someone were to say that they don’t believe the lamp is really there. They might disbelieve their eyes, or perhaps there is something wrong with their sense of touch. Even if they cannot feel the lamp, or see it, does that mean the lamp isn’t real?

Well you could say I am hallucinating the lamp, then I run into the same problem in reverse. Just because I can see it or feel it, does that mean it’s real?

The fact is, either the lamp is there or it isn’t. Those are two absolute realities. Only one person can be right and one wrong.

If the lamp is there, then it doesn’t matter whether the other person can sense it or not, it’s still there.

Does that make sense? But I can take it a step further.

Assuming the lamp is there, the other person might say that as long as they don’t believe it’s there it can’t affect them. I could turn it on or off and they could see or not see, but they might say it doesn’t matter.

I could even hit them with the lamp and they couldn’t feel it.

But if I were to injure them, that would prove the lamp is real.

(You might say that an injury isn’t real if you can’t feel it, but what about a bug bite? Or a head injury that knocks you out. You might not feel either, but one at least is certainly life threatening. Actually the worse the injury, in some cases, the less you can feel it because of damaged nerves.)

If nothing happens to them, then I was in error.

So the question is not if there is an absolute, but which absolute it is.

But what about believing in a lie? Doesn’t that harm you?

Yes, but that’s proof of my point. Truth (reality) will harm you or help you whether you believe it or not. A lie will not harm you until you let it.

It’s the difference between hallucinating a truck barreling toward you on the highway and actually standing on the highway in front of a moving truck. The first one will hurt you only if you believe it and do something stupid; the second will hurt you whether you believe it or not. Unless you move.

Truth is like a truck. Dangerous when it’s coming against you; but life saving if you’re inside it. (Trucks save lives don’t they?)

Lies on the other hand are you hurting yourself. They are nothing in of themselves, except a trick.

An absolute then is a thing not subject to change no matter the circumstance.

You’ve probably heard that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form into another. Matter (like the lamp) is an absolute for us.

And I dare say there are absolutes far more sure then material ones.

You know a tree by its fruit.

Now, and you probably saw this coming, suppose the lamp was God?

Many people cannot feel God, many more cannot see Him; but some claim to have felt Him and some claim not to.

We’ve seen that seeing and feeling themselves are not proof of the absolute of anything.

Even though God is not a material absolute, the same rules will apply. Either He is there or he is not. One person is perceiving the truth, the other is blind.

I think the evidence of God is much the same, without the lamp on, one cannot see; without God, there is no meaning in life.

If God were to strike someone they might not recognize it as Him but there would still be a blow. A mark.

The question is not if the absolute is there, but which it is, and if you will believe it.

Notice that at the moment there is just as much probability for atheism as theism.

This whole exercise might seem totally obvious; but nowadays it isn’t. Many people believe there are no absolutes, so theoretically the person who sees and the one who doesn’t are equally perceptive.

But it doesn’t work: Real things leave an impression. It could be a bruise or it could be an effect on your life, but it will be there; whether you see it or not. The proof is in the damage or improvement in your condition.

This works with emotional things too. We see it in the effects addictions have on people, addictions of all kinds, activity and substance related. The people themselves may fail to see the difference but their family and friends don’t.

It is no good trying to pretend that blindness isn’t real. All kinds of blindness.

Oddly enough I don’t hear it talked of a whole lot anymore. Being blind to the truth.

Okay that about wraps this up, but if anything in this post was unclear, please comment and let me know, I am open to suggestions. It’s a tricky subject to tackle.

Until next time–Natasha.

What I learned from ASL.

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They say third times the charm: But I have failed for the third time at the Driver’s Test.

I blame the system at this point.

Even if I am really just that poor at Driving, there’s nothing I can do about it except try, try again.

Here’s a thing you all may not know about me, I am a language buff.

I am studying three different languages currently. Fluency is slow coming since I am self taught with limited resources, but it’s still fun.

Lately I’ve had the opportunity to expand my knowledge of one language, ASL, by mingling with  both deaf people and sign interpreters.

Here’s some things to know about deaf folks, they aren’t insulted if you use that term. If you use “Hearing impaired” they think it means someone who is only partially deaf. It’s not like with blindness. (I don’t know if it’s the blind or the seeing who decided we needed to say “visually impaired” instead.)

Also, ASL stands for American Sign language. But there’s a few other sign languages used in America. There is English signing. Which it not the same as British signing. English signing is word for word. American sign is supposed to convey the idea of what you’re saying more than the individual words.

When you can’t hear what someone is saying, you have to learn to understand a lot by just watching them. So it’s better to use less motions so there’s time to watch facial expressions too.

Now I’m hearing, and I have no deaf relatives, which a few decades back would have made me a pretty rare anomaly in deaf culture. Only a few hearing people used to be familiar with sign language. But now that it’s taught in school, even hearing folks are becoming interpreters and being part of the deaf community. Which is pretty much the community no one else is aware of unless they’ve known someone who knows someone in it.

Folks are trying to make it possible for the deaf to be a part of regular society. Job-wise anyway.

Anyway, I took a fancy to ASL a few years back and have studied it off and on since, as well as taught a little of it to s couple people. Unfortunately I’ve yet to mean someone else with my passion for language.

You may wonder why I’m sharing this.

Well, for all I know, a deaf person could have clicked on my blog and I never knew it. So hey, if that’st he case, welcome aboard.

But more than that I think that learning ASL has changed me somewhat. Just how much is yet to be determined. If I choose to pursue a real career in it, then it’ll change my whole life. If it remains a hobby, who knows? You never know what might come of something like this.

But even at a basic level, knowing ASL has opened my eyes to the world of non verbal communication.

I have been one of those folks who had trouble looking people in the eye, and picking up on body language. That I should take to signing is somewhat ironic, since it’s made up exclusively of both those things. But I never had a real problem in the signing context with looking at people.

I wonder now if it also improved my ability to perceive people’s body language.

It’s been so long and there’s so many other factors that it’s hard to say for sure. But I do think I see communication differently now.

I think everyone should be fluent in at least one other language if they have any ability to learn it at all. Mentally it will make your brain stronger and give you a better grasp of your own tongue. (And most people who aren’t Americans already know this.)

But I have found a spiritual element in it too.

Trying to learn another language is humbling. It makes you realize how dependent on language we are as humans. And how little you know when you thought you knew a lot.

Also I sometime think of how God knows every single language, and it makes no difference to him.

Honestly, maybe I just feel less different from people of other cultures. Different languages can be intimidating, but once you’ve learned one, you realize that they all have meaning and the people who speak them express themselves just as you do.

Because if humans can’t communicate, what can we do with each other? Nothing.

Which is not to say I don’t get a little fun out of being able to puzzle other people who speak only English, what can I say? I’m human.

But what I really hope is that I’ll make connections because of this hobby of mine. I believe that our gifts and interests are given to us both for our own enjoyment and to help other people. even if helping them starts with just understanding them. I can’t tell you how much that has helped me at difficult times in my life.

Well, that’s all for now, until next time–Natasha.

A myth retold.

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You ever hear the myth of Cupid and Psyche? It’s pretty cool. It was the inspiration for my favorite book “Till we have faces.”

In a nutshell it’s Beauty and the Beast with a few strange twists.

Psyche is a beautiful beyond belief woman, who is being worshiped instead of the goddess Aphrodite (who is goddess of love and beauty) which makes Aphrodite furious, so she sens her son Eros (whom we all know by his roman name Cupid) to make Psyche fall in love with some hideous person or beast. In the process however, he accidentally scratches himself with the point of an arrow and falls  in love with her himself.

Well, you can imagine how Aphrodite feels about this, but she doesn’t do anything for awhile. Psyche goes to an oracle for advice, since she’d getting lonely and tired of only being worshiped and not really loved, the oracle (I believe upon Aphrodite’s instruction) tells her she is fated to marry a monster. Well, Psyche isn’t too happy about this, but somehow( the reasons vary) she ends up on a cliff and the West Wind comes an carries her to this great palace. Where he is waited on by invisible servants and visited at night by her husband. Whom she never sees. (This is like the original Beauty and the Beast, not the Disney version.)

Psyche is enjoying herself with no qualms until her sisters pay her a visit. (Either Eros lets them or his mother or they somehow find her themselves, I’m not sure.) We’ll say Eros lets them in this account. Her sisters fill her head with suspicions about her husband, what if he really is a hideous monster? Finally she agrees to look at him by night, the very thing she was forbidden to do. So she does this that night, but he turns out to be a gorgeous god with angel wings. While she’s gaping at him in adoration a drop of hot candle wax falls on him from her lap. He wakes up, scolds her for breaking his trust, and leaves her there. Aphrodite hears all about it and decides to punish Psyche in some pretty dramatic ways. She sets her a lot of tasks that seem impossible. But creatures ranging from ants, to eagles, to other gods, all help her complete the tasks.

Finally she is given one last task. Getting beauty from Persephone, the queen of the underworld. Psyche successfully gets a cask from her, but even though she was warned not to look in it, she does. (Some say because she wanted to look better for her husband whom she was supposed to be reunited with.) Well, it turns out what was in the box was death. Or else the beauty in it was so intense no mortal mind could take it in. Whatever the case Psyche immediately passes out. Either into death or just unconsciousness.

Eros finally comes back to her, after being kept away by his mother for a long time, and revives her. Then he brings her up to Olympus and she is given immortality. Zeus patches things up between her and Aphrodite somehow, and they all live happily ever after. (As much as Greek gods do.) Psyche also is given wings. Butterfly like wings if I remember correctly.

In Greek psyche means “Soul” and I’ve also heard it means “butterfly.” Which I think fits. I think the Greeks were onto a thing or two when they came up with this myth.

The myth is a metaphor for the soul. I’m sure it’s been interpreted different ways, but here’s my guess at it: The soul has to mate with love in order to fly. But before it can be fully united to true love, it must be free of its bondage to selfish, vengeful, jealous love (represented by Aphrodite.) That kind of love is just lust really, it wants to be admired and fulfilled but never give anything back in return. And if you know anything about Greek mythology, you know Aphrodite is responsible for screwing a lot of people up because of her matchmaking. (To her credit, she also makes some happy marriages along the way.)

Eros, or Cupid is considered a monster because he forces people to fall for each other with his arrows. People fear love because it leads to many reckless things. At least I always thought that’s what it meant.

C. S. Lewis puts a different spin on it when he shows that people fear Eros because they do not understand him, nor do they know him. Even though by all accounts Aphrodite does more to mess people up, Eros gets the credit for the damage she does. Eros is seen as a  brute because he seems to devour people. In that they are never seen again after they are taken to him. But Lewis digs deeper and shows that after being with a god, mortals are ruined for ever being content with mere mortal companionship again. Which makes their families angry and jealous, and makes other immortals like Aphrodite furious.

The really odd part is where Psyche dies. In any other Greek Myth, she’d be doomed for disobeying Aphrodite’s instructions. (It happened to other people.) But in this one, in an odd twist, she is forgiven and brought back with no lasting consequences. And she is reunited with her husband and made immortal. Did you catch that? The soul is made immortal after being united with love?

What’s really interesting is that I’m fairly certain this myth predated Christianity, yet all the basic elements of Christianity are in there. Psyche breaks the god’s command, ends up enslaved to another god who wants to punish her, she dies, she is resurrected, and she lives forever; because of love.

On top of that, Eros is Aphrodite’s son, so you could also see it as a representation of how Christ atones for us and makes us right with the Father.

It’s a powerful myth because it rings true. It’s one of the only Greek myths I know of where mercy wins out over the gods queer justice. It also reflects the truth, as Lewis shows, that the gods ways are unsearchable for mortals.

I like the myth both in its original form and in its retelling and I can’t figure out why no one is doing a retelling of it in movie form. Someone get on that!

Anyway, I hope you liked it, until next time–Natasha.

Stranger than fiction.

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Stranger than fiction.

It’s the title of a movie, I’ll bet there’s probably a book called that too. It’s also an old saying “Real life is stranger than fiction.”

You know what’s funny to me? How demanding we are now about our entertainment. There are still folks who aren’t picky. But especially among millennials and younger, we’ve got a lot of critics who want to find their fiction believable.

I’m guilty of this too, and hey, it’s not exactly wrong. I’m all for having standards. It’s not that that bothers me.

It’s that these standards are often ridiculous.

Fiction creators are held up to almost impossible standards. Everything that happens in their imaginary world needs to line up with everything else. They get criticized if there’s a detour into a subject unrelated to the main plot, even though if all of a story is just about one main plot, it can be flat and lacking in depth. If their characters aren’t funny or really emotional, than they’re flat. (It couldn’t just be that not everyone has to be either really funny or really volatile. Or stoic.)

They get accused of making characters stereotypical or cliche, but are also expected to play into certain stereotypes like “strong female character” or “doubtful hero,” or “compelling villain.”

We put a lot on these poor folks who just want to tell us an interesting story. Some of the most beloved stories of all time don’t make sense, that’s part of their charm.

And we’d be wise to take a look at why that is, and learn from it.

Take “Alice in Wonderland” for example. If you are western European, you have heard of this story. It used to be the number one required children’s book in England. It may still be. (Google it someone.) This story is famously nonsensical. But I like how Jim Weiss described such nonsense. “It makes sense, but in it’s own whimsical way.”

Alice runs into a lot of silliness, but mixed in with all that are some important lessons in humor error and in logic and the value of certain things. IT also turns a lot of the phrase we use on our own heads, and so teaches us that words ae important. In fact books like the Alice books, and the Phantom Tollbooth, and Mary Poppins, all foster a love of words in the reader. I sound like the prolouge to a classic by an editor, but it’s true nonetheless.

But what I find most important of all about these books is that they challenge the persepctive on life that even children may take too seriously. Alice i a know-it-all, Milo
(Tollbooth) is bored and finds nothing around him to be worthwhile, and Jane and Michael tend to be close minded about new things. The whimsical things that happen to all of those children teach them to enjoy life more and see wonder in things that they never paid attention to. The Narnia books do the same thing in a more gentle and subtle way.

And it’s good for all of us to have to stretch our minds to see things a different way. To understand that there may be different rules than the ones we know, or that we may just only know part of the story.

Okay, so what do my two subjects have to do with each other? I’m getting to that.

We have two choices in life, ladies in gentlemen, and all our important decisions will fall into one of these categories. Good and Bad.

But good doesn’t just mean moral, it means good for you.

And our attitude toward fiction is way more important to our well being than we give it credit for.

We can either demand that we understand every little thing, in every single part, after just one time with a story. Or, we can let it sink in a little deeper, and move us; or puzzle us and thereby cause us to think and hopefully to grow.

See, all this criticism and nitpicking, it’s our way of trying to protect ourselves. Not even from bad ideas, but just from liking things that it would somehow reflect badly on us to like. We don’t want to be fooled again.

There is some wisdom in that, but we have carried it way too far as a culture. It’s really just used to keep us from ever being challenged in the way we look at things. Because as long as we can pick something to pieces, we don’t have to admit it has a point. And as long as we can assign whatever meaning we want to it (whether it be less or more than the creator intended) then we don’t have to ask ourselves what the actual meaning was.

If we can explain it, then it can’t hurt us.

That’s what we think.

But if everything must be explained, then I’ll be the first to say fiction is fiction indeed.

Nothing in fiction is more unreal than when it all makes sense. Because if you haven’t noticed, real life does not make sense.

In real life, things happen for a reason, but it’s not always a reason we know. Or like. In real life phenomenons take place that we can’t understand or explain. In real life, outcomes are not always predictable. Most of all, in real life things cannot be dismissed just because we disagree with them or find fault with them. We actually have to work out problems in real life.

That’s why I take fiction seriously. Because it ought to be helping us deal with real life, since fiction is actually far simpler.

So demanding it be perfect is demanding something you are never going to see in this life. And demanding it be compelling is pointless. Because most fiction can’t force you to be compelled, you have to choose whether to care or not. And it’s no big surprise that those who don’t care about fictional events on the basis that it’s boring will not care about real events in a deep way.

Life is most definitely stranger than fiction, and the best fiction reminds us of that fact so we can become more flexible.

Those are my thoughts for now, until next time–Natasha.

How to recognize a weasel–part two.

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This is not really a continuation of my Beauty and the Beast review, it’s more a commentary on films in general.

I said when I reviewed The Hunger Games that the movie was trying to make you think it was good, but it really had no strong message.

It turns out there’s a lot of that going around. I just saw La La Land and it was the same thing. It seemed good because it was trying to be like an old fashioned romance, but it totally lacked morals. I’m actually surprised that many good people thought it was great.

I get why, I wanted to like it. But I kept waiting for a moment where the characters did something I could really admire, but they didn’t.

I think my Grandmother thinks I’m just predisposed to dislike every movie that recently (in the last five years) came out.

But I liked “Hidden Figures” and “The Intern.” And heck, I like “Guardians of the Galaxy.” I liked the new Cinderella movie.

I’m not impossible to please.

I am hard to please. I missed the memo when pleasing the more difficult audience suddenly became not what movie writers were supposed to go for.

Which is not to say I should just get to say any movie is bad because I personally didn’t like it. I didn’t like Hacksaw Ridge over much, but it’s not a bad movie. Some things are just taste.

But some aren’t. Like caring what a movie is actually trying to say. And if it’s not trying to say anything, then it’s smoke and mirrors, because no one can come up with a decent creation if they don’t have a goal in mind.

My sister is a painter and drawer, she never paints a picture of nothing in particular. I know some artists do to express freedom, but even they are trying to express something. I write, I never write a story or  post about nothing. My other sibling crafts, she never makes nothing in particular.

Whether you’re a good or bad artist, you can’t be an artist without a goal or a point in mind.

And a film without a real point is just trimmings and trappings over a bare framework.

But we’ve gotten really good at those trimmings.

We have realistic looking CGI to the point where most of us have seen more vibrant landscapes on TV than we have in real life.

We have actors who can be airbrushed to perfection.

We have locations to die for, almost.

We have surroud sound. We have cool scores. We have promotional ads!

What we don’t seem to have is stories. Everyone is talking about how unoriginal Hollywood is getting. I guess the directors figure if you can’t make up a new idea, you have to dress up an old one.

But lest we be too copycat-ish, we’ll throw out all the old morals the plot used to entail. Let’s have more sex, shooting, explosions, and dumb throwaway lines that will become t-shirts and memes and be forgotten a few years hence. That’s what people want to see.

Well, unfortunately, I’m starting to wonder if that is what people want to see.

I can still remember the feeling I used to get when I finished watching a really good movie. I felt braver, better, and like life was more beautiful because of that film’s ideas. I felt like I had a glimpse into something I wouldn’t normally see or think about. Every now and then I get that feeling again.

But not form these big hits that have recently come out. They just don’t do it for me. I could look every recent superhero film I’ve seen in the eyes and tell it “The Incredibles was still better than you.” And forget the romantic comedies.

Well, I digress.

I read in one book that since the Fall we’ve gotten really good at covering up our shame with fig leaves Whether they be ordinary fig leaves or designer fig leaves.

Or as Shakespeare put it “All that glitters is not gold.”

Shakespeare tells us that if we are “young in limb, in judgement old,” we will not stake our happiness on things that are shiny and seem valuable on the surface, but inside contain dead men’s bones. (Merchant of Venice.)

The fig leaves represent the way we try to cover up our shame. And our current shame as a culture is how little we understand right and wrong. A lot of us feel confused about a lot of things, so we cover it up by making movies and other things that sound good, and sound profound, but if we were to really examine them they would be as fragile as leaves and one yank would destroy the facade.

The words of Shakespeare warn us not to value things that are dead inside just because they satisfy our senses.

I look for life in a movie. Some movies are just too foolish, others are deliberate garbage, others are the result of poor writing.

We need to be able to tell, because if we can’t, we’ll admire all the wrong things. And you can’t admire garbage on a screen, and then appreciate gold in real life.

Let’s just say that anyone who takes fool’s gold for the real thing will never recognize actual gold when they see it. They don’t look the same when you’ve seen both.

And can I just point out that the people who are telling us it doesn’t matter and to just enjoy the garbage are usually the ones making it… don’t you think they have a slight agenda?

I’m basically giving you all permission to dislike popular films for good reasons. And to like good films with all the enthusiasm the youth are showing for the bad ones. That’s where the “young in limb” part comes in.

Wisdom and Passion are the two great helpers of life, and they have to be forged the right way.

That’s all for now, until next time–Natasha.