Words

Words are very important to me. To me, the phrase "actions speak louder than words" doesn't really ring true. Words speak loud like words to me. My life is not a silent movie, it's a talkie.
I have learned lately, in a very deep way, that I cannot trust someone who does not express themselves in words.
Words were negated for me when I was growing up. They were not allowed. I think that is why I was such a book worm. I couldn't get enough of them because there just weren't enough of them in real life and so instead they just went around and around in my head because there was no release for them.
Now I'm not saying there isn't validity to actions being a true reflection of what is going on inside a person, and I'm not ignoring the fact that a person can say a load of horse shit while trying to "appear" to be honest, but for me, the fact is words are the only thing that will truly smooth the way, make me relax, help me trust and believe in someone. Until that word comes out that I am waiting to hear, I am only waiting for the other shoe to drop.
John 1
The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

It is no small thing

The oscars.... a really big thing for me since I was a small child. Some people will poo poo it and say it's just a spectacle blah blah blah, but I am moved by theatre, I am moved by a story, I find humanity in all of it and I love humanity, I love my fellow man and I love the nakedness and the honesty of film. I stayed home from school a lot when I was a kid; I absolutely hated school and didn't learn anything whilst there. When I was home, I watched movies. Tons and tons of movies. Also documentaries because there were only two channels when i was little and there was just good quality programming on them, not endless reruns and crap. I had parents who had a very broad knowledge of actors & actresses and stars and they informed my views of cinema in general and the gifted people in the industry. I was a huge fan of stories in any form really; I read voraciously and there are still movies from when I was little and becoming a teenager that I know helped create my world view. Guess Who's coming to Dinner helped me to understand bigotry and prejudice and be aware of it. The thing is, in my family we didn't talk about black and white. We talked about people's characteristics and their values etc. So, it was somewhat shocking to me to find that there were huge prejudices out there. The movie "The trial of Billy Jack" was a moment I'll never forget. It opened my eyes to the vast gulf between settlers and indigenous peoples and the triumph of love over hate. I watched it at home in my room when I was 14 and my Mom walked in to find me sobbing harder than I ever had in my life to that point.  Painful crying for all the pain of everyone in the world ever.
Gone with the Wind, Funny Girl, What's up Doc, The Pink Panther movies. 2001 A Space Odyssey, Singing in the Rain, Apocalypse Now, Paper Moon, Amadeus, Bladerunner, The Fisher King, Tous Les Matins du Monde, Gladiator, Empire of the Sun, LA Confidential, An American in Paris, Oliver!, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, The Piano, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, The Insider... the list is endless.
I love movies. I love being in a movie theater, I miss sitting in a car in a drive-in theatre - Aristocrats, Peter Pan, Grease, etc.
I love what Penelope Cruz said about art being a universal language and I loved that they brought out five award winning peers for each nominee, I think it was one of the classiest things I've ever seen and the moment of legacy that that afforded the nominee gave much more credence to the fact that they deserved to be in that company of actors.
I loved that Kunio Kato said "Domo origato Mr. Roboto" Seriously, that was just good fun.
I loved that I got to feel wholehearted about Heath Ledgers win for Best supporting Actor. I am all for my favourites and for the gesture, but I also want the best person to actually win, and I was blown away by his performance in that movie and I hate that it was his last one and I approve completely even as a movie snob that he won.
I love that Kate Winslet finally won an Oscar and I also think that she has grown into it with grace and talent, so it was probably exactly what she should have won one for.
I kind of wish that Richard Jenkins had won for best actor, but that's just because I would have loved to see the look on his face. It's fantastic that he even got the nom, but I would have loved the moment of having a seriously hard working character actor get a lead actor award.
And I loved that Slumdog won so much simply because I have a deep deep love of India and it's people and that culture touches my heart and makes me want a better life for all of them. Yes, that was very satisfying.
I think that this was one of the best produced Oscars I have seen in years and it looked to the naked eye as though it was actually enjoyable for all gathered there instead of just a painful debacle to sit through.
Bravo all of you, bravo.

The bells are ringing.

James 4 verse 14
It's less than an hour to midnight. The last hour of the last day of 2008. So, what is a year. It was made of moments and experiences, hopes and failures, emotions and drudgery; all that makes up a life, broken down into time. Moments become days, days become months, months become a year, years become decades, decades become centuries and centuries become millenia. It's all a little surreal really, and if it becomes more than surreal, it can become overwhelming, being part of relentless march of time. Is it relentless, or is it a gift? It has been a strange year. I completely changed my life. New job, new city, new home, new.... new sounds... the church bells are ringing down the block.

I don't enjoy the tone of these bells, but I do find the very fact of them reassuring. They make me feel connected. They have been ringing for a very long time and before these ones, others rang out the call; not just here, but in cathedrals everywhere. Actually, as I listen, I realize that tonight they are ringing a different tune. It's a little melancholy, or maybe that's just me; it's actually a more melodic tune than they normally have, strangely juxtaposed against the drunkenness going on just outside my door and the steady thump of the bass from the house party beside me. It makes me want to be outside. Not with the revelers, but just outside, where I can feel the air and taste the rain. However, when I let all of the noise in my own head stop, I find that I am content to be half inside and half out.

The Christmas tree is on, and the only other light is the candle burning at the table.

I have my glass of wine, my book and I'm sitting beside the open window where I can actually feel the rain and taste the air, which on a night like this, is probably better than the other way around. I've turned off the t.v. finally, just so I could spend the last hour of the year with God, but found I needed to say something to myself first. I'm pretty sure it's just to remind myself that there is substance and there is life. There, they've started again and will probably go on intermittently till midnight. I'm glad.

Stolen survey

1. Pick 15 of your favourite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

1.It's K-K-K-Ken c-c-c-coming to k-k-k-kill me.
2. It's important to think. It's what separates us from lentils.
3. Those giraffes you sold me, they won't mate. They just walk around, eating, and not mating. You sold me... queer giraffes. I want my money back.
4.+ "You're a fucking *psycho*.
-"Don't rush to judgment on something like that until all the facts are in.
5.There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say "screw all those people"! Anybody could make a case, a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you're two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to have a pigmentation problem, and I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse, and that would be if - knowing what you two are and knowing what you two have and knowing what you two feel- you didn't get married. Well, Tillie, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner?
6.I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

This one is for J'aime!
7.You tell him, and I will smack you. I will smack you like a bad, bad donkey, okay!

This is my favourite quote from a movie ever. makes me laugh my head off every time. Of course you have to see it to get how funny it actually is, otherwise it just sounds...well, bad.
8. No, I'm not okay! Do I look okay? The fucker shot me! What the fuck-ass fuck of a bum-fuck shithole town is this?
I defy any of you yankee folk to know #9
9.How do you forget about 400 pounds of defecating menace?
10. +We pumped your mother's stomach.
- Yeah, it was an accident.
+: How did she accidentally chug half a bottle of sleeping pills.
- She was cleaning them up.
+: With her mouth?
11.Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.
12. Shelves in the closet; happy thought indeed.
13.Wendell, I'd like full and docile co-operation on every topic.
14. It was like he was wearing a suit...an edgar suit.
15.I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight... razor... and surviving.

O.k. I think it was more fun for me looking up old movies and seeing all the quotes for them. It was really hard to pick the ones I liked best.

Happy Valentine's Day Dad.

So, the other day was the anniversary of my Dad's death. It is a day after Valentines Day and it always makes me very reflective. This year was no different. I wasn't sad in particular. It was a day without him, and this year, a day without my daughter as well, which was weird but getting more normal I suppose. 

My family and close friends know that my Dad was not an easy man. He was moody and cranky and there was a gulf between us. However, I have good things to look back on and be grateful for. One of them was Valentine's Day. I'll back up a sec to say that no matter what the holiday was - Christmas, Hallowe'en, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, or Valentine's, my Dad went out of his way to be in a good mood all day and to really make the duration of the holiday special. This is a huge legacy he left because I don't have too many cliché hang ups about holidays being all awful and full of family angst etc.

It's just that in our family Valentine's day wasn't so much about romance as it was about family. It wasn't so much about the evening out as it was about a special breakfast setting. Throughout the rest of the year, the norm rather than the exception was to eat breakfast separately. We all had different schedules etc. so it wasn't very often (i'm sure that a lot of families experience this) that we shared the breaking of the morning fast. 

So back to the hole that is left by my Dad at Valentine's day. Every day since I was a little girl, when I woke up in the morning and saw the breakfast table laid out with all of our plates there, there would always be a heart shaped box of chocolates for me as well as for my Mom. He never let me feel left out of this holiday shaped by the world to be about romantic love. I didn't have it and there was no one else to place the box there but him. He never missed one. Except the last day. Just a box of chocolates, just one day a year. Looking back it meant the world.

Thanks Dad.

That present malady

Why do we persist in accepting the mediocre in life?

Why have we forgotten about radical change, radical growth? Or do we just not think that kind of shift belongs to us. It's for other people; is that the way we have started to believe?

We do it in our families.... "Well, I can't tell her/him how I feel about that, it's just the way they are. We've always had that relationship and I just don't see it changing... and, my beliefs, views pain, it is just not what they want to hear about." Why doesn't it matter enough that you could reach farther into their hearts and truly know them , to take the risk of being exactly who you are with them and let them truly be who they are with you. That means mother to daughter, daughter to mother, sister to sister, aunt to nephew, niece to uncle, cousin to cousin. We were put in our families for a reason and they are a testing ground for how we relate to the world. Why do we lose all our courage here in this landscape?

We have friendships that we just let disappear and fade into time and others that we maintain but how much is real and how much is just a facade?  How many of your friends really know you?  And it's not how many friends would stand beside you in a crisis, it's how many of them would you ask? How many of them would you let in?

Romantic relationships end and instead of making new friends out of the person we have just ended it with, or honouring them, we live in culture that just expects things to get bad or worse or just be nothing... is that person nothing?




I am horrified at the little we accept, at the mediocre and lukewarm prayers we pray. We allow our well-worn and time honoured traditions around communication and lifestyles to rule us. We truly let molehills become mountains in our lives by refusing to step out in faith and courage.
I am sick to death of the mediocre in me. I want to slam it into a wall and never let it up again. I want to rise to every challenge God puts in my way, even if the challenge is learning how to be grateful. I don't want to accept a mediocre gratitude from myself, I don't want to pay lip service to anything I do. My church, my neighbourhood, my country, my world is in bed with mediocrity and I know there are some righteous souls out there kicking lukewarm in the ass and winning and I want to be a part of that.
What about you?

Things you may or may not know about me

• I have a huge phobia around bubbles. I am not afraid of them however, I find them repulsive.
• I am a pool shark - I can beat most of all y'all.
• I cannot eat anything that is too mushy - whipped cream and mashed potatoes are out. Also, no milkshakes, this is just mushy plus bubbles which is doubly disgusting.
• I love bunnies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• I have read War and Peace several times and I love it.
• I didn't know my Dad's real first name till I was nine. His name was Keith but my Mother called him Mike. Actually I have many many family members who we call things other than their real names.
• When I was 7 I was convinced I knew exactly how to build a fully operational replica of the Loch Ness Monster.