Christmas

"The best of gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of family all wrapped up in each other."
                                                                       -a voice wishing you a Merry Christmas; Burton Hills

Merry Christmas to all! Happy Holidays of course! I do realize that not everybody celebrates Christmas, however it is the dominate holiday being that it is celebrated by Christians, atheist, and the non religious. Religiously it has it's own set morals, but I rather not get into that because not everyone is religious. Atheist usually celebrate Christmas for the Hollywood view, as do the non religious. I wanted to talk about the Christian ideals of faith and hope, and I also wanted to talk about the Hollywood ideals because they have common threads.
I think what I love is that no matter where you stand, Christmas has something to do with family. From a Christian stand point, it's about the family of God. I like how this bounds all of humanity as family. I always thought the reason to be kind to everyone is because they're human, which makes their suffers your suffers. It's not that you only fight for your team, or country. We're all on the same team, so we should all care. Around Christmas, Christians are reminded that through God we are connected even deeper than that, we're connected as a family.
Hollywood isn't wrong. I think that the mind set; be kind to one another, it's Christmas! isn't a bad one. You should be kind all year around. But when we focus on family, society has made art that shows something beautiful about this time of year. Can you imagine a time of year when family is the ideal? Where family is the most important thing again, as it should be? This is describing the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Christians say that people do this give Christmas a meaning, because if you don't have a religion, it's an empty holiday. I'm Christian, but that's not my perspective. I think that it has actually allowed people an opportunity to express values through art such as movies, classic plays, writings, dance, all art. And society has shown what human beings have come to naturally value, we have all come to value love.
This is the time to love. Love your family. Love people. Love friends. Love. It's become the most powerful human emotion.
Think about your favorite Christmas work. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens comes to my mind. I've seen a couple times in plays, read every Christmas to date, and have seen maybe thirty movies of the play. The theme is Christmas is a magical time for family and love. The main character is reminded that in his past he had love and family and that made him happy. Then he's reminded that he's throwing that all away and in the process he's making himself live a life of misery. Then he comes to realize life is too short to live without love. So he loves the world. He loves his family. His loves the people of his community. He makes and loves friendships.
Love changed scrooge from the Grinch to a regular old Santa. Whether you love others, or are receiving the gift of God's love, or are just basking in the benefits of the season such as Christmas sales even though you don't celebrate the holiday, you love this time.
It's Christmas Eve. Tomorrow we will all wake up to a day devoted to love.

Love the people around and hold them tight,
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Monsters

"There's a monster hiding in the mirror. When I lean closer she comes nearer. She looks deep into my eyes and sees the fear. 'Hush baby hush', she whispers, 'you're the only one who that knows I'm here'."
                                                                                         - a voice who saw the monster in the mirror

People do terrible terrible things. People do things young children have nightmares of. They do things we fear till the day we die.

The common misconception is that only monsters do these terrible things. People want to believe somebody could never do something horrid because they aren't monsters. Only monster could. No human could ever. They are monsters. Not because of what they did. They were always monsters.

Cellar rats. They're there. If you open the door to the cellar suddenly they won't have time to hide, and you'll watch scatter and try to pretend they weren't there and weren't seen. If you make  noise coming down, they will have hidden before you turn on the light.

The monsters have very good hearing. They hide. They hide behind something it knows you won't suspect. It hides behind something pretty and attractive, that way it can continue to hurt things and you'll let it. It hides behind the human face. 

We are afraid of monsters. They make us tremble. There is nothing more terrifying then seeing there's one in the mirror. Nothing more terrifying than seeing a monster feed on hatred and the realize that we provided the hatred. We keep the monster alive. We allow it to consume us, control us, and then we allow ourselves to become the monster.

Then we want to believe we are the only monster. Only we can see it, so all the others will never know. Where too busy pretending we don't hate and love the beast we see in the mirror. We're too busy thinking we'e fooled everyone around us. We're too busy thinking that they think we're one of them. We don't realize that the monster is excepted because the only ones there to judge the hideousness are beasts.

But if we ever come to this realization, we forget our reflection. We forget that we're wearing masks. All we can do is fixate on the hideous monster we just saw. And we're scared. We realize we live in a world with monsters. We realize that monsters hurt people. We remember we're scared of the monsters.

It's not until people scream and point when they see our true faces that we're reminded of the skin we were wearing before. We're reminded of the monster we are. We hurt people. 

All we can do is except the monster. We tell ourselves all monsters do what we do and that the monster is who we are. The people we hurt don't matter anymore. We live in the world of monsters now with people being little pests.

The monster is delusional. They imagine the people. They think it's okay because they aren't hurting their own. There are no people, only monsters. Monsters hurt each other. They think it's fun. 

Don't stop monster. The monster is scary. The monster is evil. The monster will hurt you. The monster will kill you. You don't need to fear other monsters though. You only need to fear the one. The one in the mirror. 

Other monsters can kill you, hurt you, love you. This one is so much worse. This one can be you. You are the most powerful weapon at a monster's disposal. This monster, this monster in the mirror, this monster only wants to grow. It's a  different monster for all of us.

Each monster is fueled by a unique  hatred, which deforms it in some way. The monster is our purity, all of them have been hideously deformed. We thought the monsters lived in the closet. We thought that at a certain age we could stop fearing them. We thought they never left the closet. But monsters need to hunt, stretch their legs. They step out. People see the monsters, not just us when we look in the mirror.

The monsters aren't a force within us. Everything good in us isn't us. We want to believe that the monsters are just a small part within us. The good, that's just the smallest element within the monster. The monster wears a mask. The mask is made of light, it looks like a human face. But light doesn't always reflect the same way. When we look in the mirror, we can see what really lies beneath the skin.

We believe that only the monsters do bad things. We're all monsters though. We just need to look at our reflections.

What monster do you see in the mirror.

Stargirl: Names

"I'm not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it."

 -Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl: 
A voice that doesn't need a label












I thought that one of the most interesting concepts of this book was the name. This quote really says something about how our names represent us. In Stargirl, she mentions she went by different names at different times. Her name was just a word. The point was that she recognized that her name was only a word. A piece of cloth is just that, a piece of cloth. Notice how cloth has changed the world. Cloth, and in some cases other materials, has built an industry; fashion. You are not your clothes, but you try to make your clothes you. You style is you, but you are not your style. Stargirl thinks of names as the same thing. Her name is like her sense of style, it gets worn, she outgrows, she changes it.
This was such  a unique perspective because it's not meant to just reflect names. But it was so intriguing. Our names, our titles, we didn't choose them, how can they reflect who we are? Stargirl has gone by three names previous to the events of of the book. The first is her given name, which she stuck with for years, Susan. The second was Pocketmouse. She chose this name for herself when she was in elementary school. The last is the one she uses during the events of the book, for the most part, Stargirl.
So what was wrong with Susan? Nothing. She just wasn't Susan any more. She became Pocketmouse. Susan was apparently just as connected with the world as Stargirl is, but she wasn't as comfortable. Susan was her parents daughter. Pocketmouse was the name she chose when she had identified with herself. Her parents welcomed the changing of her name because they saw it as growth in their daughter and a new person they could get to know and love. What parent wouldn't want to see their daughter grow and form their own identity separate from their association with their parents.
The book doesn't say much about who Pocketmouse was. All we can tell is that she wasn't like Stargirl. Stargirl was a new personality she grew into. It was great to dig into the meaning of Stargirl's name because names mean something different to her. Our name is something that we our called, how society recognizes us. When she changed her name, she was asking society to recognize who she was, she asks them to recognize her by her personality. She was not her name, her name was her. She doesn't want to be recognized by her face or name, she wanted to recognized for her spirit.
So who was Stargirl? Who was this personality she would embrace and be known as? Her name is Stargirl. At first the instinct was that this was somebody who would be a star, take the stage, and broadcast who she was. She is broadcasted, but it isn't her. She doesn't try to shine brighter than others. Her nae means something different. A star is a little light in the sky. But there are billions. Her name does mean that she's a star, but stars don't light up a sky on their own, it's nothing as self-centered as that, not even remotely. The book says that in many ways she is more us than we are. That's the meaning of her name. Her name is trying to say that we're all stars, she isn't different or more special than us. Her name isn't her shining, it's us shining.
I love this theory on the meaning. I'm not saying it's a possible reason she chose the name. I'm proposing it's the reason the author chose. The theme of the book is very much asking who we really are at heart. It wants us to question if we're like everyone around us, or if we're all aching to dance in the rain. When it hit me as Stargirl meaning us shining, it hit me with a sense of care. That somehow this fictional character could care about me, about us. Why would she? Because she's meant to be an embodiment  of our some form of our truest selves.
Our truest selves are just people. Each a little different, but we all have the same deep yearn for love and we all feel a pain at the same time. We suffer constantly, sometimes aware, sometimes not, because there is somebody out there hurting. A little part of us always senses the pain of the world and lets in the light in the lives of others. Humanity isn't a species, it's a force. It may be bounded by a god, or something built into our DNA. Whatever it is, it may be the most important part of us.
We are not our names. Our names, or at least, or truest names, are us. You choose what your name means to people. You choose what your name really is.

What's your name?

You Took it Away

You said I betrayed you.

You said I kept a secrete from you.

You said I was a bad friend.

You said I was just advertising myself.

You said I was depressed.

I didn't hide any thing from you.

I wasn't I was depressed.

I didn't lie.

I didn't hide.

I didn't sing my praises.

I didn't want you to know.

I wasn't trying to show you.

I didn't want anyone to know.

I wanted something for me.

Just for me.

To be not me.

Not the me you think you know.

I had that.

I had something for me.

You took it away.

You betrayed me.

Then you stole my secrete.

You stole my refuge.

You were a bad friend.

You depressed me.

You took away my shield.

I had something.

You took it away.







You took it away.

You Took it Away

You said I betrayed you.

You said I kept a secrete from you.

You said I was a bad friend.

You said I was just advertising myself.

You said I was depressed.

I didn't hide any thing from you.

I wasn't I was depressed.

I didn't lie.

I didn't hide.

I didn't sing my praises.

I didn't want you to know.

I wasn't trying to show you.

I didn't want anyone to know.

I wanted something for me.

Just for me.

To be not me.

Not the me you think you know.

I had that.

I had something for me.

You took it away.

You betrayed me.

Then you stole my secrete.

You stole my refuge.

You were a bad friend.

You depressed me.

You took away my shield.

I had something.

You took it away.







You took it away.

You Took it Away

You said I betrayed you.

You said I kept a secrete from you.

You said I was a bad friend.

You said I was just advertising myself.

You said I was depressed.

I didn't hide any thing from you.

I wasn't I was depressed.

I didn't lie.

I didn't hide.

I didn't sing my praises.

I didn't want you to know.

I wasn't trying to show you.

I didn't want anyone to know.

I wanted something for me.

Just for me.

To be not me.

Not the me you think you know.

I had that.

I had something for me.

You took it away.

You betrayed me.

Then you stole my secrete.

You stole my refuge.

You were a bad friend.

You depressed me.

You took away my shield.

I had something.

You took it away.







You took it away.