Under The Tuscan Sun

So, my dear fellow bloggers, facebookers..... etc. etc. Here I am yet again surfing and typing my heart away on this computer. I have completely chosen a 180 degree path change for my life: including renaming this blog. So, I find it only fitting that I should bring up a movie that most closely resembles my life in these most recent series of moments I have lived so far. The feature film being, what else, but Under the Tuscan Sun.

After a very recent divorce, Francesca gets talked into going on a tour of Tuscany to get away and while there sees a villa she decides on the spur of the moment to buy with the little bit of money left to her name... And thus begins her journey of her new life.

How can I NOT compare this movie to my own life?.... More of a rhetorical question than an actual one, I suppose.

So, if I was to review the movie but edit in the blanks from my own life what would it sound like.....

After a very recent break-up and death of three close family members, Katalin on the spur of the moment decides to move to San Antonio and take her dog and the last little bit of money and the last bit of sanity she has with her. And thus .... well, is the end of yet another sad chapter in her series of unfortunate events and the beginning of a series of random perchance occasions she puts herself in and at times just "coincidently" finds herself in.

Aaaaaand I have had someone tell me that I am boring, and that I am sad, AGAIN.. and that I should get "dolled" up and go out and dance and "find a boyfriend." I laugh out loud and think, "Is it really that simple?" L.O.L. And I have had someone tell me that when you stop looking so hard for something and just go with the flow, it will usually show up on its own. ...

So, I put myself on the path I want every morning and I wait to see what happens.... ...

Today, I got up, drank two RedBulls, ate breakfast, started laundry, took a nap, drank another RedBull, got out, ate a hamburger kid's meal with apples instead of fries and a strawberry lemonade, spent time with my aunt, uncle, and two cousins, went to the bookstore and picked out a book (duh, can never leave there without one...) and then came home, ate popcorn shrimp and put on Stranger Than Fiction for my grandparents to watch.

I'm not sure what this all adds up to.... But little...well, fully am I aware that...

This is what I do, this is who I am. ...

And tomorrow I will go to work, and let the day do the rest. Who knows, maybe I'll do something awesome like .... stumble across a ladybug...

or invent a cake made out of cake doughnuts....or indulge in cookies and milk after an atrocious day. Who knows? I don't. But I know it'll be awesome. Because it's mine... and no one else's.

and....

This is what I'm going to do.... and this is who I am going to be...

Goodnight.

That's What She Said

This is my blog Re-Discovered. This is my story.




Goodbye "That's What She Said"
You are what got me started
And I will always remember that.
And you're thinking "pfffsht...that's what she said.." And you'd be right...
That's what I am thinking while spending my days here in Texas=)
Yup...But that's not what She Said..
That's what I say.
Hello "Under The Texan Sun"

Super Troopers, What-A-Burger, & The Rocketeer & Joe versus The Volcano

So my dear readers, here I am. Life has granted me the grace and possibility to love and to lose. I realize now, when people ask if it is better to love and to have lost, or to not have loved at all.... They are not asking or comparing, they are trying to see if you know that none of that matters. What matters is if you realize that love without loss, is not love at all. Without loss we cannot know love; without love, we cannot understand loss. If we had never tasted bad, how would we know what good is in comparison?.....

Anyway... Translation into normal english.

There are plenty of normal things I do and I have rediscovered. Liiiike the simplicity of going to the bookstore and finding a patch of bare carpet and planting myself indian style down and peeling the cover of my journal back and jotting down my random feelings and thoughts. I have rediscovered speaking my thoughts without filtering them. I have rediscovered the wonderful cash-chewy-ness of cashew chicken and rice. I have rediscovered the splendor of the movie theater and how comforting it has been and can be at times of great stress. I have rediscovered new things I hadn't tried before, like the movie, Super Troopers.

This is what I have been missing this whole time!!?!?... Sad day that I've existed this long without this awesome laugh... But happy day, that from now on I am aware that it's here for me if I should ever need a good laugh.

I have rediscovered what it's like to have family... and to have family that actually cares about you; family that wants to spend time with you and get to know. People that love you.. for just being you.

I have rediscovered my appetite for food... And What-A-Burger.

I have rediscovered curiosity for stories hidden in between the lines of peoples stories around me, abbreviated and hidden in the square plaques we put on our cars officially called "license plates." Every plate is a story.... If only I was able to look into the history of each one, imagine the crazy and stupendously boring things I would hear about.

I have rediscovered the memories and new enjoyment of watching old flicks I grew up on, like The Rocketeer. I thought Lady Luck was one of the prettiest and most classic looking actresses Ihad ever seen and I still think so.

I have rediscovered the understanding of my own story, and the stories that brought me here. I have rediscovered the glory and comedy of Joe Versus the Volcano once more. "They look like little monsters... But, they're good little monsters.".... "Long ago, the delicate tangles of his hair, covered the emptiness of my palm...." Look I don't know you, you're angry... I can see that. I'm very troubled... I'm not ready to.. There's only so much time, so use it well... I'm sitting here talking to you, I don't want to throw it away...

I have no response to that..

Then maybe you should take me back to the hotel....

Will you meet me for breakfast?... I told you I was a flibberty-gibbet. I'm sorry I was so grotesque last night. Can I ask you a question?... Why are you dressed as Jungle Jim?

Goodnight.

The Shining

o.k. So after my productive day off... EEEk except for doing my laundry... (must get on that....) I am now watching The Shining... In broad daylight with my blinds open enough to let daylight in... Yes. I am a chicken when it comes to horror and I am not too prideful to admit it.

Shining : definition: n. sixth sense

I had read the book by Stephen King a long time ago, but since forgotten the meaning behind the title. The little boy has a friend "Tony" that lives in his mouth and tells him things that have happened or things that will happen. The boys dad gets a job as a winter caretaker at a hotel in the mountains. I'm sure EVERYONE knows it's the hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. And I'm sure EVERYONE has seen it a long time ago, so I'll skip over all the sordid details. But I will say, I had forgotten the shining refers to the sixth sense that is stronger in some people than in others.

What absolutely makes this beyond creepy for me, is that I remember that road driving up to that hotel, I remember those mountains. I know that place personally. The actors casted are creepy looking people too (duh) and the music is a lot of "white noise." I Hate...I loathe...I despise... I ABHOR white noise. GIVES ME THE HEEBIES JEEBIES AND OBVIOUSLY IT'S NOT JUST ME THAT FEELS THAT WAY!!!!!!

At the beginning, while the hotel owner is showing the wife and husband around the grounds, a black man that is the hotel manager, Mr. Halloran, takes their little boy, Danny to get some ice cream to keep him occupied for a bit. He recognizes that the boy has telepathic abilities and asks Danny to talk with him about it. Mr. Halloran explains that he used to have conversations with his grandmother for hours without ever opening their mouths and she described it as them having a shining to them that some had and "others didn't."

Now that the sun is going down, I have turned the volume down and put on the subtitles. Just too plain creepy to keep this turned up. I bet Danny wishes he had a remote he could use to turn off his telepathy with.

And on that short and cheery note, I hope you all get some sleep, because guess what? Tomorrow is Friday!! Again!!!

Big

It is my Friday... well, my first friday.. cuz then Wednesday is my second Friday... and real Friday isn't really a Friday at all... So, yea.... Anyhoo.....

And I spent the morning at work, and kicked some dragons, then napped (cuz kicking dragons will take the punch out of one's self..) and then passed a languid 45 minutes at 1/2 priced books and came home to eat a lovely Betty Crocker's dinner prepared by mi Nana with Bluebell ice cream and strawberries for dessert. After watching Sleepless in Seattle the other evening for the first time, the subject of Tom Hank's looks got brought up and I asked if they remembered the movie Big he was in......Aaaaand the answer was a big fat "No" cuuuz, they'd never even seen it. (!)What!!??

So, as of this moment, we are almost done watching Big, about a kid that made a wish at a carnival that he was big. "Big" meaning "grown-up." And he just so happens to make the wish while playing an arcade game for 25 cents...And it comes true. It is sweet and a movie from my childhood interestingly enough. Need I say more?... Probably... But I am just going to leave you to discover it for yourself... Goodnight everyone. It's been fun...

Stranger Than Fiction..My Kind of Flours

So, here I am..... yes, again.... Blogging... and watching yet, another movie, and yet..... blogging about an entirely different movie I watched earlier. Again. So, Hello... Again....*chesire grin..* Seems to be my trademark look nowadays. Anyway, so, I am blogging about Stranger than Fiction while watching Sleepless in Seattle.

I might as well tell you now!! There are serious Spoiler Alerts in all these reviews...... hmmmm, may have to work on that later on........ But for now... deal with it. Trust me, if I'm reviewing it, it's worth watching. ... Moving on!!!!

So, being my last day off for the next four days (thank god it's not the next six days, ugh) I spent the morning doing my own thing, drawing, coloring, making ringtones, fiddling around with facebook and my facebook page (successfully and unsuccessfully,) and what else, but watching a movie (of course.) Inevitably, I always have a movie in the background. So, my parents had emailed me and said while watching a certain movie, they thought of me because the heroine of the story reminded them of me...

Whether it was the fact she works in a bakery, is for less government, or has a funky personality.. I'm thinking it was probably a collaboration of all those things. The name of its quirky self is Stranger Than Fiction. Starring, Will Ferrel, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, it packs a nice cast of characters that carries the unique script on a walk through the park. For all the famous actors boasted on the casting list, it feels like an indy film. It is about a man that measures everything by time, and more specifically by the time on his wristwatch. He goes to sleep at a certain time, wakes up at a certain time, brushes his teeth in so many strokes, jogs so many steps to the bus stop just in time to catch the bus, and arrives at his office building where he is an IRS auditor. Everything is kept short.... and simple. Not short and sweet, just short and simple. He begins to hear a woman's voice (Emma Thompson) that narrates everything he does (very much seeming like the voice of God from the sky... if God's voice were the voice of a woman of course.)

He is beginning to feel chaffed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown after spending days of listening to this voice only he hears (But Hey[!] he's not schizophrenic,) when one day he sets out from his computer desk to audit a woman that works at a small bakery shoppe.

Upon meeting her, he is infatuated.. no....entranced by her... And (of course) the woman narrating describes his feelings perfectly and he catches himself gazing at her in a fog of "love" at first sight. .... His life becomes not so short, and not so simple, but definitely sweet by the end once he has bavarian sugar cookies and the love of his life there feeding them to him.

He discovered, as did his narrator, that it isn't always about the "great" things in life so much as it is about the small things...The things that usually seem just o.k. And the baker girl learns that you can't make a difference in the world if you're locked away for being a fanatic..... Life shouldn't be about how everyone dies in the end.... I mean, c'mon... Everyone dies... But no one lives life the same way.. So, why shouldn't life be about...living life... Focus on life..

My favorite part of the movie, he shows up at her bakery when she is locking up to go home, and he is standing there with a box with about ten paper bags all with different colored labels and she looks at him a bit irritated and suspicious and asks, "What?!" He stumbles over his words and finally manages, "I brought you flours.... I thought you might like that....."

Freaking most awesome original line.....EVER!!!!!! *sigh of contentment*

So, the verdict.... The little things in life are what usually end up saving us in the end, so don't forget about 'em, o.k? Goodnight..........

17 Again

I am sitting here still enjoying movies that I have not yet watched. I am now watching Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, but that's not what I am reviewing at this very moment. While passing through the movie trailers to get to the dvd menu, I passed 17 Again. I just watched that for the first time two weeks ago. I was feeling low at the time. I was dwelling on the person I had been for the last few years and I dwell so much on pretty much everything from the fact that I haven't yet figured out how not to aka "let go." So, in my low mood of self-loathing, I popped in 17 Again, a dvd I found in a two dollar bin on Black Friday. I had never watched it after my "impulse-induced" stated had passed. But the black mood I was simmering in, was in dire need of fluffiness I was not yet acquainted with; Legally Blonde and Fred Claus would just not do the trick. So, I removed the crackling plastic off the cover, placed the dvd into my blu-ray player and wrapped my smug cloud cover over my head and tucked myself in its strangely cozy embrace.

I have become so used to analyzing feelings and my feelings and other people's feelings, that feelings aren't just "feelings" anymore that happen, that pop up at random... Feelings are reactions... And if you can predict or figure out what causes them... Then they make sense, they aren't random, they have reason.... But see... Feelings don't always make sense, or have reason.... So, in my pursuit of finding the root of feelings, I forgot what "feelings" mean. ... Enough about the "touchy-feely" talk.

The whole point is that seeing Zac Efron

dropping the basketball and running after his highschool sweetheart to ask her to marry him: touched me..touched my heart. I saw young love and it reminded me that .......well, when a guy loves a woman.. He shows up. Feelings can be "created" but it's like comparing diamonds and artificial diamonds... Not the same thing. The real thing is something that happens despite everything, and you wouldn't trade it for anything else. It made me happy to see them depict the real thing... The real feeling that is.....

.

*Breath of fresh air*

I have learned so much from those days... I wouldn't trade them for anything else. I wouldn't ask for them to come back, but I wouldn't trade them for anything else. Watching 17 Again is like falling asleep in a field of poppies...... You need someone to come along and save you. And on that note... Ghosts of GirlFriends Past is pretty cute. Pretty cliche.... But, it's got its own twist to Dicken's Christmas Carol. .... No pun intended... I think?.....

Curdled

It is a lovely Saturday morning, by definition, my day off; when in reality it is Thursday. I have spent the morning gloriously and deliciously doing nothing but what my heart desires.... Well, to a point, the point being the things what I am able to accomplish for my hearts desire... But Anyway!..

So, after a six day work week, I am now resting, thank goodness. My artistic soul is beaming and languidly basking behind this computer with markers and canvasses strewn about me.

I put on a Quinten Tarantino film a friend had lent me to pass the morning, and was pleasantly surprised. It had a very different feel than his other films. It is about a girl's fascination with murders that all started when a man fell murdered from the balcony above her mother's bakery. She began a scrapbook with articles in it accompanied by depictions she draws of the articles. She grows into a woman that quits a job at a bakery to work as a maid that cleans up after murder investigations.

The Mexican atmosphere and cumbia music nicely accentuate and liven up this dark, and what would normally be called morbid, film.

It somehow soothed my heartache at being a loner to watch Curdled. I did not feel so boring for my interests and boring habits after watching the main character, Gabriella. My thought was, "Well, at least I don't have that obsession!" There were numerous sweet details sprinkled about that caught my attention. The fact Gabriella's mother owned a bakery, that at home, she bakes gingerbread cookies and pipes icing on them, that she dances by herself to the pattern of the steps leading up to the victim's demise.

It was by no means sugary sweet, but it was more like pan dulce, just sweet enough to satisfy. That's what she said, and that's what I say, and now I want pan dulce.... And it's All Your Fault!!

Sucker Punch

It is another day in the world.. And it has taken me long enough to drag myself up to the computer and stretch my fingers over to the keys and across them to at least tap out a construction of a paragraph.... or two.. or three....

SuckerPunch: n.; adj. the moment a dream is rudely awakened into reality

Work is work. Life is life. . But what is love?... Some people don't like to discuss it. Some people enjoy mulling over the idea, while others constantly jump in head first and immerse themselves in it. I have a theory, and I am waiting to see it proven true. I propose that love is like a person: it has two sides to it; to understand it you must get to know and understand both sides before you can truly know it. There is a sad/evil/cruel side and there is a happy/good/compassionate side. And before you can really know just how wonderful the beautiful side is, you must acquaint yourself with the ugly side of it. Without one, the other cannot exist.

Up till now I have fished to the very bottom of the barrel of my soul and the world's soul to find "love." On the way down I passed some shiny apples, some gnarly apples, some sour apples, some sweet apples, some moldy apples, some abandoned apples that people had tasted and tossed aside to be picked at by desperate others only to be tossed aside again.... And I became acquainted and good friends with mostly the half eaten sticky cores. I stubbornly followed the optimism that there is good in everyone and I was determined to prove it. And yes, I still believe there is. However, I now realize, dragging my soul through the mud will not help those old gnarly moldy apples anymore than it will help my very own self. Faith is believing in things not seen, so maybe the whole time I've been trying to prove good exists in everything has been the wrong answer; maybe just having faith that it is there, deep within, regardless of whether anyone can prove it or not, is what I should have really been after.

I titled this post after the film Sucker Punch and I still have yet to mention anything about it. It is about a girl who had everything and lost everything: everything except for her soul and mind. But, her saving grace was finding a new purpose to live for after she found something worth dying for. On one level, I interpreted the characters all as individuals. But after pondering on it for a few weeks, I realize we have all those personalities inside of ourselves. We have the girl that has nothing to lose inside of us, protecting us and egging us on when we fear hurt or pain. We have that girl that ran away from home and ended up trapped with no way back. We all have so much potential and different possibilities and fate and memories speaking to us... And the most important decisions we make to shape our fate will be the hardest ones to decide: the decisions of letting go and sacrifice.

Whenever you come to a crossroads (and yes, here it comes, the crossroads speech....) you have to decide whether to turn right or left. One road usually leads to a scary undetermined path full of new sights and sounds that are unfamiliar, while the other holds no secrets, no fear... And it is this second path, devoid of fear and its brother hope that should be feared, because it is a shallow road that leaves many mere shells of the entire human they could and should be.

Do not be afraid to let go of the past..... Be afraid of not letting it go. Learn to let go of that girl that is numb and heartbroken. She has been there to protect the little girl in you this whole time and she is there to take the hit so that the innocent part of you is able escape and given the chance to grow again.

I suppose now that it's almost two in the morning I will get off my soap box and let you all continue snoring. goodnight.