The Edge of Reason

Here I am dear fellow bloggers, readers, and stalkers. I am seated at an old comfortable hang out: Barnes & Noble. Leg crossed, iPad balanced across knee, Starbucks refresher within reach, book my cousin gave me a few days ago at my side, I feel comfortable. I feel at peace in this moment. I was always safe here (at Barnes.) I now feel like that somewhere else: in a river with my feet dangling in the rain gorged current. I actually can't wait to get back to it.

I saw the dvd Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason sitting atop a relative's tv cabinet and it put me to thinking. She sets out to take care of herself and doesn't settle for less than what she wants, and along the way, her standards are raised higher. For anyone that hasn't seen it, it is a movie about a middle aged British woman seeking success and love and bumbling her way through life fantastically. When life gives Bridget Jones lemons, she puckers up and just sucks on 'em or cuts up lemon wedges for a drink, or she might just chuck them in the trash, you just are never quite sure with her.


I usually feel like I'm on the edge of reason. Who doesn't?... It's a crazy busy world, and one of our important jobs that a lot of us ignore is slowing down enough to have time to do the things that relax us and make us happy. We are born and bred into a society that we have to push ourselves to work until we drop, and then just get back up and keep doing it till we drop again... and again.. until we die. It's important to stop and smell the roses, or the coffee, or both, or whatever strikes your fancy. Some people have to work hard to find even a few minutes to take care of themselves; most people don't have the luxury of saying, "I work so that I can afford my living costs and the ability to be able to go do what I Really want to be doing with my time." I am lucky enough to say, I go to work, I do my job and I leave, and I get paid; and in my off time I am able to just do what I want to do.

I think of how I got to take a crazy roadtrip with my dog at my side and just listen to the silence of the road. I got to finally drive back into my old city and feel my old memories and just cry from sensing the gentle probing tendrils one's environment wraps around memories like ivy vines. I was able to finally let myself remember what it felt like a year and a half ago when I was so heartbroken and empty, and I finally was able to cry for the woman I was at that time. It felt so good to just let all my walls of protection down and just let my history wash over me like a rain storm. I got to get my transmission fixed today and tomorrow I get to go the the Renaissance festival, and I get to just relax and just breathe. I get so caught up in thought, I almost turn blue from just holding my breathe.

So, hold onto yourselves my dears. Don't forget what you like doing in your free time. We are all individuals with different hobbies, we deserve to have time to enjoy them. Even if it's smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish (like Bridget Jones..) don't forget to make yourself stop and just bask in it for a second or two.

Drowsy and ready to get a good night's sleep,

Read Riding Hood

I wish you all a Happy Weekend!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iSoul

The Dark Knight Rises

Good Morning Dear World. I am slightly crazy and on a whim picked myself up and drove myself to where I was born.

Think 933 miles or so. I am here now. I hadn't planned on seeing the latest Batman movie when it first comes out, but I sure am hearing a lot of talk about it. And I recently started a piece of art on the former joker, and a line of his popped into my head.

"It's All A Part Of The Plan...."

I just heard about the midnight shooting at the premier of Batman. My heart is breaking; for all those families, for all those men and women and children... I am reminded of all the sadness I grew up with and left here. It really has nothing to do with the shooting, but the shooting itself brought up my own loss and sadness and once again, I am reminded of why I left Aurora. Anyone that has loved and lost, can understand how different situations can conjure up similar emotions from baggage and history. I am seriously waxing sentimental here, and I always was better at writing people love letters, than I ever was just talking to them... until recently, when I found the words (but that is another story for another day.) And right now, I want to write a love letter to Aurora, the woman that took care of me so long, but isn't compatible with me any longer.

Dear Aurora,

I will always love you, you were my first companion and partner. But I am not happy with you. I was born into you, you were my fate. But my destiny lies else where. I stayed with you so long.... I thought you were forever. But, I've had a taste of another place, and I can't live with you any longer. And I know you do not have the strength to let me go, so I will take it upon myself to let go of you first so we both can begin our separate journeys to happiness now. I will stand up and be the example and do this the right way. We are not growing anymore, only staying stagnant. You got me started and I would not be the person I am today without you, and I thank you for that. I know separation hurts, and you are entitled to being bitter and resentful at me, but I hope you can try to see that I am trying to remain truthful and be honest. I know that if I am not honest now, it will only come back to hurt us later, and I would rather hurt now, and not later. So, know that I understand if you are angry and want to lash out at me in hurt and frustration. I understand why you are lashing out, but this is for the best. You don't deserve someone that would just stay with you out of pity and sentiment. You deserve someone that is with you because you love each other. I do not feel that love with you anymore, I have respect and a place for you in my heart always, but that is all I have to give. And you shouldn't accept/settle for that as enough. Never settle for less than love. I am writing from my heart as always. I would never give less than the blood in my veins, and writing is only opening veins and bleeding onto a page. I hope you can believe me, if not today, some day soon. I never thought we would be here, but we are and if you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, I will look at it for you and tell you about it. I promise you it's there, we won't stay on the bottom, we only have up to go from here. Believe me. There is a better world out there, with love and hope and a larger sky than we ever imagined.

Sincerely and always with veritas,

Aequitas.

With that my loves, I will sign off, I have bled all I can bleed today.

Do not ever forget to look for the beauty in the world.

It is there, even when all we can see is the evil.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iSoul

Location:Aurora, United States

La Luna

Good morning everyone, I still cannot possibly get this story out of my mind. I even took my two cousins to go see Brave yesterday. Why?.. I actually am asking myself why I feel so attached to this film. And after watching it yesterday, I have another answer apart from the one I had yesterday. I think I could go on finding reasons I am attached, but that is beside the point.
At the beginning Merida is talking about how some believe fate and destiny is connected through us through the land; how they are weaved together like a tapestry; how it lives in us and how some of us set out to control it.

I have come to realize there are choices we make that lead us to our destiny and to our fate, and there are things we keep running into that we feel we cannot escape from and can't get past. And I have come to realize those are the things that are our fate: the things we keep running into. Fate is a vicious cycle, because it is usually the things that we have come to know day in and day out, every year, sometimes our whole lives: it is all we know, and either we blindly accept it as our destiny; we feel the need to change it, but don't know how or are too scared to; or we recognize the cycle for what it is and realize we are bigger than the cycle and can be better than it and rise out of it. Fate is what it is, fate is the land. But destiny is in us: Destiny is our Very Own Selves: destiny is you and me as individuals deciding how we react to our fate, whether we continue following it in repetitive circles, or whether we break free of it and weave something new.

I'm twenty-three years old and I have managed to survive three monumentally difficult events in my life so far. And it made me realize something important for my life as well; everyone can give you advice, but only you can make the decisions for your life; you have to forget and forgive yourself of your past, and only think of this moment and where you stand and where you want to see yourself end up; you have to take each step yourself, and with each step evaluate it: ask yourself, "O.k. in that moment, I had to do 'this..' and now I am here, and (a) that worked I'm going to keep moving in 'this' direction or (b) that didn't turn out as I expected, I need to move in 'that' other direction now." Sometimes we only know the right way to go by living each moment and taking things step by step, emotion by emotion, knowing who we are, what we can and can't live with and paying the price for being alive. I tell myself every day when between a rock and hard place, that I have to choose the decision that keeps me fighting. Because the day I choose the option that kills me inside or makes me an angry, bitter, or evil person, there is no point to living. I might as well be dead, if I have no fight in me; if I give in to "the dark side..;"if I am slowly killing myself inside.

Everyone deserves happiness. You, me, everyone. They also deserve the truth no matter how difficult and painful. Without truth we cannot reach happiness.

I am in a very melancholy mood, my loves, and my head feels fuzzy, so I will let you go and hope you get to see the boy and his father and grandfather sweeping up stars on the moon tonight.

Goodnight,

As Always with sincerity,

Read Riding Hood



- Posted using BlogPress from my iSoul

Brave

Hello my fellow bloggers, I hope you find yourselves enjoying this afternoon whether it is sunny, raining, or cold wherever you are. It is sunny and on the verge of being stifling hot. I doggedly tap away on my keyboard just because I know I am going to talk from my heart, and talking from the heart requires courage, and I have used up so much right now, and yet, I know it is required of me to continue using it until further notice. The summer heat supplies such wonderfully natural happy endorphins, and yet at a scorching price to be payed: getting sunburnt. *sigh* I rhetorically ask myself, "What can one do?" However, I was able to see the recent Pixar movie Brave on the weekend it came out and I have been bursting to talk to about it.

The short film at the beginning is my favorite Pixar short film ever, no doubt whatsoever. It is about three generations, a grandfather, father, and son that row out in a little dingy every night, put up a ladder and climb up to the moon. On the moon is where falling stars land and is where they sweep/rake up as many stars to give the moon its phases. The film encompasses the night the grandfather and father take the son/grandson up to the moon for the first time to teach him the family tradition. It is a beautiful and touching excerpt about learning the tradition we are born with to build yourself a foundation and then venturing out and finding your own way to build and expand tradition so that with each generation it evolves and betters itself, by learning from mistakes and each person recognizing the difference of individuals. It touched me, and quite honestly a day doesn't go by now, that I don't think about the moon and look forward to seeing just so that I can imagine them up there having cleaned up fallen stars.  Looking, as always, for the irony in life, I smile realizing my Nana loves her hot tub and atrium so she can look up at that "beautiful moon" and now I love it too; funny how those things work out.

I do not want to give away too many spoilers about Brave.... Skimming over what I summarized about the mini film, I realize that if Brave was a paper, the mini film is the beginning paragraph of that paper; it is the suggestive beginning of the feature films theme. So, I will tick off the main things about Brave that stood out to me.

1. Born into privilege/gifts requires great responsibility.

2. Tradition is a foundation, but only a foundation. A foundation does not build a house. Individuals build houses.

3. We are not our parents, and we are not our parent's mistakes. Coming of age happens at different ages for everyone, but once we do, we are not children anymore. We are adults. We are individuals. Free of our parents pasts, only responsible for our own history that we have created and only responsible for our  stories that are not reflections of our parents history.  We are born with this strange sense that we are born into living out and correcting our parents lives and where they went wrong. But that sense is misleading, because we are all born with our own destinies free of what our parents were and where they came from.

4. With Freedom, we are required to adorn our characters with diplomacy, humility, and integrity, for without these siblings, freedom would be boastful, hardly recognizble and scorned.


And this last thing is what I have most learned my darlings, long before I ever saw this movie, but was so readily reminded of after seeing this. Always remember, it isn't being brave, if you aren't scared. Figure out what you need. And learn how to ask for it. Never forget those things.

As always, my darlings, I sign off with much affection and I hope you are able to enjoy sweet summer and all of her fickle lazy moods. I know I am and my skin is my witness.

sincerely, and

 Red as a Lobster,

Read Riding Hood.

Reading Time With Pickle

I want to watch Joe Somebody. In it Tim Allen gets panic attacks and it reminds me of kind of where I'm at right now. There is a peace to finally finding the end of your rope, because you have three options:

1. Hang there till you drop from exhaustion

2. Climb back up to the top of the rope

3. Or just let go of the rope and end it sooner..

But there's a fourth option people don't hear about very often, just because it is so radically different.

4. Jump to another rope. And start over. The last rope wasn't working for you, so let's do something different.

This fourth option is a lifestyle change, an at home change, a personal (practical) soul change. Just Do not let it change who you are.

I am so used to doing what I've done to cope I barely know anything else. Something as simple as taking a Tylenol PM doesn't cross my mind to help me sleep, because I've always just dealt with no sleep. Last night, however, was the first time I realized that rope of "insomnia" just wasn't working for me anymore. So I changed ropes. I went and got some Tylenol PM, took two. Slept without waking up and got up this morning and advice my old doctor and my therapist told me came to mind. They said there is 4 (or 5?) "S's" to fight depression
1. Sleep
2. Sunshine
3. ....
I don't remember the rest.

But besides that, it made me consider how little simple things help make all the bigger problems smaller too.

So.... I also have trouble eating. And I finally saw the key to that too. Have you ever had someone look up to you? A younger sibling, or family member? A daughter? A son? What if they were struggling to eat? What would you do?.. Personally, I would find the strength to eat to show them, it'll be ok: you have to do all the small basic things like eating and sleeping to help the scarier problems more manageable.

So my darlings, we are comfortable in our safe little nooks, hidden, tucked away in our comfort zones. But try to remember that sometimes those safe rooms we have built for ourselves becomes our prison. Ropes become chains, rather than options.
Weigh every option. And don't ever forget that stopping to get a good night sleep, waking up to sip a cup of joe, and meandering to smell the flowers before launching into battle is sometimes the best medicine.

Check out Joe Somebody. Take care my dears.

-- Desde Mi iSoul

Strange But True

Hello my darlings a quick thought as I watch stranger than fiction once again.

Did you know that I am afraid of happiness?.. And did you know that although happiness frightens me the finding and then losing of happiness frightens me even more. Like Harold, the protaginist, I hold the ending to my novel, my life. And I finally realize that there are certain situations of fate that are out of my control... And all I can control is how I deal with these circumstances: to stop living is not an option; And, neither is running away. So I come to terms with the tragedy in my life, because as much as I dislike the bad in life, I do understand that to truly enjoy the good in life one must experience the bad as well. So I swallow my tragedy, and face it bravely and scared as hell. No storm lasts forever. It can't. And I comfort myself knowing that if there can be such horrible tragedy in this life, there can only be such wonderful goodness as well. There must be.

So as I am sorry that you must brave the storms of this life, but take comfort knowing there is incredible goodness waiting just ahead (don't ask how I know, I couldn't tell you, I just do know.) There must be. There is.

Hold on my dears. Storms don't last forever.

The Addam's Family

My dear fellow bloggers and google surfers, I would hate to disappoint by blogging too often and I wouldn't want to break my tradition of beginning my blog with the occasional typical apology for not blogging on a regular basis. My innermost blogger has been stifled from her blabbing... I have been busy living life. I suddenly have a moment of glorious- beautiful tedious-ness in front of the tv.. And I am absorbing the miracles that have happened in my life.. And finally I am able to look back at every heartbreak and see every curse for the blessing it truly was .. Because all that pain lead me here. And even "here" isn't free of pain, but no one ever said life was going to be easy. There's a Russian proverb that says if you wake up and aren't in pain, you are dead.
It took me a long while to figure out communication is the key to finding peace of mind. I still have to daily figure out what I want and learn how to ask for help to get it.

I am still not good enough to wake up and realize right away what I have slipped into doing, it isually takes me a while to sort it all out- and now, after a million laundry loads later, highway drives, hours of journaling, hours of ignoring, hours of facing facts... I see I am ready to embrace my natural self, minus my crutches.. Minus my baggage. For myself. For my peace of mind. For just getting comfortable with who I am and for not going to waste any more time trying to be something or someone else.
I am always humbled by myself. Right when I think I couldn't feel any older, I get kicked down a notch and reminded I am still young and learning to be comfortable with myself.
I watched The Adams Family the other day and it made me feel good because it made me feel better about my quirky, weird eccentricities. Who cares if the whole world thinks I'm odd or weird?.. I like myself:) And if anyone else happens to like me too ... Well that's just an added bonus miracle. *sigh of peace*

So my darlings, honesty is the best policy: beginning with yourself. You're strange. Get over it:) I already did, and am now going back to my tedious tv-ness and going to zone out. La-dee-da.





-- Desde Mi iSoul