Silver Linings Playbook

I finally got around to watching "Silver Linings Playbook" last night, I've been wanting to see it since it came out. It was a good movie, I even had a little tear in my eye at the end, (can you feel a but coming on here?) but (there it is) it could have been so much better.
                                       Spoiler Alert!
 At the beginning of the movie I actually felt a bit like I was experiencing a mental disorder of my own, they did a good job of getting you into the characters mind set. Like the part where he freaks out over the ending of "A Farewell to Arms" because it doesn't have a happy ending, foreshadowing there but not the way I anticipated. As the movie goes along you see that silver lining (wait a minute that's not his name) Pat, is not the only character in the film with a serious mental illness, just the only one that's had, court ordered, treatment for it. The film moves along nicely with ups and downs, with comedy and drama and then it takes a Hollywood turn. Pat's father risks everything he has on a double bet which includes Pat and Tiffany scoring at least a 5 in a dance contest (which is a long shot at best) and Pat finding out that Tiffany actually wrote the letter that he thought his ex had written. Now it looks like everything is set up for an impossible happy ending but Pat gets a look in his eye and you think, maybe he's going to show everyone how ridiculous they're being; at this point I thought if they play this right it's going to be sad but amazing. But alas the film makers seemed to forget they were making a drama about people dealing with mental illness and instead were making a romcom, complete with a don't-let-the-girl-get-away speech, chasing-her-down-the-street, Jerry Maguire-esque you-had-me-at you-wrote-it-last-week moment. Yes it was somewhat satisfying seeing a happy (silver lining) ending but it was so unrealistic as to take away from an otherwise amazing movie. Yes, everyone's happy, but for how long? How long before they get in a fight and she starts sleeping around, and if she does will he lose it again? How long before Pat's dad risks everything on another superstitious bet? Maybe we're just suppose to be happy that they're happy for a moment and not think about the incredibly thin line by which it all hangs.

That Writing Feeling

It's been over 7 months since I last posted a blog, I've written a few between that time and now but deleted them when they went places I wasn't comfortable going on the world wide web. It's hard both walking the fine line between honest and t.m.i, and finding time to commit to the writing down of thoughts. For instance, I hadn't even finished the first sentence here before I had to stop and pull a Doc McStuffins and tape and action figure's arm back together. I have, however, been wanting to write and two movies I've watched recently have fanned the flame of that particular desire. The first flick was the mostly forgettable but not horrible film "Mom's Night Out", this was one Araine had wanted to see and while we didn't make it to see it at the theater we did rent it a few weeks ago. Patricia Heaton, of t.v.'s "The Middle" and "Everybody Loves Raymond", produced and co-stared in this somewhat faith-based comedy about a harried mom who tries to take a night out with her friends. The mom in the movie is a budding professional blogger (a profession that seems to exist more in Hollywood than in real life) who never feels she measures up as a mom, thus dampening her 'mom' blog; but, of course, by the films end she's learned that she's good enough just as she is and she starts blogging away. This set me thinking, I need to blog again, if a harassed Hollywood heroine can do it then perhaps this easily overstressed dad can do it as well. The second movie, I watched just this morning, is the not-for-the-faint-of-heart "Kill Your Darlings". Daniel Radcliffe, in a big departure from "Harry Potter", stars as Allen Ginsberg in a film somewhat based upon actual events. The movie is nominally about a murder that the founding fathers of the beat movement were implicated in, but the real drive of the movie is seeing how this group came together and came to be who they were. Radcliffe's Ginsberg starts out as a wide-eyed freshman at Columbia who soon falls under the spell of the troubled, anti-establishmentarian Lucien, Lucien then introduces Ginsberg to (among others) Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Lucien is both the Pete Best and Yoko Ono of the 'beat' founders. The neat thing to me about this movie is that you can feel "Howl" being born within this tumultuous time, even though he doesn't say it in the film (the poem came later in his life) you can see that famous first line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." coming to life. While I don't support the use of mind altering drugs in general, perhaps it's a good thing for a few wild individuals to take the plunge and "expand their consciousness" for the benefit of us all. Worry not though, I'm no Raskolnikov thinking I'm a Napoleon, I need my consciousness intact; but the film did make me want to write. (Now before you rush out and watch this movie know that it is pretty graphic, perhaps you should read "Howl" before deciding if you want to watch the flick.
    Well, for better and worse, there's the blog. It was aggravating getting it written (you wouldn't believe how long it took) but it felt good to write and I hope to make it a more common thing, whether anyone reads them or not.

Some Thoughts on Love

Over the past week I've read and watched a few things talking about love, not romantic love (not necessarily) but the harder type, the unconditional type; but, being February (the month of celebrating love with expensive presents) I think I'll include a more romantic idea of love as well.
  I've started doing a couple of daily readings, all very short mind you, because I've got a lot to do; I mean Netflix isn't going to watch itself. There are two daily devotionals I follow on Facebook (see, it's not all cat pictures), I've got an intellectual devotional with daily facts (for instance did you know some experts believe the "Mona Lisa" may have been Da Vinci painting himself as a woman?), I read a chapter or so from the New Testament, a few paragraphs from Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha", and a section (too small to be called a chapter) in this really great (really short) book by Tai Sheridan called "Buddha in Blue Jeans: An Extremely Short Guide to Sitting Quietly and Being Buddha" (one of my favorite quotes from it is, "Events are not your ideas about them. Meet the world without expectations"). I know it sounds like a lot but it doesn't take more than 10 or so minutes to read it all. There's a lot about love in these readings, the kind of love that doesn't always come easy, the kind I struggle with quite a bit actually. The bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love our enemies, turn the other check and all that. When Siddhartha finds rebirth at the side of the river he's filled with a love for everything, with joy for being alive. In Buddha in Blue Jeans Sheridan writes, "The object of your love doesn't matter. You are love" and "There are no walls in the world of love." So what's so hard about all this? Well, I don't know about you but when someone gives me attitude, my first reaction isn't, I love you anyway; my first reaction usually involves a passive aggressive smile and an inwardly said curse word (okay, sometimes it's an audible curse, depending on the situation). So I have to remind myself that even if someone bugs me, I should love them, that even non-ideal situations should be handled with and approached with love. I have to try and remember that it is my responsibility to control my thoughts and reactions, that I can be negative or I can be positive. Now there are situations and people who deserve rebuke and reproach but it can be done from a place of love. The hardest part of this, for me, is to let go of anger, to not respond with anger and to let go expectations of how things 'ought to be'. I find myself being a Clark Griswold as times, building up unrealistic expectations of how things should be, families are seldom like the pictures on the back of board games, where everyone is happy and laughing and having fun at the same time; no life is generally a lot messier than that.
   We also watched the movie "Frozen" yesterday, and it's all about love. (I'm going to try and avoid specific spoilers here but I do want to talk about the movie some, so bear that in mind as you read.) It's neat in that while there is romantic love at play in the movie, that's not necessarily what they're talking about when they speak of true love. In the movie an act of true love saves the day and melts the frozen heart, it's also love that allows for the whole town to be saved. Love turns out to be the answer for the problem one of the characters has, she has lived her life in fear of herself and what she might do to others; fear, isolation, and regret have kept her from her family and from the world at large and it's only when she learns to love others despite all this pain that she's able to control her problem. I think this draws a great parallel to those dealing with addiction, hurt, anxiety, anger, and other problems that we think must be kept to ourselves. We think others won't understand, will judge us, will look down on us and so we hide away (physically or mentally) until the problem becomes out of our control. But if we would love ourselves and then love others as ourselves and open ourselves up to be loved by others then perhaps we could learn to control our 'problems' before they get away from us. In "Buddha in Blue Jeans" the author has a section about giving yourself to life, to others such as family, friends, and society at large and about giving yourself to immaterial things like creativity, and spirituality; the point being we need to open ourselves to the possibilities of life and love. As a somewhat introverted person at times this can be a struggle for me as well.
  Now to the more fun kind of love, romantic love. I've shared my thoughts on this before but I think they might bear repeating. There's a great feeling called love in which your whole being seems caught up in someone else, an emotion that makes you want to be with that person constantly, to stare into their eyes and make up silly love songs ("Some people want to fill the world with (them), I say what's wrong with that..."). That's a great feeling but it's also a fleeting feeling, it can come and go; sometimes Ariane or I will look to the other and say, I'm really IN LOVE with you right now, and it's this feeling of which we speak. But romantic love is also a commitment, it's saying that even when I'm not "in love" with you that I'm still going to love you. That is to say, I'm going to put your needs and desires first, I'm going to try and increase your happiness and do what I know is right for our relationship. It's funny because sometimes this can be hard to do, let's face it, selfishness is an inborn trait of humanity, but at other times it's the easiest thing in the world to do. I suppose it comes somewhat with maturity but also with that first kind of love, the one that says I'm going to love you even when I don't feel like it.
   So it might sound a little hippy-ish, or new age-ish, or even Christian-ish but I'm always trying to open myself up to love, to love life, to love family, to love work, to love all things up to and including you, whoever you are.

Lessons of a Bookworm

  Books teach lots of lessons, sometime it's something the author intended and sometimes it's something that only you can take away from the book, a combination of the authors words and your unique experiences. This isn't to be an exhaustive list, just a random bit of things I've learned reading books.
   From Siddhartha I learned that a book doesn't have to be big to pack a big impact and from Hermann Hesse that loving one book by an author doesn't mean you'll love the rest of his work; but even if you don't love the story (Demian) it can still resonate with you for years to come. Also from Siddhartha and from some of Salinger's work I learned that we often have to forget what we know in order to learn what we need to know.
  Speaking of Salinger, Salinger taught me that, "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "F you" signs in the world. It's impossible."While he probably didn't intend to Salinger also taught me that a certain amount of phoniness is not only normal but necessary for society to function, sorry Holden. Salinger, Vonnegut, and Hemingway also taught me that war is indeed hell; although Hemingway made it sound a bit like a romantic hell.
  Tolstoy taught me in Anna Karenina that really big books usually have lots of filler that has nothing to do with the stories being told. That sometimes regular romances seem much more desirable when compared with flashy, star struck ones and that the main story in a book isn't always the best one.
   Speaking of Russian's, Dostoevsky taught me many things and I've only read two of his books so far. He taught me that a man can reason anything, even murder can seem reasonable when dwelt on too long. He taught me that 'classics' could be interesting stories, and (with The Brothers Karamazov) that the parts of a book can be greater than it's sum. He taught me that people don't know what to do with freedom and would rather have laws and dogma, and that we are all responsible for the worst among us because we didn't reach them when we had a chance.
   Dai Sijie, Paulo Coelho and Laura Esquivel taught me that there are non-English writing authors out there definitely worth reading, Coelho gave me the only version of the story of Job I've ever really liked and also made me see how a writer can mess up his own story by inserting too much of himself into it. Sijie taught me about Chinese reeducation camps (in the 1960s) and how literature can free the mind. And Esquivel taught me that a book can be smoldering hot, fantastical, romantic and contain recipes all at the same time.
   Neil Gaiman showed me fairy tales are also for adults.
   Joyce Carol Oates showed me how a house can be a major character in a story.
   Christopher Moore and Tom Robbins showed me that a warped imagination can be a good thing, that profanity can be prose and that red heads can be real trouble. Moore also gave the world Pocket (a unique reworking of Shakespeare's fool from King Lear)and Abby Normal, which maybe isn't a lesson learned but a good thing all the same; remember when Abby was talking about Boo Radley?
   Which brings me to Harper Lee, who taught me it's not always easy to stand up for your principles but it's always worth it. Cyrano de Bergerac tempered that lesson by teaching me that standing up for those beliefs to the point of being obsessive about them can lead to loneliness and death. Cyrano also showed me you can love a character even if he's a dick and in a similar vain Lolita showed that you can sympathize with even a very base protagonist with the right writer at the helm.
   Stephen King showed me how important a good ending is, and Elizabeth Kostova showed me how a terrible ending can ruin an otherwise amazing book. The Notebook showed how you can love the ending of a book even though you're reading it through a torrent of tears.
   Speaking of endings brings me to the end of my blog, again not an exhaustive list by any means, but these are some of the lessons I've learned from my time spent between the pages of books. Some were about literature in general and some from more of a personal growth perspective. I hope I can be as good a man as Atticus without being quite a Cyrano, I hope to be as peaceful as Siddhartha but with a Fool-ish streak, to be as passionate as quail in rose petal sauce flavored by Tita's erotic thoughts and as devoted as Noah Calhoun.

A Once Controversial Topic

  

   First of all let me begin with the obligatory I haven't blogged in awhile and had almost  forgotten I had a blog, and now on with the show. Once upon a time there was an issue that divided people, families, and communities; it even landed some people in jail. It was a hot topic issue that people held deeply seated opinions about and yet today it's pretty much a non-issue to most of us. The issue I'm discussing is, please don't be offended by this, baptism.
   To be honest it's never been much of an issue to me and still isn't one I'd get upset over but I find myself in a position of reevaluating my assumptions on the topic. I believe almost all Christian denominations practice baptism in one form or another, it and communion being the only sacraments recognized by most protestant denominations, but when and how you get wet has led to splits in churches and all the aforementioned hubbub. I was raised in the Baptist tradition and was indoctrinated in their belief of full-immersion, believers baptism (I'll explain this in a minute if your not sure what I mean) but I've almost certainly left the Baptist denomination and have been visiting other mainline Christian churches which will perform and accept the Baptist style of baptism but they also practice sprinkling or pouring of water and (the thing most foreign to the way I was taught) infant baptism.
    Now let's get into the mechanics of it all for a bit. There are some denominations that believe baptism is required to gain salvation and thereby getting your get into heaven card, others (including Baptist) believe that baptism is just an outward show of something you've already done internally (believers baptism), while others believe baptism is a rite, something that all Christians have been commanded to do and it symbolizes what Christ did for humanity, not anything that humans ourselves have done (hence the baptism of infants). Also the manner of ceremonial washing is a dividing point between Baptists and other mainline Christian groups, the sprinkling and pouring work fine for ceremonial purposes for most protestants but Baptist's (and others like them) believe you must get dunked; this belief comes both from the fact that Jesus was dunked in the Jordan River and it's representation of death and rebirth.
    Last Sunday in the liturgical calendar was the Sunday to celebrate Jesus' baptism and as we were visiting Central United Methodist Church (CUMC) in Uptown Shelby this issue was brought to mind, and (as is usually the case in my family) it brought about a humorous situation. At the end of the service the pastor poured water into a baptismal fount and invited the congregation to come forward dip their fingers in and touch it to their forehead to help them remember their baptism, their initiation into Christianity if you will. I started forward to do so, I was baptized around the age of 12 (the median age for Baptists I believe) at Ross Grove Baptist Church in Shelby, and my younger boys saw that there were kids their age going forward and they wanted to go participate as well. Now coming from a Baptist church neither of them has been baptized, but I didn't think it would hurt anything to let them come with me, I and my 7 yr. old son both dipped our fingers and touched them to our foreheads, then my 4 yr. old dipped his fingers in and proceeded to stick them in his mouth. He didn't understand. It was all I could do not to laugh during what was suppose to be a solemn time.
   As we contemplate joining the Methodist denomination we are faced with the decision of when or if to baptize our children. Our oldest has already been baptized, in the baptist tradition, and our other older children will have to decide for themselves but there remains the question of the younger ones. Now I'm looking across this bridge long before we're even close to crossing it, we've by no means committed ourselves anywhere as of yet and when we do I'm sure there will be pastors and others to help us make this type of decision. For me personally, baptism is a tradition and it doesn't bother me when it's done (I'm really more of a humanistic Unitarian with a Christian leaning than a hardline bible thumper) but I'm sure our (almost wholly Baptist) family would not be comfortable nor understand the baptizing of young children. My only other concern in the situation is that if a child doesn't choose for themselves to be, and is not old enough to remember being baptized will it mean anything to them? But then again, while I remember my baptism, I can't say that it holds much meaning for me.
    This so far has been the only big difference I've noticed between the Baptists (in general) and the Methodists. The more specific difference I've noticed (from the baptist church we were attending and CUMC), and the one that started this inquiry into other denominations, is the thankful lack of political posturing. Because I don't want politicians telling me what to believe and I don't want preachers telling me how to vote.
   So what use to be a big church splitting, family tearing issue has become more a matter of preference and inclination, an issue that we may have to come to terms with in the future, or not. I'm sure even within a non-Baptist mainline Church, we could wait and let the kids make that choice for themselves.