Monday, 31 March 2008

so...

there is a Redeemer


I sing it, I say it, I claim it sometimes...
but it was only today that I found a real personal way of grasping it.

I always think of lost and dead people being redeemed from their fate and brought found-ness and life. Sometimes I think about coupons.
J'adore le chanson avec ces mots pour le titre. "...Jesus, God's own Son / Precious Lamb of God, Messiah / Holy One." C'est belle and I even love the melody for how it fits in my throat.

yesterday morning I was forced to realize that sometimes I CANNOT AFFECT THE CHANGE THAT I WISH TO. What's more, I usually cannot affect change by doing the SAME THING over and over, only changing my mindset or "determination". Il ne marche pas. I have been extremely slow in grasping this. I don't WANT to grasp it because it means I am incapable. Yes.
It's been a few weeks that I have been studying self-discipline in the lives of people around me and a realization has been sneakily brewing in my brain during this time. Now I finally approach the cauldron and see that REMOVING temptation or distractions can be PART OF self-discipline. My previous understanding was that you can't choose to abstain from something if you don't even have access to it. It's like saying, "I love you," because someone told you to. Hm. Or, claiming you're helping the enviro by taking the bus today ..on the same day you can't find your car keys. But's not QUITE like that, not always. Sometimes, we need to turn our back and run in the other direction, cowardly as it appears. Honestly - we will find other things to be tempted by, things that we cannot remove so WHY NOT give ourselves a leg up in the ways that we CAN control?

(This is still hard for me to swallow but now I'm just seeing it plainly. I've been confronted. I must change.)

I suppose I also realized that I need to stop claiming that I don't want to change in this way when I haven't even given this way a fair chance. As in, trying it for one day (when 18 other incidental things could fully make it unpleasant, just by fluke) doesn't allow me to see the full benefits of a complete shift.

The other day someone described an immature person as one who says, "I won't do it because I don't want to."

That's me. Oh yes, it was Doctor Phil who said it. Yes. That's me. That is me. I need to deal with it.

You know, sometimes God's grace feels like coarse sandpaper.
"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." Mmmm.
Hebrews 12:11

I love that at this moment un chanson qui s'appelle Your Grace is Enough is playing. Indeed.
Remember Your promise.

Saturday, 29 March 2008

"Ali" (2001)

During the final fight I had to wonder whether the men's shorts were the same color in this film as they were in the real fight. I am very curious about how the director & writers chose which details to mimic entirely and which they would modify (how and why, etc.).

I like that the style of film was documentarish. (Unsteady camera, people walking through shots, unusual vantage points...) I got the impression (from the cast, the plot and the tone) that the film was all about respect for Ali himself. It was just drenched in it. The thing could have been flashier, it could have been different but wasn't.
I was very pleased to see so many send-ups to When We Were Kings (1996). That helps with the respect factor, too.

Smith's portrayal of Ali was mesmerizing.

I didn't know Jamie Foxx nor Jon Voigt were in this film - turns out I didn't know much about this film at all. It's strange to me to think that it flew so swiftly under my radar. I just didn't have a file on it at all.

Both of those actors did a wonderful job, too. They weren't themselves at all.

Watching Malcom X's assassination evoked a response in me that I didn't expect. Firstly, using a shotgun just seems more cruel than anything. Then the two follow-up shots, calculated and unafraid, send a message that I don't want to try to interpret. I suppose what surprized me most about my reaction was that I barely knew the character, as far as attachment bred by the film goes. (Usually they want us to love someone before they take em away. Unless it's a bad guy. I didn't realize what his assasination meant until a moment later. I was just shocked because of the way it happened, because..I guess...he's a man, a person.)

9.2/10

my favorite ultimatum

"Now or never."
it's just good.
I think that's how I'm going to ask someone to marry me. Not for serious...just to make some awkwardness. BOOya.

Wednesday, 26 March 2008

six-word life story close reading

the (untapped potential/second chance) King.

-anything that describes my life has got to mention God, if it's not some explicit, "I am a child of God," kind of statement. I wanted to write something more personal than that but I DID want to make sure that the God part got precidence.
So, if we say the brackets enclose something useful but not necessary to the sentence my life is "the King". If I weren't trying to give props, there'd be a capital T on "the".
-the slash wasn't my first choice to separate untapped potential and second chance but I ran out of word space by the time I knew what I wanted to write. now "untapped potential and second chance" sounds weird. I like putting two non-identical things on either side of a slash
-I like 1 (2/2) 1 ..... symmetry...accidental symmetry is my friend.
-the bracketed phrase is my understanding of Grace.
--it's not second, third, fourth, nth chances that I get, it's a second chance every time because Love keeps no record of wrong and I cling to that.
--untapped potential is not, generally speaking, something I see in myself or think about often BUT I know that God's ability to see it is why He issues those second chances.
-the brackets mean that I am the untapped potential and second chance king as well as being fully represented by just the King by Himself.
I suppose I could have written [k]King. second chances, lost opportunities, self-handicapping, self-sabotaging and the partial conviction that I can do better, that there is something better out there for me, that He has a plan, that He knows the plans He has for me...plans to prosper and not to harm - this is what marks my life quite distinctly. I'm the king of it.

Tuesday, 25 March 2008

Good Friday 2008

The Patriot (2000) made me look at war just a little differently. What I understood was that you get no guarantees. I suppose no one involved gets a guarantee but I was thinking more specifically about the soldiers.
They're all the same; they're uniform in a very literal way and, I suppose, for a very good reason. But no two people are going to have the same experience. Some one steps on a landmine, someone finds full paralysis, some sustain no injuries, some watch their friends die, some are POWs...nobody knows. Gabriel Martin speaks at one point as if he assumes he will return or even return unscathed/unchanged/undamaged. I thought it was a bit cocky because war, in its small moments, is brutal and unpredictable....especially in 1776 on the side of slingshot David.
Then I started thinking about the war that I'm in the middle of. Who's to say who among us will end up a martyr? Who will lose their family? Who has to walk away from their family? Who gets spit on for their conversion...Who meets no real resistance during their lifetime? Who has to go abroad? Who stays home? Who stays alone? Who's the Billy Graham?
I don't know.
I don't need to know.
I'm getting the right kind of handle on the character of war which means I am content to leave this alone. It's important though, to know that we have no guarantees; no promises for our futures even though we are all the same, uniformed, front-lining soldiers. It seems dang ol random but I don't mean that God is careless. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm OK with not being special like this and if I happen to have the worst case scenario in my future I won't take it personally. That song was onto something....Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say: It is well, it is well with my soul.

hm. Good Good Friday.


Oh alsoly...I understood the complete necessity for some to stay at home. Soldiers don't earn their keep like regular folk pull in wages, no sir. They can't! For some to go, others must send. Simple. I like this model.

8.0/10

Saturday, 22 March 2008

what's your life story, in six words?

my friend told me a conversation she had had autour de this yesterday. she said her story and her other friend's story then asked me mine. I exclaimed that I needed more time (she was expecting an instant response). I was instantly enamoured with the challenge.

my conclusion:

the (untapped potential/second chance) King.

I am fairly happy with this result. I could make another one; I could tweak it....I'm not sure if I would. I think any secondary creation would change the first. Like, I wouldn't delete what I just wrote from my memory and call its succesor the new It.
BUT,
what I would like to do is write this on a slip of papier, put it in an envelope, seal it and write on the front: "MY LIFE IN SIX WORDS. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 22 MARCH 2013." I would love to rewrite my life every five or ten years. I know my life will change enough that summarizing it this briefly must change drastically over this period of time. I like this.

Summarize your life...you always gotta summarize your life so far.

yep.
Oh and if you're reading this, I encourage you to write your six words for the sake of six words. I think the next post will be the close reading.

Thursday, 20 March 2008

bagger vance

what was weird about the transition from Tuesday to Wednesday (for me) was that it seemed, at the end of the day, when I took inventory, that nothing had really changed.
despite all the "things" I "did", nothing in my life, not on a reasonably susbstantial level, was different.
this does not make me feel good.
if I didn't know any better, I'd have to call it a waste of a day.

note to self: _______
________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
________________________________________________.


today I am thankful for a trip to the grocery stores.
my dad took me. he...."took" me. I drove.
I got 60 dollars and eighty-three cents at food BASICS (what?!?)
and then 9.52 in salmon at Zehrs....mmmmmmmmmm
plus $10+ in deli salads
Dove and Finesse are my friends. I have missed them.

That printer is WAY loud.

Wednesday, 19 March 2008

"Collateral" (2004)

I don't know.

I just don't know.
Was Tom Cruise's head hair and facial hair dyed grey(-er) so that he would look older? Or ... was he supposed to be a premature greyer? Did they want his entire image to be stainless steel? (His hair matched his suit quite well.)
It was hard to believe a) because he simply doesn't look old enough to be having hair like that and b) I know who Tom Cruise is... I'd be more easily fooled by someone I wasn't as familiar with.

Hmm.

This film reminded me small-ly of 3:10 to Yuma (2007) because you have your bad guy and good guy kept in close quarters long enough to get pretty deep into eachother's lives and almost understand one another except...well, this one didn't end the same as 3:10. I'm glad it didn't but it did make the "What did your father do," kind of conversations seem a little more ridiculous.

I've finally made my mind up: Jada Pinkett-Smith is not a great actor, in my mind. I think I've only seen her in four films... Madagascar (2005) impressed me the most. And that's cool.

Do I regret watching it? Somewhat - especially for how LONG it took to get started. My Dad wanted to start around12.45...then there were delays due to other options...then there was TALKING at the beginning (yarg!) ..and then a two-hour phone conversation during a smoking break. Yeah, I'm OK with having time to myself; I was working on other stuff in the lull but DANG. I didn't think that at 5 after 3 in the morning he'd still say, "Yea, let's watch it." (We was only ~20 minutes in by that point.)

Hm. I should probably give T Cruise a few props for his Terminator face. He pulled that off quite well. Didn't FULLY scare me but it was good. I enjoyed the part where he got shot in the face - not for morbid reasons.

I appreciate Jamie Foxx. He made some faces and gesticulations like his Ray..I enjoyed that. I always think about piano when I see that guy.

It's not often you find a narrative involving a serial murderer with only two main characters and about two supporting actors. Everyone else was chump change. It's weird because the whole film just shrinks down to the microcosm of that cab...but so much is going on outisde! It's... it's almost heartless. It's like this murderous rampage, this joke of a life, a dreamer, mental instability, legal/political corruption...they're all details in the story of who this Driver and this Fare are. Hmm. It's... it's a hard one to swallow. I'd respond better if this took a short story format, I do declare.

5.9/10

Monday, 17 March 2008

one day I'll be looking at an old photo album

and I will smile deeply looking at people's faces and houses I used to live in.

I do look forward to this time. It will be bitter-sweet.
(I should take more pictures. Some day I'll buy me a digicam.)


it was a brief shot in The Birdcage (1996) that I'm currently watching of Albert flipping through an oldy album. it was the kind of stiff black paper with black-and-white shots under photo corners... they even had the frilled edges that stamps used to have.
ahh, things are changing.

he was crying..but he's a drama queen...very exaggerated in almost every way...but he was genuinely upset..and stroking the photographs nostaglically.

I love..the idea of memories...and the idea of capturing visual triggers for those.
word.

Saturday, 15 March 2008

I watched the clock

and a second after "12:00" appeared, I grabbed my bottle, pushed the lime in, and flipped it. Ohhh I have never had a better Corona and I don't know why!
I don't need to dissect it. I can just say I am very glad for it. And I can't believe I finished it under 40. I'm a champ like that.

The conversation I overheard this afternoon

Man in a truck parked by the side of the road:
Need any help lightening your load?
Man wheeling a bicycle with a 2-4 of beer in the front basket and another in his bag:
(chuckling slightly) These are empties...I'm goin to the beer store.
Man in truck:
(laughs) We'll be here when you get back...
Man with bicycle:
There might not be any by the time I get back...
Man in truck:
(resolved, commending) Nothin' wrong with a 21-pack.

Thursday, 13 March 2008

I definitely just said into my cell phone's face, "You could probably just back off a little."

AAAAHHHHH. What a strange position I'm in.

Someone just text messaged me, making it sound like I've been neglectful..
Someone else was texting me with too many question marks and unwarranted urgency (now she's online!)

A moment ago I was having two ridiculous Gmail chats - they're ridiculous because both people SOUNDED like they were in a rush..but then mentioned that they weren't...Agggg.gg.agg.aga.

At the same time I'm trying to read an email, trying to figure out the bus schedule, get dressed, have another online conversation with a friend I NEVER see...
THen the phone rings twice and I have to relay a message from that person...
Add something into my calendar..
Email someone else to alter plans...
Add something else to my calendar..

WHERE IS THAT DANG DVD?!
ahhh.
AH!

I don't like being this fed up, I really don't.
I'm gonna snap at someone soon, I swear.

I'm looking forward to it!

:D

And yet, as I think about it, I am movied to go to the bathroom post haste.
When do I typically get this feeling? When I am extremely nervous. That's right, I'm physically nervous FOUR DAYS BEFORE the actual event. That's good stuff. Well, it's the kind of nervous excitment that somehow combines dread (& fear of the unkown) with eager anticipation. COOL. It's a good that this thing found me before I was expecting it to. I really shouldn't have had a chance to prepare.

Monday, 10 March 2008

As it turns out,

(As the world turns,)
I'm pretty messed up in the head.

Yesternight after everyone went to bed and our guests had also just parted, it was about 12.15am and I was in the middle of typing some emails.

[Are we allowed to start sentences with brackets? Every now and then I do it and think it makes sense (the idea is conveyed finely) but I wonder if it's proper. I know how to bracket and quote both - like I understand how they're meant to function and why but I want to know WHEN we codified our use of them so I can see how essential or how much of a crutch these things are. Well, maybe just the brackets. Quotation marks GOTTA be good.]

One of them was the kind of email that required me to close my eyes and put my head back a little to really ponder and decide what I wanted to write. Then I realized I had dozed off. I think I was tired. I think I was tired by 10.30pm but didn't notice because my activities had not demanded enough of me - not mentally, anyways.
I finished up all I was doing on the compster and I think it was 12.41 when I was SERIOUS mcSeriously struggling to keep the eye-lids back. I was upset [I was already upset the whole evening, let's be serious, but this had a real stem] that I couldn't stay up longer. I thought I was getting ripped off for the rest of my day. I wanted to go til 2 or 3. Then I realized I had been going since 8 am. That's...kinda a full day. Just not the one I'm used to. It didn't register properly. (This is probably a problem.)
I decided to force it. (Why?)
I went to my room and did a bunch of organizing notes and tasks, etc. - it was pretty calming and distracting because I hardly EVER sit in my room on my bed and do hand/organizey tasks like that these days. I neeed to get back into that. I makes me really happy in a strange way. (I think it reminds me of my younger days.)
I could have gone to bed....at 01h38 when I finished that...but then I saw that Blazing Saddles was coming on at 2am...and I have wanted to see that film since forever for a great list of about four or five reasons. I didn't make it past.... I think 3.15.
I'm not sure whether I should regret it it
nor am I sure what I really mean by this post.

Sunday, 9 March 2008

I shall cherish it for always.

[First I need to point out that I thouroughly appreciate the blessing of running water in my house AND more especially my shower for all its glory. Glorious. (15)]

Two friends and I were sitting at a small bar-height desk on tall chairs in a coffee shop, on-and-off talking and doing work. One friend was leaning over to say something to me and I thought I would release the gas that was asking to come out of my mouthal area. I was expecting a decent burp, just a little guy that no one would care about. (These girls and I have an understanding.)
It started out normal but about half a second later, it turned into that open-your-esophagus kind of roar that would have lasted about three times as long as the average burp - becoming creepy - if I had not cut it off after I realized what was happening and that I was in public.
What happened next? My friend gasps and moves away and I realize also that the song playing over the PA system has just finished (faded out) and so my contribution had more sonic space to occupy. You know those moments that often find you in a cafeteria or a party or a restaurant or some other large gathering of people where EVERYone in the room is silent - just by fluke - in the same moment? Some people say it means an angel's flying overhead; maybe you're familiar with that phrase. It's just a weird coincidence that so many conversations all take their pause at the same time. THAT also happened when I decided to emit the throatal abombination. Oh, and no one was washing dishes or frothing a cappucino or ANYTHING else that would have made ANY half-decent sound to help me out.
ahhh.
The elderly woman directly behind me was NOT impressed. That, to me, is the only unfortunate aspect of this entire incident.
I'm pretty sure the two younger guys that were behind us were laughing, more as time passed.
I felt like we sat there in stunned silence for an eternity but it may have only been two minutes.

We all stared DIRECTLY ahead which made sense because our little bar was facing the front window of the shop. I'm sure I tried to leap through that glass a dozen times as I kept hoping that I hadn't just done what I had done. I kept wondering if anyone might think one of the other two had done it (not that this would relieve me of ALL awkwardness) and I was listening hard for some other conversation to begin, for the next song to come on, for a new customer to walk in - ANYTHING to stop that crashing, brute sound from replaying in my mind. Unfortunate? Every time I heard it in my head, it made me want to laugh more.
I actually didn't laugh for the first looooong 20 seconds. The other two had started to giggle a little bit but we didn't dare look at eachother or speak.
Then when the whole thing replayed in my head the way it would have reached the other patrons and my laughter seeped past my chastizing fingers which had been clamped over my mouth from the second I had zipped it closed.
Once it was out, and once those two were going, the laughter became an abdominal work-out, though I did manage to keep it relatively quiet. Ohhhh too much.

The best part? Well, my hand was clamped on my mouth, Friend #1 to my immediate right, I could see in my periphery, was keeping her hands over her eyes and so I thought, "Wouldn't it be amazing if [Friend #2] had her hands over her ears?" I wondered this but I didn't think it was a likely position for her to strike. It's weird.
What did I discover when I finally worked up the nerve to lean forward and look? Her hands were DEFinitely over her ears... I don't... I don't understand.
HOW,

how on earth,

did the three of us instantly take the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil pose by pure coincidence? HOW?
Not just doing with the hands but we also were sitting still, almost blank expressions, facing forward. It must have looked bizarre to any passers-by.

I ...oh so great. What more is there to say? I cherish this moment. Ahhhhh.

Saturday, 8 March 2008

"Jumper" (2008)

Mmmmhmmm.
I liked it.
We had gone to the theatre with the intention of seeing something completely different. But it wasn't playing so this was the best runner-up.
I enjoyed it.
I was impressed by Hayden Christensen but mostly because my memory was trying to convince me he was an utterly horrible actor. (I think I had him confused with someone else. Either way, he wasn't bad.)
I thoroughly, fully, crazily, completely, happily enjoyed the scenery and landscape and ridiculous vantage points we were afforded on account of the main character's skill.
For that alone I would watch this film again, and even recommend it to some.
I liked it and..... it gave me some stuff to think about. It was so superhero-esque without being explicit.
There was a weird bit about 2/3 of the way through that seemed incredibly rushed which I didn't appreciate but again, the graphics are amazing (special effects? is that what they're called?) and the darkness of it I love. I like how the story unfolded because it kept me a-guessin.

8.4/10


Atonement (2007) [02/03/08:)]

I liked it.
It's kinda creepy
The style of filming is amazing
the colors and costumes were amazing
the acting left nothing in want
the plot was ridiculously great (and heart-wrenching but not in the way I'd have expected)
the brute reality of it is refreshing...
The title kinda makes sense. (One of the peeps I went with said a review of the film she had read said it would have been better titled, "Reconciliation." Nope. Not at all; I don't agree.)

But I liked this guy. I sat in my seat staring at the floor for a few (5?) minutes before I allowed the outside world to re-enter.
I should love to watch it again. Love to.
Someone else I was with said she was reading the livre it was based on and was going to finish it by that Sunday. (She said this on Friday. Mad props to her!)
Romanced by the idea, I wanted to go buy the book myself and blow through it for Sunday eve but... never did because I couldn't swallow that $20 expense, not on a whim.
Now I'm sure I shall read.
it.

ahhhhhhhhh yes. I love good films. thank God for those. (really - thanks.)

God reads my blog sometimes.

9/10