Flicker

we watched "Bridge To Tarabithia." Disturbing story, that. i think i really liked it, but it's sad. Made me think of the time before my imagination was destroyed in the Accident.

Harried Bear

Aeon has a bear named Hairybear. He procured Hairybear-- who is a teddy with one of those strange hair-pieces that femmes tie their hair up with, and which is supposed to blend in with their hair wrapped round his neck-- as a method of getting him to stop yanking out his own hair. It worked, and Hairybear has become a necessary ingredient in his sleep pattern, and a pretty darn good conversation partner. Only i've noticed some funny uses that Aeon has for Hairy, that have an eerie correlation with what i-- as a bigger person-- tend to use my own friends for. First, and most obviously, he's a boy, and thus uses Hairy as both a melee and projectile weapon. And to be fair to 'im, what're friends for? With the extensions, he makes a wicked flail. Also (and mildly more disturbingly) he takes out his anger on poor Hairy. When he gets punished, he tends to inflict the same brand of wrath on his bear.

But here's the one i just recently noticed-- the thing that sent me in here musing: i put him down for a nap a li'l bit ago, and he didn't want one (which is not terribly unusual). i usually put up the baby gate in situations like that so he'll finally give up the fight and go his grumpy butt to bed. When he gets at all tired, he becomes attached to Hairybear; that's the nature of their relationship. But today, and a few times in the past, he came up to the gate complaining about the unfair burden i'd yoked him with, and in a moment of serendipity he hucked Hairybear over the gate. Then he looked at me and at Hairy, very clearly assured that i'd understand the need for them to be together and would have no choice but to haul him over to Hairy and back into the Promised Land.

Importantly, it didn't work out so well for him. In fact, it didn't take him very long to realize that he'd really rather have his bear back, even if that meant staying in his room. It made me think of people dear to me that i've either pushed away, or tried to push away, thinking somehow that it would bring us both to a better place-- and never considering that it might actually mean losing a dear relationship. And the number of times i've done just that... It'd be fair to say that i'm a slow learner.

The moral, of course, is that i would probably have more friends if i could just mature in the ol' Abstract Planning Department past my two-year-old.

Xerxeses

Last night Steph picked up a flick called "One Night With the King." It's a retooling of the story of Esther from the Bible, replete with hypothetical gap-filling; but interestingly, it's also about Xerxes, the Persian emperor. Now, i'm not sure if it's supposed to be the same Xerxes that was the bad guy in "300"-- i don't even have a good guess as to how many Xerxes there were, nor how many of 'em had a strong desire to kill all the Greeks-- but i gotta say it was interesting to switch from a 6'5" pampered gay black Xerxes to sub-6 long-haired white guy warrior-king, who, by contemporary standards was reatively faithful to good ol' Esther, upon having married 'er. Also, the white version didn't really portray the god-king schtick. At any rate, they both struck me as a black and white difference from the way he was portrayed by Nebby K. in the Veggie-Tales version. Also Esther in "ONWtK" wasn't nearly as big a wuss (although a couple of the sappy romance scenes kinda made me throw up in my mouth a li'l) and Mordecai didn't have an "I run a deli in the Bronx" accent. Apparently Jews had a fairly heavy British accent in the Persian empire.

three hundred

A week or two ago we watched the movie "300". It's about 300 or so Spartans that fended off a few berzillion Persians on a beach. The movie itself was cool enough i reckon. Lots of violence and special effects in a claustrophobic li'l cg world. And it's based on a real live comic book. (Editor's note: that's a "graphic novel" to the 30 year old geeks out there who still live with their moms and play Dungeons & Dragons.) But i think what i found coolest, and why i watched it again the next night, was the Spartans themselves. i don't know how close to their actual culture the comic/movie actually came-- don't know much about Spartans-- but it's possible to imagine a culture like it as being real. Superhuman ninja skills and common deathwish notwithstanding, the cool bit about their culture (as portrayed) was the totally overriding sense of purpose instilled in everyone in it. Everyone there was a soldier; everone knew they could count on the person next to 'em to watch their back; everyone knew they could count on themself to do what they had to do 'cuz they were trained for it from birth. That's cool. i finished the movie with a sense of longing for something like that.

Now, i'm not saying i wish i were part of some kind of community of supersoldiers. i just wonder what it'd be like to be part of a community, and i wonder what it'd be like to have been raised with a purpose in mind-- besides maybe that i should make it to adulthood alive. i'd love to raise my kids with a sense of purpose like that-- some definite goal or direction: the thing i was raised entirely without and wish i had. But ironically, i feel more lost and purposeless and without a community now than i think i ever have before. And who knows?-- maybe my parents felt just this same way when they were 31; maybe that's why i was raised to be a formidable nintendo player and to wander around like a chicken with my head cut off. "Behold, 'cody, the Starter of Many Things and Finisher of None'!"

Ha.