How can it be 7:20 PM and I’m done? I’m prepping for a conference to which I won a scholarship and my brain, heart and body are just done. There’s still more work to do and I’m done. So I’ll take a break and write to you.
All day I’ve been haunted (pardon the pun) by ‘The Grey’. I get most of my movies from the library but I wanted to see this one right away so I spent $2 instead of waiting as 67th of 428 with fourteen copies, or some such. Some people do retail therapy, some people do sports or video games, or TV or handcrafts when they’re distressing. I do movies.
"The Grey" is the kind of movie you keep telling yourself to turn off but curiosity about where the thing is going to end is a greater force than the voice of reason. There weren’t any bonus features about how it was made so I don’t know if those wolves were real or the magic of sound and light in San Francisco type creation. The snow sure looked real.
Despite the complexities of plot, it’s basically one giant metaphor for being and staying alive. The beauty of the movie, not the horror of the wolves stays with you. As a person who spent her adolescent years babysitting late at night with her backed pressed up against any wall possible while I watched Friday or Saturday thriller midnight movie, I am surprised and grateful.
I was looking around the Island this week and fascinated by all the things people are into. The farmers and gardeners stay kinda hidden all winter and then bam… they’re everywhere. The artists are so persistent in their translations of medium to meaning. Again … the Artist’s Tour makes them so visible. The schools are all into their final productions, contests, and achievements. Retail is inviting everyone to think about the tourist season and buy, buy, buy for all those spring special occasions.
I look at everyone wanting to ask everyone, each single person, ‘what’s your back story?’. How did you come to have this or that passion? Did anyone encourage you or did you find it on your own?
It’s ironic to me, as a writer that I had to teach myself to type. My mother wouldn’t let me take typing in high school because, ‘if they find out you can type, they’ll never let you do anything else’. My ability to touch-type will never cease to be a wonder to me. I remember the red cast off business textbook from the forties I would lean like a tent to my right and carefully practice: asdf ;lkj asdgf ;lkj. To this day I don’t know how it is possible to type these letters without consciously thinking each one of them into existence through my fingers. I love it. That’s the kind of living I like. I have a great appreciation for practicing so well that muscle memory and the imagination become a powerful force together.
So…thinking about how people get to where they are, and who supports them… I followed that rabbit trail of musings down the path of thinking about who has given you advice or feedback. On this Island, in the same day, you can be told you are one of God’s greatest gifts to the planet, and… you are the blight that is keeping all humanity back.
How do you know whom to believe? Who do you listen to? How do you respond?
Current culture says you are no one unless someone says you are somebody. It’s called the BS Factor in a book I once read (by the same title). It means I can stand in front of a group of people and pronounce great truth and exhort all to higher ground, but unless I have somebody who has been announced as a great person of authority declare what I say is true, there is a great chance I will not be listened to. The only other declarative is ‘research’. You can say, ‘research says’ and that will do the trick.
So here we are, hoping for some shred of confirmation of our personhood and the visionaries say, ‘to heck with it’. I’m going to create or declare anyway. I’m going to be the first one through the wall (to borrow the phrase from Moneyball).
And others say, "Well…not so sure. I’m going to wait and see".
But here’s what I think. I think the old song was right. I don’t think it’s ‘You’re nobody til somebody says you are". I think it’s ‘You’re nobody til somebody loves you."
The biggest two points of ‘The Grey’ is love conquers all and love covers a multitude of sins.
Living on a small rural Island with filled with farmers and visionaries and worker bees is very complicated. If we each ask ourselves every day, how can I increase my heart so that there is more love and sense of joy and adventure than there is fear and worry and competition, we have a fighting chance of not exploiting each other but really caring for each other. We have a chance lifting up and taking the grave cloths off each other as one of my teacher’s use to describe it.
Having said all that, the ultimate song that needs to be written, by you, is ‘You’re nobody until you believe in your deepest true place, you being alive makes this world a better place." That isn’t ego, that’s mission.
I can get stuck in what others think and what opinions I share as a sign that I am alive, or move to love as the prevailing life force, and if I’m really brave……….I can learn to love myself. We live on a little Island that rolls up the sidewalks at nine and vibrates peace in thousands of acres. Why not take a little time to be good to us and treat ourselves with love and care? Jes’ sayin’…
Love,
Deborah
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