Captain’s Log – Page 15

checkUp twenty17: Junly

Yeah. So there’s that. I haven’t updated since June 18th with my Wonder Woman review. In my own defense, I have been busy, but I’ve thought a time or two “I should write” and I’ve not, so I don’t get completely off the hook here. I mean, it’s taken for it to be 0404 on a Friday morning with insomnia to get me writing. How bad is that? Or maybe good? I dunno. Anyway. Here goes…something….

Every month I try to do some or all of the following: #1: Writing, #2: Reading, #3: Building, #4: Art and #5: Activities. This is a check up for June and July.

#1. Writing. I did write an update in June, and a review of WW. But I didn’t write at all in July. Combined score: 5-10.

#2. Reading. I finished St. Francis: In His Own Words, a compilation of writings by the monk St. Francis of Assisi. I am also working through another book. I’ll get most credit, but not all: 7.5-10.

#3. Building. I didn’t build anything, but I did spend the months organizing my LEGO minifigures and accessories. Now that I write that it sounds so grown up! but fuck you, little voice in my head. Anyway, it will help further endeavors, so again, partial credit? but it is also what kept me from building. So, one step back, two forward? Sounds good to me: 7.5-10.

#4. Art. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nunca. No excuse here. I’ve had opportunity. 0-10.

#5. Activities. I’ve not missed a day of work, continued meeting with my friend, and even had a friend over for dinner So, that gets me full credit. I know the idea is to get out of the house and do new stuff, but that’s hard with two jobs and little extra time. Full credit on this one: 10-10.

Hmm. It’s been an interesting summer, but so far, so good, I guess. Crunching the crunchables I get: 30/50. 60% for the months, and I think 74% for the year. Still not terrible. August is already looking better because I’m writing! and I have a commission for a LEGO portrait that I can work on, a book to finish, and probably an activity or two, plus some art this weekend? We shall see.

Excelsior!

checkUp twenty17: May

Wow. It’s been a busy time lately, which is why I am writing my checkUp for May in the middle of June.

I’m seeking to accomplish the following each month: #1: Writing, #2: Reading, #3: Building, #4: Art and #5: Activities. So how did I do in May? Pretty good, I think. To sum up:

#1. Writing. I wrote my update, a review of the latest Guardians’ and Pirates’ films and I wrote a review of a book over at nerdspan.com. 6-5

#2. Reading. I finished the book I was reading for Life Group and I finished the book I reviewed, Off Rock by Kieran Shea. 6-5.

#3. Building. I built two Stargates in LEGO. I have yet to decide exactly what to do with them. But I built them. I haven’t yet photographed them. But I still get credit. 5-5.

#4. Art. I have been working on painting two stormtrooper helmets while my dad works on his model of a vintage Mustang. I have a few pics of the in progress paintings, but will wait to post any until the helmets are finished. 5-5.

#5. Activities. I met with my friend, back from Africa, once or twice, and I started a new job! so that counts extra. Incidentally, the new job is what is keeping me so busy. Way to bury the lede, Phil. 6-5.

I did extraordinarily well this month: 28/25, or 112%. That brings up my yearly average, last seen at 79%, to a robust 85.6%. Very nice.

So far June has been busy with work, but not much else, but we shall see what comes of it.

Thanks for following along, and look out, I do have some more writing to do!

checkUp twenty17: April

Tempest fuget! I think that’s Latin for “time flies” but at the moment I’m too lazy to look it up*. Anyway, time does fly, and here it is already April. time-flies That means it is time for another check up into how I am doing with my goals in twenty17. For them what need a reminder (like me) I am pledged to perform the following each month: #1: Writing, #2: Reading, #3: Building, #4: Art and #5: Activities. I have achieved these to varying degrees in January, February, and March. But how now April? Let us have a reckoning.

#1. Writing. I haven’t written at all. 0-5

#2. Reading. I did not read this month, except from the book I am reading for my Life Group that meets on Tuesdays, so I guess I will give half credit for that. It isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I have done it consistently. 2.5-5.

#3. Building. I built a futuristic hover truck in LEGO, which I immediately surmised must be from the Star Wars universe and had been a hover truck that the Rebels used to scout planets or guard perimeters or something. Anyway, I think it’s cool. 5-5.

#4. Art. I took a LEGO Portrait of the futuristic hover truck and posted it to Flickr. Check it out. 5-5.

#5. Activities. I have continued to meet at my local church with a group talking about how to have multiethnic conversations and relationships. It has been a rewarding and enlightening discussion every Tuesday and has even built a few relationships. I get decreasing credit for this, because I started this in March and haven’t done anything new, however, a member of the group invited me to a Texas Rangers’ game last Sunday, and I was only prevented of going by work, and that would have been a countable activity, so I will get bonus credit for good intentions. 5-5.

In summation, that is 17.5 out of 25. 70%. Ouch. I really need to get reading and writing. That gives me a total of 79% for the year as I slide further into the dark abyss of doing nothing with my free time. Looking back, I was excited for April, though I can’t figure out now exactly why, but I had plans I evidently didn’t get to.

I hope to do better in May, but I am not sanguine, as I will have other challenges ahead that I can foresee.

*well, I misspelled it, but yes, it is Latin and does mean the intended. Tempus fugit!

Check-up twenty17: March

It is now officially the 1st of April, so I can evaluate my progress through March twenty17. If you’ve been following my writings this year, you know I am challenging myself to do a few things every month: #1: Writing, #2: Reading, #3: Building, #4: Art and #5: Activities. In January, I hadn’t yet decided on the last three of those, so that month I had an easy 5/5. February brought me a little lower with 2.5/5 due to not writing and not doing art. Now…March.

#1. Writing. I wrote twice, about the film Logan and about the passing of Carrie Fisher (click on March 2017 to the right of this post and you should see both posts listed for you). 5-5

#2. Reading. I did not finish a book this month, but I did make progress in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Tales from the Perilous Realm. 0-5.

#3. Building. I rebuilt my LEGO Landspeeder and put together a MOC of the Anchorhead market on Tatooine. Both were formed from self-existing sets, so I don’t get full credit. 3.5-5.

#4. Art. I took an artistic picture of the second MOC, actually a recreation of a pic I saw on Instagram, so not completely original. But I did take a new LEGO portrait, so I’ll actually get bonus credit for this one. 8-5.

#5. Activities. I started attending a meeting at a local church about multi-ethnic conversations. This will be ongoing through April and May so I will get decreasing credit in those months for attendance, but for March I get full credit. 5-5.

So, all total, that is a final score of 24-25, grading on a curve with a retroactive 2.5-5 for #2 for actually reading some. 96% for March. For the year I get a total of 82%. Man, not writing in February and not finishing a book in March is killing my average. I need to get on both consistently. Still, I am doing fairly well at staying active and doing things and not just sleeping or playing on my iPhone.

I am excited for April as I have some things planned, but not much that satisfies my personal challenges. Therefore, the excitement of getting to create is high, but the anxiety of having no specifics is also high.

Finally, catch my Art pics on Flickr here and here and stay tuned for more from me, the Redbeard.

A preview:

Princess, Sister, General

I could never figure it out, and it isn’t really stated anywhere, so as a kid I never knew. Was Leia the elder Skywalker, or was Luke? I know they were retconned to twins sometime after Star Wars and before Return of the Jedi, but still, logically, one is older. Who was it? I was one of three boys in my family, complete and whole, until my sister came along six years later to upset the established order and complete us all. It wasn’t really until I was six or seven that I began to religiously watch the Star Wars saga, so in my mind I became Luke Skywalker and my new baby sister was Princess Leia.

My sister and I never played that way, that is, never acted out the Star Wars story together, but in my head I saw Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia as the twin sister I never had until I had a little sister, and then as my sister grew up to be a fierce, independent, wise, take-no-bullshit young woman she became Leia to my Luke.

We were raised differently, like Luke and Leia, as my parents doted on the only daughter, gave her her own room (where I had to share space with one or both of my brothers as conditions allowed), and in general lavished the favoritism upon her. I mean, of course my parents said they had no favorites, but really, three boys didn’t hold a candle my to parent’s little princess.

I never had my mind on where I was, or what I was doing, and was always craving excitement and adventure, like a certain young sand-locked farm boy, and my sister always knew what she wanted and how she wanted it and seemed to be driven in ways I wasn’t, like a certain young Senator from Alderaan.

I could stretch the metaphor and say that I like to wear black, and her white and interesting hair-dos but that would be stretching the truth as well. Suffice to say, we met late* in life and became a duo that learned to appreciate and love each other.

Now, as adults, past our “growing up” years, she is, as ever, driven, and I am wandering the galaxy in search of my own Force to guide me. She is the General: moving forward; I am the Jedi: mystically engaged with life’s triumphs and failures.

Given such a personal connection to the character of Leia Organa-Skywalker-Solo, I was deeply affected by the tragic death of Carrie Fisher last year. I had watched her all my life as she “grew up” as a character on Star Wars and I had followed her later life on social media. I always dreamed of going to a Star Wars celebration or ComicCon to meet her, and regret that I will now not have the chance to tell her what she meant to me. Like my sister, Fisher was feisty, funny, and familial. I am not the only one in the Star Wars community to view her as a surrogate-sister, and that was a role she embraced after a certain time. Certainly she was honest about her struggles with mental illness, substance abuse, and a dysfunctional family in a way that made me ok with my own depression and personal struggles.

I grew up knowing that women could be strong, resilient, heroic, steadfast, worthy, sexy, beautiful leaders and sisters and women all at the same time and that was because Carrie Fisher embodied that so well on screen and on the internet, and my sister was all those things and more in what I saw as a little mirror of Fisher.

It seemed at first a strange thing to be so sad at the death of a celebrity I had never met and who inhabited my star-struck fascination with Star Wars, but having come to this realization of what Carrie Fisher truly meant to me in such personal terms, it doesn’t seem strange at all anymore.

As I enter a world now robbed of Fisher, I embrace my sister all the more tightly and thank the Force that I was given such a wonderful gift and example of womanhood at such a young age, that despite not being twins, we grew to be very close, a closeness we share today.

Fisher is now one with the Force, and I have my sister to guide me always. I look forward to the next chapter in our Saga…

*If by being introduced when I was just 6 can be called “late” in life.

Check-up twenty17: Jan and Feb

January came and went, and with it blustery winds and driving snow. Well, not here in Texas, but I am sure somewhere that was true. Anyhow, along the way I made a few non-resolutions, and one of them was that in twenty17 I would write more. I want to regularly assess how I am doing and introduce a few new non-resolutions into the mix. Here goes…

January twenty17

Ok, first, writing more. How am I doing? Well, I wrote four blog posts in January, so for that I will give myself a 5 out of 5. Great! Second, reading more. How did I do? I read a book, The God Who Is There by Francis A. Schaeffer. And that was all I resolved publicly at that point, so for all of January I get a 10 out of 10 and for the year a 100%. Not bad so far.

February twenty 17

Writing…well, sad to say I didn’t write anything in February. I am forced to give myself a 0 out of 5. I did read a short book of mostly pictures, Myth and Magic: The Art of John Howe, and I finished The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien so I will give myself a 5-5. For February a total of 50%. For the year that puts me at 75%. Not terrible, but I need to write more.

Looking ahead twenty17

Here is where we introduce more opportunities for points. So far I have #1: Writing. I will introduce #2: Reading, #3: Building, #4: Art and #5: Activities. A précis of each will follow, a standard set of guidelines by which to judge myself and my progress, and then I will re-do February and look ahead to March.

#1: Writing – I will write at least twice on the blog, about anything, any time.

#2: Reading – I will finish at least one book per month. Any length, any genre.

#3: Building – I will build at least one LEGO My Own Creation (MOC) per month. Any size.

#4: Art – (here things get interesting) I will create one piece of art each month. This includes photography of LEGO or stormtroopers, or painting, or building of a physical piece of art. Anything artistic, any size, any media.

#5: Activities – I will get out of the apartment for at least one activity each month that does not include my parents or siblings.

I will grade on a bit of curve to begin, to give myself a chance at building a feeling of success, but will lessen the curve as I go on to be realistic. Ok. Let’s look back at February.

February twenty17

#1: Writing – I didn’t write. 0-5
#2 Reading – I finished reading two books. 5-5
#3 Building – I built a MOC of a rally sport dune buggy (pic to follow). 5-5
#4 Art – I didn’t make any art (I didn’t take the pictures of my MOC until March). 0-5
#5 Activities – I met with a friend to chat. 5-5

Total = 70%, grading on a curve I gave myself a retroactive 2.5-5 for #4 since that wasn’t technically a requirement in February.

For the year I get an overall score of 85%. Yeah!

I am looking forward to see how March works out. I will have written at least once on the blog (you’re reading it!) and I have made some art, did an activity or two, and am reading, so here’s hoping I finish well.

Now, for the promised shot of my LEGO rally sport dune buggy:

rally sport

A Tale of Two Parts

Part the First

This is difficult for me to write. Yesterday, January 3rd, would have been my seventh wedding anniversary had I not been divorced. Unlike a spouse who died and is no longer upon the planet Earth, I am dealing with a different kind of loneliness. It is the loneliness of no longer being wanted. I know, approximately, where my ex-wife is, and approximately, what she is doing. And that hurts, because she isn’t here, and she isn’t with me. Once upon a fairy tale time, she was right by my side doing what I was doing, or I was by her side, doing what she was doing. We were together. But now she is beside someone else, and they are doing things together. And that hurts spectacularly.

I don’t know what the time period is supposed to be for getting over a spousal rejection, but I am apparently not there yet as I still memorialize a coupling that has uncoupled. I am sure I will get there at some point, but in the meantime, I am stumped by a simple question: now that she has moved on and put me behind her and someone else beside her, I am a free man. I am as if I was never married. That thought gives me some release, some comfort, but what do I do now to anchor that thought in reality? Do I burn all her love letters in a massive bonfire of dead desire? Do I delete all our pictures and digital memories as if scorching cyberspace? Do I forget her name and erase her influence from my life? Is such a thing even possible? I signed up for eternity. I was hers forever…until I wasn’t. I don’t know what to do.

Except, maybe I do know. I will do what I have done since the first noniversary rolled around: keep moving forward.

Part the Second

It is a brand new year, an entity I am calling twenty17. Thus far in my life I have mostly eschewed this whole idea of “New Year’s Resolutions” in which one is hereby resolved by the arbitrary Gregorian calendar to radically change one’s life in some way. It has seemed like so much hokum to think that just because some number has rolled over on a time keeping device, one is now able to change their life. In my nearly 30 years of experience, I haven’t seen that to be particularly possible. But here I am, about to resolve something on so public a forum as to not be ignored.

I resolve two things, first: to read more. I was a voracious reader in my youth. You would often find me curled up on the couch, or stretched out on a bed with book in hand, eagerly flipping pages, absorbing content like the proverbial sponge absorbs water. In the last few years, my reading has slackened pace to have almost stopped completely. The only reading ritual that continues is my annual reading of the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion. Even that reading has become less a pleasure and more a chore. But I want to regain the magic of reading, and that means actually reading again. Part and parcel with my goal of reading more is to actually find a local library and get a library card so that I might read to my heart’s contentment.

Secondly may it be resolved: to write more. I used to be a prolific writer, at least one who wrote semi often about current events or currently occurring thoughts. However, as can be seen from a perusal of the right hand column on this blog labeled “archives”, there is a gap from 2015 to 2017 in which I didn’t write anything. This I want to remedy. I won’t resolve to write every day, or even every week, but I do promise to write at least once a month. So far, I am doing spectacularly as this will be my second long form essay in this month alone. Go me!

Part the Epilogue

Hereby it can be seen that these two parts join together. In leaving behind one form of life, I pick up another, and move forward. And that perhaps is the answer. Hannah, I sincerely hope, will live a long and happy life, and thus we may even cross paths again in the future. The only way I live life with that knowledge and survive that eventuality with any semblance of me is to create a once and future life that is again mine own.

Excelsior!

As of Yet Untitled

I am frightened that I won’t be any good at this “writing” thing. It’s been over a year since I’ve written anything of note.

I’m terrified. Honestly scared. I am frightened that I won’t be any good at this “writing” thing. It’s been over a year since I’ve written anything of note. Sure, I’ve penned a few poems in recent months, but the last time I wrote something longer form was just after The Force Awakens was released in theaters in 2015.

I have an image in my mind’s eye. I stand upon a precipice, about to fall over. One wrong step, and I plummet to my death. I should be staring at the setting sun, watching the moon rise and the stars appear, but instead my gaze is locked on the long dark below me. Inside my shoes, my toes are desperately curling, trying in vain to clamp on to the narrow ledge in front.

This image represents my fear of failure. It has been so strong it has kept me from writing for over a year. I don’t know where exactly it came from, what manifested it inside my brain, but it has been there: lurking.

I have many things I want to write about: Rogue One, Passengers, the untimely death of a princess turned general, my not-7th wedding anniversary, the passing of the most logical being in the galaxy, a few new year’s resolutions, all the death and gloom that was twenty16, and the list continues. But I have been afraid. Afraid that my opinion is not valid, afraid that I won’t have the words, afraid of what she will think, afraid to memorialize too late, afraid to say the wrong thing…afraid.

The abyss rises to grab me.

I had an interesting experience this evening. I am still not sure what it was I saw, but as I was locking my door, on my way out to pick up dinner, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, something dark and shadowy that disappeared behind the corner of the house as soon as I focused on it. I don’t put faith in ghosts or apparitions, though because of medication that I take I have been known to hallucinate from time to time, except only when I don’t take it. I thought about what I saw all during the drive out and back. Initially, I was spooked. I had no idea what I had I seen, if I had in fact seen anything, and that unknowning, that uncertainty scared me a little. I’m a grown man, almost 30, in fact, and I am not given to remaining afraid. Except…

Except I haven’t written in over a year out of sheer bloody panic.

In the end I decided, on my way home, that what I had seen was the coattail of my future time traveling self ducking out of the way so that I wouldn’t see myself and thereby destroy the space time continuum. (Or pass out from shock.) Instantly, I was unafraid.

And here I am writing. It still took me a few more hours of mindless mobile Scrabble and Ticket to Ride before I pulled myself off my bed and settled down in front of my laptop to actually put one word after another. And somewhere, in my head, in my heart, deep in the outer rim of my soul, I am still afraid. But I cannot let that fear stop me from doing what I love and that is to write. So I will write. I will write about Carrie Fisher, Leonard Nimoy, my ex-wife, movies that I have fallen in love with, what I have resolved this new year, the late twenty-teens and so on.

I am stronger than my fear. I back from the ledge to catch the last few rays of sunlight fading into twilight blue. I write.

The Awakening

Palpable was the excitement of going to see Star Wars Epsiode I: The Phantom Menace in the spring of 1999. I distinctly remember riding in the back seat of my father’s car, driving along the highway towards our local theater. I remember sitting on the end seat, next to him, and my brother on the other side of my father as the lights of the theater dimmed and the opening crawl floated up the screen. Despite my high excitement, disappointment followed. I was twelve years old then, and had grown up watching the original Star Wars trilogy so many times that my first experience with Star Wars had long been forgotten. It seems I had always loved watching Star Wars.

It is now nearly the end of 2015, and with it a new era has been born. Unless you’ve been hiding out on Dagobah with a broken holonet receiver, you know that the sequel trilogy has been launched with Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. I’ve seen it twice now, once in regular old two dimensions, and once in IMAX 3D. If you want to stop reading now to avoid spoilers on the story, I will simply say this: it was better than the prequels and a true Star Wars film full of the space adventure and fantasy we’ve come to love from that galaxy far, far away…

What has made the Star Wars universe great and has allowed it to endure for generations are the iconic, memorable characters. From the beginning of The Force Awakens, we receive terrific new characters that I believe will live on in the zeitgeist of the world consciousness just as have the original characters from the original Star Wars.

Right away we are introduced to the first non-human character that will drive a large portion of the film as a Macguffin and that is the orange and white ball droid BB-8. Early on in the marketing and releases about The Force Awakens we saw BB-8 and I must admit I was less than impressed. I thought the robot was overly cute, and was attached to my nostalgia for R2-D2 and C-3P0. But from those first few moments on screen, BB-8 captured my attention in exactly the same way Artoo and Threepio did in the beginning of Star Wars. Moments later we meet Po Dameron, the heroic and dashing X-wing pilot and Kylo Ren, the angry, yet strangely compelling new Dark Lord. At this point, I got caught up in the story and the film, and wondered where these characters would take me. Again, early on, as these characters were revealed, I thought that Kylo Ren in particular was trying too hard to be the new Darth Vader, but seeing him on the big screen, as the story unfolded, I saw an angry, hurting young man trying desperately to live up to a legacy he admired, albeit for all the wrong reasons. As the film progressed we were introduced to the main characters, Rey and Finn the defecting stormtrooper. Rey is a simple human living in the literal shadow of a decades old galactic war, scavenging for survival and awaiting her future. Finn is rejecting the only life he has ever known and seeking a way to freedom. Both meet up, and the adventure really gets going as they steal a familiar piece of space garbage and outrace the new Empire: the First Order. Reintroducing the Millennium Falcon and previous owners Han Solo and Chewbacca was less a slavish devotion to past glories, but an acknowledgement of the age of the universe and the passage of time. Things move on from our lives and sometimes old friends return in unexpected ways. Later we meet Leia Organa, less princess and more general, and even she feels like a totally new character. She is no longer young and feisty, but now strong and resolute with the burning fervor of conviction and experience. I loved the thousand year old Maz and her little cantina on a backwater world, her unexpected wisdom and yet shadowy side as someone who hung out with the dregs and downcast. She was the dark mirror to Yoda, ancient and wise and somehow a young outlaw on the back edge of the galaxy. All of these new characters immediately became as interesting and compelling to me as the droid duo, Luke Skywalker, Ben Kenobi and Yoda, and Han Solo from Star Wars. I desperately wanted to know their stories and follow them on their adventures.

Secondly, the locations hearkened back, in a good way, to the the original trilogy. There was the desolate desert world of Jakku, the ice planet/superweapon of Starkiller Base, the forest world of Takodana, all mirroring Tatooine, Hoth, and Endor. This became a theme to the Force Awakens: revealing the new through the lens of the old. There was the Millennium Falcon given new life as the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy racing along the Jakku dunes and derelict Star Destroyers and the new planet destroying super weapon. Far from drudgingly repeating the past, the new Star Wars gave me quick tutorial in what I already loved, setting me up for something that I will never have imagined in Episodes VIII and IX.

Thirdly, there was plenty of new twists and further revelations of the galaxy far, far away, which is far more vast and old and lived in than I imagined. I loved the brief introduction to other smugglers and outlaws aboard Han’s new freighter, the rathtar beasts Han was transporting, again, hearkening back to Jabba’s den of despicable denizens and the rancor which lurked below. I loved the X-wing/TIE fighter battles, the exchanges of blaster fire, the familiar yet new First Order risen from the ashes of the Empire, Jedi mind tricks, and unexpected stormtrooper humor, no longer clones but real people fighting for a cause they believe in.

I thought the acting in this film was superb, and that is what ultimately won me over to the classic nature of the new Star Wars. Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver all did fantastic work in breathing into their characters the breath of life. I believed all of them. But the real surprise was the reveal of Luke Skywalker at the end. Mark Hamill communicated so much without saying a single word that I was totally blown away. The shot lingered on his face as he turned to see Rey and what her outstretched arm held and I saw sorrow, pain, recognition, remembrance, resolution and so many more emotions in his eyes. He realized the fullness of what his failure to train Ben Solo had wrought on the galaxy, he acknowledged what his absence fostered in current events, he recognized his lightsaber, and with it the pain of his failure and loss against Darth Vader so long ago, and he made the choice to no longer look to the past but to rejoin the present in hope of a better future with Rey and the Resistance.

Finally, the death of Han Solo, which I completely expected to happen given Harrison Ford’s complicated relationship with the character, was still shocking and emotionally gutting. Here was everything that was awesome, funny, and beloved about the original trilogy being brutally murdered by its own offspring, the sequel trilogy, and the message was clear: despite the winks, the references, and the familiar, this is not your father’s Star Wars anymore. This is a new beast altogether and in the future, nothing is certain. Here the brilliance of Lawrence Kasdan’s writing and JJ Abrams’ direction was shown in full: this was the narrative being constructed below the cool space story above.

I know I just said finally, but I must shoutout to the stellar John Williams and his amazing score. If the special effects and characters are the body of Star Wars, Williams’ music is the soul. One of the greatest composers of our time, Williams brings the best of his genius to underscore every beat of the Force Awakens and I will enjoy his new music just as much as I have loved the original soundtracks.

The Force Awakens is not without it’s flaws, but for every seeming plot hole or convenient occurrence, I am reminded of similar aspects to the films I love: Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. The original trilogy succeeded on the spectacle, heroics, and characters we loved, not from perfect plotting or consistently complete logic. Star Wars is a space opera, a grand fantasy adventure among the stars, and should be loved as such.

Remember, Remember or What Guy Fawkes Day Means to Me

Today is the fifth of November, and you might hear, or see people on social media sites quoting from the film V for Vendetta or the graphic novel it was based on or the old traditional Guy Fawkes rhymes “remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot” and the history that it was based on.

That history is Guy Fawkes Day, which in short, is a commonwealth holiday that celebrates the failed plot to assassinate King James I in 1605 by one Guy Fawkes of the Gunpowder Plot. Whatever the original reasons Fawkes and his cronies had for killing the English monarch, it is clear that his failed plot’s celebration means more to people today, and more to me, than just a failed murder.

I abhor violence, and don’t believe in death as a way to move a social agenda forward so I might be called a traditionalist when it comes to the celebration of a failed assassination. In fact, my introduction to the world of Guy Fawkes and the “fifth of November” cult that has grown up around him comes through the film V for Vendetta. In the film, a future Britain is controlled by a totalitarian regime that has become, or perhaps always was, evil and that government is taken down by a man in a Guy Fawkes-esque mask known only as V.

It is a wonderful film, and I suppose its primary message is “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people” but I am no revolutionary, at least not one of swords and drums and guns. Indeed, if there is a quote from the film that sums me up, in so much as a film quote can, it is this one: “Ideas are bulletproof.”

The protagonist of the film, Evie Hammond, a small, frightened girl who becomes a patriot afire for the cause under the tutelage of V, says that one “cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it; ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love” and while all that certainly sounds true it isn’t quite accurate. Evie is speaking of the man behind the ideas, her Guy Fawkes that she loves, and how her love for him is more real to her than his ideas are and I think she misses the point of her own drama.

Ideas do not die. Ideas can change the world. All the women and men who have ever fought for an idea have died forgotten. We do not remember their names. We only remember why they fought, why they died. I know nothing about the real Guy Fawkes, all I know is his idea: that one could change the world through gunpowder, treason, and plot. And while he ultimately failed, people still believe that to this day. That idea is pervasive and powerful.

I believe that ideologies and ideas are more powerful than puny bombs and bullets. I believe that one day we will lay aside weapons of mass destruction as a means of advancing ideas and instead fight directly with words. Words cannot be stopped by force. Words endure the death of the speaker. Words shape ideas. Words are remembered.

That is what I do, each fifth of November: I remember. I remember the ideas that have come before me, that inspire me, that challenge me. I may not remember who first generated the idea, or why they died, but I do remember the words they used to articulate that idea. I remember the words they used to advance that idea.

And I try, just as they did, to articulate my own ideas with words. It is likely no one may remember me, but there is a chance they will remember my words, and my ideas. My ideas that love triumphs over hate, that prejudice and fear are transitory and that acceptance and unity will win the day. That reaching for something is just as important as grasping it. That moving forward will always trump moving backwards. That every inch is just as far as a mile. That ideas are bulletproof.

So today, remember, remember the fifth of November and remember the ideas that created today, and generate some ideas that will create a better tomorrow.