Once upon a time

Once upon a time in a land a lot like ours there lived a lot of little girls who wanted desperately to be princesses and princesses who just wanted to live normal lives. There were cats who wanted to be dogs and and dogs who wanted to be cats and plucky British couples who wanted nothing more than to fall out of canoes into shallow bodies of water. There were star crossed lovers and there were bitter rivalries. There were dreamers with single minded determination and there were those who never quite figured out what they wanted. There were those with stories to tell and others with the skill to tell them, and if they were lucky they story tellers were able to find the stories.

Once upon a time in this world I wanted to be a professional baseball player. In the first grade I was sure I was going to be a major league pitcher but then in the second grade someone told me that girls don't play professional baseball and now I throw like a girl. After that I took dance classes for seven years thinking, I suppose, of a future in musical theater, but I'm not such a good singer. For a brief period I wanted to be a model but, while I apparently had the poise for it, I was told I'd never be tall enough for runway modeling (though I did find myself on a catwalk once or twice, not in a professional capacity, strictly amateur, thanks to an aunt who's a designer).

One thing I always wanted to be through all of that was a writer. I've tried numerous types of writing. I won a short story contest in 5th grade and then promptly quit writing short stories forever. I wrote awful angsty poetry when I was in high school and then quit writing poetry forever when I got a C in my college poetry writing contest. After I dropped out of college I decided to try my hand at screenwriting. I studied screenwriting for a year and in the process, I found that I am not a story teller, at least I don't have a natural talent for it. I can do it, sort of, but it's hard for me. One of the professors of my screenwriting class was one of the most natural story tellers I have ever seen (or heard) and I couldn't believe how easy he made it seem (in comparison to how hard it actually is).

So, now I write this stuff instead, but I'm still always looking for a good story to tell. I can't stop trying.

If Google doesn't map it it's not a place on Earth

In the immortal words of Tiffany, "They say in heaven love comes first" (which I guess makes today's song of the day Heaven Is a Place on Earth). Unfortunately, all to often, heaven is not a place on earth and love does not come first. For many people life gets in the way of love. In life, if love did come first a lot of other things would have to be compromised. Where you want to live, how many (if any) kids you want to have, religion, who is going to be the bread winner, how much sex is enough, who's family to spend the holidays with, where to go on vacation...it seems like every day would present dozens of new things you might have to compromise on.

Most people realize this and when they're single they try to predict what things will be "deal breakers". As a single person you think of things you want in a mate and things you couldn't live with. Many people stick to these guns no matter what, but a lot of people find there's a little more wiggle room in the rules they've written for themselves than they thought. They meet someone who has none of the things they thought they were looking for and/or all of the things they thought they could never live with but they can't help loving that person anyway.

My great-grandfather was a devout catholic. A true believer who thought that he could buy salvation for all his family by donating to the church. When my mom and I went through a bunch of his old papers, searching for clues about our genealogy, we found records of all the money he spent and who's souls he was trying to buy into heaven with each of those donations. We also found my great-grandmother's catechism book. It appears that she had at least planned to convert to Catholicism for him (though I don't recall if we found record of her confirmation or not). I don't know much about them but I can only assume that they loved each very much because for a devout catholic man and Jewish divorcee to end up married there had to be some compromising.

It seems like, maybe, she was the one to do most of the compromising and maybe, it is from her that I've inherited my sense that love conquers all. It wouldn't be the only thing I get from her. At age sixteen, I saw a picture of her and it was the first time I'd ever looked at a photograph of anyone in my family and seen myself reflected back. I suppose it would stand to reason that I get more than my looks from her. Unfortunately she died young and neither I, nor my mom, ever had a chance to meet her. In fact, even my grandmother, who was only three when she died, barely knew her. I asked my mother recently what she died from...I had always assumed it was childbirth for some reason, but it turns out she had an enlarged heart. I'm not making that up. I know it seems like I must be because of the metaphor (i.e. she had such a big heart, she loved so much, that she was willing to make whatever compromise she had to for it), but I'm really not making it up.

I don't know if I get my capacity for love from my great-grandmother, but where ever it comes from, even though heaven isn't always (or even often) a place on Earth, for me love does come first. If I love someone I'll always find a way to compromise.

Ethics: Because I said so

There was an article in Tuesday's NY Times about the ethical dilemmas presented by new technology. An environmental scientist is quoted in the article saying, "There is no one to say 'Thou shalt not'". That phrasing struck me as odd. "Thou shalt not" is biblical terminology, and the implication of the statement is sort of Nitzschean. I mean, either this woman believes that there never was anyone who said "Thou shalt not" (i.e. there is no God), in which case it doesn't really bear mentioning in this way (because if there never was then it doesn't relate to new technology or anything new for that matter), or, more likely, there was but isn't any more (i.e. God is dead).

Whether you believe that God really dictated to Moses (among others) or not, the fact is that a great many people did believe that, so someone, whether it was God, or just Moses himself, was able to tell people "Thou shalt not", (and have many of them listen and accept it as a commandment they must follow). If someone were to try the same thing today (i.e. to say, whether truthfully or not, that God spoke to them, they would likely be institutionalized (or, depending on where they were from, maybe killed). I wonder, if someone found or claimed to have found, some ancient text adding all sorts of commandments, would people listen?

It isn't so far fetched. The Book of Mormon is a whole lot newer than Moses and his commandments and there are a lot of people out there not drinking coffee, tea or alcohol, because Joseph Smith told them that God didn't want them to and a good many of them believe that it is purely about obedience.

I always thought that God would know what things we might want to eat and drink that could be harmful to us and that those dietary restrictions (which many religions have) were more about God protecting us from harm to our health. However many people who believe in a good and loving God also, apparently, believe that this Father in Heaven, is the type of parent that comes up with arbitrary rules and insists that we follow them because He said so.

I actually like this parental analogy because as an adult I can see that some of the things my parents told me not to do, which at the time seemed arbitrary, were really for my own good (like God's diet laws). They were trying to protect me. For example, when I was 14 my mother told me to stay away from older guys. She explained it really well too. She told me that once I was out of school, age difference wouldn't matter (at least not as much), but until then, people change so much so quickly that older guys would be vastly different that guys my own age and than me, that they would want different things than I wanted. I ignored her, of course, and a year later nearly got myself raped (or more accurately got myself nearly raped).

Even after that happened I still wasn't exactly a paragon of obedience. I'm obedient if I understand the reasons why I should be and sometimes, I have to make the mistake in order to understand the reasoning. When it comes to things that affect my own health and well being (like the things my mother told me not to do, or religious dictates about not drinking coffee or eating pork) I can make my own mistakes but the things they are talking about in this article have potentially harmful effects on humanity as a whole. It seems to me like the absence of someone to say, "Thou shalt not", might actually be a good thing. Especially if the only reason offered would be, "because I said so".

In the absence of such an authority, panels of scientists and philosophers convene to discuss the ethical implications of creating new technologies whose effects on humanity are yet unknown and could potentially be disastrous. These are people who can tell us not just that we shouldn't do these things, but why we shouldn't do them.

The family you make

I've had Growing Up Falling Down (the Living End) stuck in my head for the past week or two. According to some my youth ended a couple months so I guess I should be all grown up already but I feel like right now is the moment that I am growing up.

I think that growing up is a lot about the family you make for yourself. As someone who is really close with the family I was born with I never thought about making a family for myself (because I already have one and I'm happy with it). I have been thinking about it a lot lately though.

There was a lot of talk about it in the news coverage of one of this summers big movies (Sex and the City). I didn't see the movie but it was something I questioned about the show so I understood the criticism, the girls families are hardly ever depicted in the movie (or the show), not even at their weddings. The explanation, of course, is that those girls may not be connected by blood, but they are each other's family.

The natural conclusion is that people make their friends into surrogate families because they don't like the families they were born with. Another possibility is people in extreme situations, working super long hours or the like, form those family like strong bonds with each other and it has nothing to do with dissatisfaction with their existing families (you see that in television too, Sorkin does it a lot).

Neither of those things apply to me, and yet, I find myself creating family for myself. Maybe, there was a void to fill...I never had a sister so I found myself one. Ever since then I've been building my family outside my family.

So now, it's not that the roots I have here in this place, my family, mean any less to me, but I have other things in my life now that mean just as much. The other things, other people, are pretty spread out. I know I'm going to be moving soon. The lease on my apartment is up in October and I don't think I'm staying the Seattle area. I'm just not sure where I'll end up. LA, Olympia, and New York are the options...Olympia is probably the most me, I like a laid back place, and one of my best friends is there now. Three years ago I was sure if I ever moved from Seattle it would be to LA, I have friends there, and an entire branch of my extended family in that area. New York is somewhere I swore I'd never live, but one of my best friends just moved there, my sister really (in this family I'm making for myself), and like family, I think we need each other. I'm not sure how it will work out, but no matter where I go I guess I will have family around me, whether it's the family I was born with or the one I make for myself.

Losing yourself

My first acting teacher told me that you have to keep something of yourself (I think it was 90/10, give 90% to the character and keep 10% of yourself). This is excellent advice especially since if you're any good at all at acting you'll at some point find a character you're playing bleeding over into your own life and personality. It's the reason actors end up dating their costars so often. It's also the reason actors are often crazy, or at least assumed to be crazy.

Heath Ledger is a very good actor, and his Joker was great, and while I'm not trying to say that he's crazy, I don't think it was Oscar caliber work. He played a crazy killer with no motivation what-so-ever. I know it's cliche but actors need to know what their characters motivation is, and the Joker is a character without any motivation. That's not a character that allows for an especially emotionally nuanced portrayal, in fact it's pretty one dimensional. He died tragically, and perhaps deserves a posthumous Oscar both for making the Joker nuanced at all and because he didn't win the one he deserved for Brokeback Mountain, but I am saying that his acting in Dark Knight didn't take my breath away, his acting has taken my breath away, but not in this movie.

Cristian Bale, by the way, is a very good actor, who, it's said, doesn't keep anything of himself. People say that he becomes a completely different person (off camera I mean, since obviously he becomes a different person on camera). Of course, I'm not trying to say that he's crazy either. He had the more three dimensional character and he did very well with it is all. Of course it's kind of hard to see the emotionally nuanced acting when the man is wearing a mask over his eyes for half the film so I don't think anyone is going to be getting any Oscars (for their acting in this film).

Still, when I was watching the movie I totally lost myself. My friend tells me she was watching and she knew they couldn't have killed Gordon, because he wasn't commissioner yet. I should have known that too. I know enough Batman to know that Gordon was commissioner. Then Harvey Dent has gasoline running down the side of his face and I'm so caught up in the story, I should know what's coming, I know enough Batman to know about Two Face, but I don't even realize what's coming. That story had me rapt from beginning to end even though I know Batman. Maybe I have a tendency to let myself get lost in a story more than most people, and maybe this story was particularly compelling for a lot of reasons, but at least one of those reason is convincing actors.