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What are you waiting for?
Now I have been asked why I go to the Movies and paying the money associated with it instead of waiting for it to trickle down to the delivery systems of DVD and Streaming sources. This will be a small attempt of trying to explain to those that ask that. Well... First of all it's a way for me to escape the monotony of crapitude that seems to happen on a daily basis. It does seem like a whole lot of dung has started to pile up lately but I notice that when I'm at the movies, it all seems better for the short time that I'm there. No stresses from work, no stresases from not being able to be more sociable, just the celluloid stories and a Large Soft Drink (with Free Refill) and sometimes a Popcorn if I could afford it. Movies at the theater has been and always will be something that I just like to experience. Second, it used to be a social outlet for me, friends would get together and see the late showing at the neighborhood budget house and afterwards we'd be all jazzed up on the movie and carry on to a late night diner to talk about it among other things. Those two reasons should be plenty... Escape and cameraderie are things that those in the snooty upper-crust don't want us to have, unless it's to distract us from their crooked skullduggery... Sorry... getting a little off track. I feel sort of connected with all of the strangers there by a shared experience of the movie as well.
In a world of extremes that we live in, there are things that balance out one another. Happiness and Sadness,Pleasure and Pain, Light and Dark. The thing is, with the average person's morbid capacity to be predatory in pursuits, therein lives the Painbringers.
Painbringers use depair and misery (most of the times, their creation) as their food and drink. Their drug of choice is the total breakdown of a person's self-image and worth. As with all parasitic creatures, people don't notice them until the damage is done, and they have moved onto other victims. If you believe beyond the status quo, the Painbringers see it as a challenge to grind up and spit out. They might seem untouchable and invulnerable but nothing can be farther from the truth.
The secret to a Painbringer's demise is in actuality its way of feedimg off of its victim's belief. If a person believes the venom a Painbringer exudes, they become food on the table and, in a few, seeds start to grow of more Painbringers. The thing a Painbringer hates more than anything else is a strong self-image that they can't subvert or break. A Will focused with the intensity of the sun will burn and blast a Painbringer. Painbringers, by their nature, "Can dish it out, but can't take it". Any resistance to what they spout causes them to look elsewhere. If everyone looked within themselves and saw how strong they could be in their self-belief, all of the Painbringers would shrivel up and waste away to dust.
Food for thought...
In the world of Concrete and Steel, people equate things with how close or how far things are and establish importance to things by a sliding rule. Of course this all depends on the person and their views of what's important or what is trivial. There is an old adage of Never letting one's reach exceed their grasp, but how does one know the distance of one's reach and the strength of one's grasp.
Phrases like "S(he)'s out of your league.", "I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole", "They are worlds apart", "They are from two different sides of the tracks." and "He's in his own world." all have to do with the implication of distance or of the isolation of distance. When a person decides on these implications and isolations, they establish distances for themselves and others that interract with them.
The main thing that dictates distance with us is the mind and how we sense things in our world. Take for example the ten feet of that aforementioned pole. I am not the fastest guy around but I can cover ten feet quite rapidly. That pole doesn't stand a chance if I had to cross that small distance. Tracks and worlds don't hold any less challenges for me either. A well trained mind will always find a way to make the Tracks be used by both sides to meet and to render the gulfs between worlds close enough for whispers.
Distance is just an illusion. Near... or far is just what you make of it.
Some thoughts that went through my head as I sat on a bench, in a mall eating a McChicken Sandwich and drinking an Iced Sweet Tea.
Is being an individual worth it in a world where the masses get the smoother ride? From what I could see where I sat on a bench, it seems that if you follow patterns of behavior, you seem to be happy. I have never been one to emulate patterns of behavior, at lest on a conscious level, unlike all of the various people that went by me as I sat. Some of their behaviors seem foreign (leading a girlfriend by her buttocks through the mall, glaring at other guys who look remotely their way) some were familiar (a girl seeming withdrawn in a group of lgirls that were outgoing. Not that I think I am a girl but the emotive state...) I usually did my own thing, felt what I felt, did what I did because I was being myself. Sometimes it gets to you, being outside looking in at the masses, but who ever said walking your path would be easy.
I don't EVER regret being an individual, but at times things in life try to make you feel it. At the end of the day, I never have flinched looking into my eyes in a mirror and I have never done anything to make me so. I wonder if all those who oppose individuality can say the same...
In one's daily trials and travails, one is beset and haunted by various ghosts.
Most of the time its the ghosts of our past, Is what is happening now going to be a repeat performance of the past. The ghosts of fear, the ghosts of doubts, both cause us to hesitate and second guess our every action. The ghosts of the present confound us even more than those of the past. The ghosts of potential can drive us to ruin, not to mention the Seven Sins pulling us in their directions. Also the ghosts yet to be have a little grasp upon us as well. How do we measure up in the eyes of others and How do we measure up to what we see of ourselves being farther down the river of time. Ghosts of Desires. Ghosts of Pain. Ghosts of Loss. Every single ghost wants its place in the sun, its fifteen minutes to shine, its pound of flesh.
Some people consider all of this spectral cacophany, normal. What if though instead of the pleading and yelling of all of these spectres, there is nothing. What if the ghosts couldn't lay claim to you without angering all of the rest. Each ghost trumped by another with an equal claim. If this is rare and far from the norm does the one with the Tormented Ghosts lack anything that the ones that are pulled by their tribe of spirits? Or does everyone that has their ghosts decide to make the one without an outcast or pariah to the rest of the world? Is not hearing their subtle comments and pleadings allow you to hear what the soul have to say?
Or are the ghosts not tormented with these rare individuals but acting in concert to better affect change on the universe or our world as we see it? Are the ghosts Protectors and Defenders? Teachers and Scholars? Knights and Mystics? All to make us the best we can be with what we are dealt in the world. Who's to say...
