Damn The Stars That Shine. Damn The Lies That Were Mine. Damn The Lover’s Love.

I had this thought occur to me today. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I suppose tho that a Katydid cannot sleep when a Lark sings. Something may be beautiful to you, but it may be damning or dangerous to another.

I know that my atoms are not mine and that they were forged in stars and scattered across the universe by their deaths. I know that I am a product of bunch of chemical reactions. I know that I will one day die.

I also know that I am more than sum of my parts. That my death, will only be in this body. I will decompose and become apart of everything. I know that my mannerisms will be inherited by those who loved me. Just I have inherited theirs. And I know if there is a afterlife my spirit will live on forever in love and kindness.

But that doesn't make this life any less worth it.

The man on the left is Me and the man to the right is My Father. And if speaking honestly I have never given that man enough credit. Most of the best things I am, I inherited from him. He takes up most of me. Literally half, and figuratively far more than that. He has been a constant pressure in my life, and first It's like what, that doesn't sound great but then you remember that's what turns carbon to diamonds. And yeah there's has been a lot tension and friction in our relationships past, but nothing has ever been polished or shined without those exact things. My Father has always loved me without any modifier. He has been of a sturdier stock than I, and his firm guidance has always been to a better path than the one he had to walk. Once I remember my youth pastor compared my Father to how fountain square (Our home) used to be, and I am like how Fountain Square is now. And I don't think there could have been a better metaphor because while we are two different people where share the same base, and we may present ourselves differently but our love is just the same. My Father, I call him "old man", because I know I will always be able to depend on him in any age or time. My Father, if my life were a house he would be the frame. My Father, once with reluctance but now with reverence I carry his name. My Father, I have never given that man enough credit, and starting now Id like that to change.

Lemongrass in the Summer Sun. Just as bare feet dance so beautifully on the browns of the earth. A water hose then becomes the plaything of two people. Laughing Laughter that can still be heard.

C'mere sweet child a hard truth is that sometimes you will write whole chapters for a person in your life, but all you will ever be is only scribbles in their margins. An after thought, an editors note.

I believe we are apt to see the truth as lies. Lies sometimes are alluring, sweeter to the ear, or easier to believe. We trick even ourselves, justifying them and enabling them. Pain and Anger are the greatest among the liars. They hurt us, so we doubt the truth. We define our Identity by our Truths. I will share with you what I have thought, felt and learned. Love, the complete commitment to the well being and happiness of yourself, another person or people without any condition or modifier. Integrity, the practice of being uncompromised in one's values and actions. Kindness, it is a behavior defined by consideration and concern. It is gentle, and it is generous. We become the truths we believe in. We accept the lives or the lies we agree with. We can choose, more importantly You can choose these things. But do not do this partially, or reluctantly, you have to accept it wholly. It is a challenge and it takes time. I am still learning. But if you allow them to they will change you.

You are like the flowers that bloom and blossom. Even their leaves scatter to the wind.

Another love letter, I'll likely never send.

I think of people all day long. There are peoples whose names are written in the valves of my heart and with every beat and measure their meanings send my lifeblood through my veins. However, recently my thoughts are falling on you. I feel like I've wrote this letter-of-sorts to you a thousand times, and sent it to you none. For most people I can enumerate exhaustively every grievance or alternatively adequately admit any appreciation. But for you it has been consistently hard to find and define. For sometime I have been mixing up every word and position, it's definition and connotation trying to form something coherent. But I fear somewhere from heart to head, from head to hand, or hand to paper, it is getting lost in translation. Unfortunately I am acutely aware of my own mistakes, and I can say that I have committed many transgressions both purposeful and otherwise, big and small. And the greatest of these, at some point in my life I intentionally removed myself. For far too long I have remained silent and absent. Exclusive and Elusive. Now I am trying to write myself back into the narratives of many people. You are one of them. My thoughts and moments for you are variable and different, some are as the rosy fingered sky brings dawn to day, or as a quiet snow blankets a patient night. As the warmth of my heated seat reminds me of a shivering passenger. Or even now, as I'm writing this, your smile the sound of your laughter. I cannot say for certain if the formality of my words widens the gap, or closes the distance. But I know at least I've tried to convey some semblance of the reality that is, in a single trite expression "In my heart." I know that eventually, at sometime a bell will toll for my name, and my sins tallied. I can only pray that the ground remembers my name, and forgives me and just allows me to rest in the sun and grass, under my own vine. Then my body burned and ashes spread. But in a life, I can know this one victory. That I did not regret to shower the people I love with love. You are one of them. I would willingly give to you my days, hours and minutes. However I fear, that you, like most cancers put on shell, or an armor to protect something. And that's okay there is no fault or shame in that. You are allowed to be as guarded, defended or distance as you are comfortable with. You have opened yourself up to me before, and in that touching moment you impressed on to me an image. Something worth protecting. You are not fragile. You are sturdy. You've known pain, and adversity. What vision I received is one I will covet, cherish and hold sacred. You do not ever have to make yourself vulnerable to me, but I would like to make myself to you. If you give me the chance to, I'll give you those things my days, hours and minutes. If given your permission, I would be in your narrative. I see you, I hear you, if you would allow me, I'd hope to help you feel those ways. I am not here to defraud, defame, or even deshell you. My only motivation is to care, love and to get know you better. I only hope you don't misread my intention.

“For some time, Hollywood has marketed family entertainment according to a two-pronged strategy, with cute stuff and kinetic motion for the kids and sly pop-cultural references and tame double entendres for mom and dad. Miyazaki has no interest in such trickery, or in the alternative method, most successfully deployed in Pixar features like Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and Inside/Out, of blending silliness with sentimentality.”

“Most films made for children are flashy adventure-comedies. Structurally and tonally, they feel almost exactly like blockbusters made for adults, scrubbed of any potentially offensive material. They aren’t so much made for children as they’re made to be not not for children. It’s perhaps telling that the genre is generally called “Family,” rather than “Children’s.” The films are designed to be pleasing to a broad, age-diverse audience, but they’re not necessarily specially made for young minds.”

“My Neighbor Totoro, on the other hand, is a genuine children’s film, attuned to child psychology. Satsuki and Mei move and speak like children: they run and romp, giggle and yell. The sibling dynamic is sensitively rendered: Satsuki is eager to impress her parents but sometimes succumbs to silliness, while Mei is Satsuki’s shadow and echo (with an independent streak). But perhaps most uniquely, My Neighbor Totoro follows children’s goals and concerns. Its protagonists aren’t given a mission or a call to adventure - in the absence of a larger drama, they create their own, as children in stable environments do. They play.”

“Consider the sequence just before Mei first encounters Totoro. Satsuki has left for school, and Dad is working from home, so Mei dons a hat and a shoulder bag and tells her father that she’s “off to run some errands” - The film is hers for the next ten minutes, with very little dialogue. She’s seized by ideas, and then abandons them; her goals switch from moment to moment. First she wants to play “flower shop” with her dad, but then she becomes distracted by a pool full of tadpoles. Then, of course, she needs a bucket to catch tadpoles in - but the bucket has a hole in it. And on it goes, but we’re never bored, because Mei is never bored.”

“[…] You can only ride a ride so many times before the thrill wears off. But a child can never exhaust the possibilities of a park or a neighborhood or a forest, and Totoro exists in this mode. The film is made up of travel and transit and exploration, set against lush, evocative landscapes that seem to extend far beyond the frame. We enter the film driving along a dirt road past houses and rice paddies; we follow Mei as she clambers through a thicket and into the forest; we walk home from school with the girls, ducking into a shrine to take shelter from the rain; we run past endless green fields with Satsuki as she searches for Mei. The psychic center of Totoro’s world is an impossibly giant camphor tree covered in moss. The girls climb over it, bow to it as a forest-guardian, and at one point fly high above it, with the help of Totoro. Much like Totoro himself, the tree is enormous and initially intimidating, but ultimately a source of shelter and inspiration.”

“My Neighbor Totoro has a story, but it’s the kind of story that a child might make up, or that a parent might tell as a bedtime story, prodded along by the refrain, “And then what happened?” This kind of whimsicality is actually baked into Miyazaki’s process: he begins animating his films before they’re fully written. Totoro has chase scenes and fantastical creatures, but these are flights of fancy rooted in a familiar world. A big part of being a kid is watching and waiting, and Miyazaki understands this. When Mei catches a glimpse of a small Totoro running under her house, she crouches down and stares into the gap, waiting. Miyazaki holds on this image: we wait with her. Magical things happen, but most of life happens in between those things—and there is a kind of gentle magic, for a child, in seeing those in-betweens brought to life truthfully on screen.”

A.O. Scott and Lauren Wilford on “My Neighbor Totoro”, 2017.