the little girl who found her strength

but as you wait for said "awesomeness"

here's a little bit of fun for ya:

everything on this link, facebook, etc, is copyrighted, so no stealing. seriously. i have ninja monkeys that i can borrow from a friend... they mean business, monkey business, only, you know, with death and stuff.

so i figured this post will be all words.

ohmygod stop yelling at me!!! i know i know!!! no one can handle just writing.
and to that i say: SUCK IT UP!

i mean, i will take that into consideration.

this is a story,
call it a children's story if you will, but i call it a "story", because stories are stories, regardless of the intended audience.

so here we go:

The Little Girl who Found her Strength

once, not very long ago, 
there was a little girl
with a little voice
and a little personality
not to mention, very little courage.

she lived in the woods

with her family
and their pet tiger. 

(spoiler! this is a blatant PLUG for a good friend...this drawing is thanks to my very good friend, and partner in crime, doug... insert PLUG for DOUG here: http://douggiedoo.deviantart.com/ he's a very talented artist, check him out)

 

now, for years this little girl stared at the tiger, wanting it's strength, it's agility, it's, well it's freedom. 

so, tentatively, she went up to it and asked, as children often do:
"tiger dear, where do you get all this from? where does you strength and everything that makes you, well you?"

the tiger, chuckled (if you can imagine a tiger chuckling, it's quite silly really.)

but then the tiger thought. 

and thought

and thought some more. 

"well, i suppose  i get it from in here" he said as he pointed to his chest.

the little girl thought about that statement and was not at all happy with the answer. 

"what do you mean, 'in here'. where exactly is 'in here.'"

the tiger realized, he wasn't quite sure. he'd always been feared, always called agile, a hunter, and strong. i suppose it was then that he wasn't so sure of his answer.

"i think," said the tiger "that it comes from your heart, and not just a little from what people say of you. if you're called 'strong', well, then you're strong. if you're called 'agile', well, then you're agile, and so on."

"huh." said the little girl.  "so basically, it comes from what others say about you?"

the tiger realized his fault immediately and backtracked his words: "no! no, it has nothing to do with what other people say about you..."

"but you said..." the little girl was very impatient and not just a little bit confused.

"i know what i said, but tigers can be wrong. the right answer to your question is: you make yourself by choices, by, by, well, by listening to yourself for a good long while and then, i think you'll have your answer."

so the girl walked away, still confused, but with a bit more confidence. the tiger followed in her steps to protect her, like he had always done.

after a while of walking, the little girl stopped. 

as did the tiger. 

and as the little girl turned around, she said "tiger, go play today. i was thinking as we walked, and i realized, having you protect me, well it means i don't have to protect myself. i think i found what i was looking for."

the tiger, being quite proud of his advice, walked away and felt confident the little girl found her courage. coincidentally,  so did the little girl. 

the end. 

thank you all for reading or following or giving it a chance.

alright boys and girls....


get ready for the story of a lifetime!


being an intermediate archer myself, and having Brave out in theatres... well, i'm creating two awesome characters with celtic names that will be described... in the next blog (sometime tomorrow.)


expect ACTION, expect AWESOME, expect A BIT OF LITERARY NARRATIVE PROSE!!!




basically:

 plus

 equals

AWESOME

no worries, no fictional characters were harmed or copyrighted in the making of this blog

:)

oh yeah, it'll be epic.

change, fairy tales, and dragons! oh yes!!!

today i wanted to talk about change:


i've been scarred by it.


bits and pieces of me have been burned


salt has been placed on open wounds


in dark rooms where no one cares to hear your screaming,
they enjoy it.


those dark places we've all been to for whatever reason:


a broken heart: maybe you were broken, maybe you did the breaking.


a loss: maybe death, maybe someone left you when you were little and the world was very big.


maybe even pain, the physical or the emotionally, it's all the same.


in my instance, it's the physical, 13 years of it.


i joke about it, but even now, it hurts, it's an open wound and i'm scared to death someone will pour salt all over it.


i'm afraid of so many things.


most people are.


spiders, the dark (or more likely, what happens when you're alone and vulnerable), being alone, being stuck with someone, heights, small spaces, the water, fire, whatever your fear or fears may be, the important thing to remember, i think, is that it's important to be open to change.


that's something i'm afraid of. change for the good, not afraid of that. i'm afraid of the pain getting worse, of someone hurting the people i love just by being here. that kind of fear. the fear of existence.


and when it comes right down to it, that's when you need an escape.


i choose stories (books, comics, shows, movies, fairy tales, art, and especially music.)


i think stories are best told orally, i was raised that way.


i was read to, every night, by mom or dad, they switched because they're must have been exhausted, but they always found time to read to me.


my favorites? always the action ones stories, where the hero rides in and saves the damsel, only i pretended to be be the man, the hero...


cinderella needed a fairy godmother, a prince to take her away from it all.
snow white? she needed a prince to wake her up.
little red riding hood? she needed the huntsman to cut open the wolf's belly.
rapunzel needed someone to save her.
they all did.
there were no fairy tales (until now) where women saved the day.
i think i hated sleeping beauty the most: i wanted her to be able to wake herself up.


yes, all of these had morals to them, they are relative to their time and culture,


and yet, i still hate that she couldn't wake herself up.

                                                                                  

it was always those that made me the angriest. because i wanted to say "you! hey you! you're strong! wake up! you don't need him to do it for you! you can do it yourself!!! all you need to do is try, try and be strong for yourself, not for some prince! you have the strength within you!"


and that's, for me, what i've taken away from change and pain:


fight it


wake yourself up


we mostly (not always),
     but quite often: we have the choice of being the damsel, forever waiting....
or
    we can wake ourselves up, be our own heroes, slay our dragons and fight with swords and bows and arrows to get to the evil tower, defeat the dragon, and wake ourselves up!
fight for us!


we,
all of us,
we deserve that choice.




because this, is a fairy tale, in life, you get the choice to be the hero or the damsel.


and now for a silly little thing i like to call reality check on our damsel and hero:
he's coming to rescue her, she'll be saved, they'll live happily ever after... yay!

but in real life, the scenario would play out a little more like this:
her/ hero full of confidence and ... iron: prince's iron sheild and sword, so that's off to a great start, as least it isn't silver... oh wait, parts of the sheild are...


oh yes, and let's not forget sleeping beauty: waiting so long to be rescued by someone from the middle ages where romance was... well, it was not so much. or again, maybe there's just a cultural disconnect. anyway, by now, our damsel as either gone insane by the literal HELL around her, OR killed herself because of aforementioned literal HELL around her. either way... not so good when you break it down...

dougie d drew this for me for this site:

       a life of carefully contained chaos. i pretty much love it. and those boots and earrings and even the hair match perfectly. doug better not be a psychic. also: until i figure out how to permanently get this on the blog somewhere... here's a little picture of me, in the not so far future. 

(doug left out i'd clearly have something in my boot to cut me free. please. houdini's got nothing on me.

there was a request for:


Caveman (or troglodyte... i LOVE using that word) paleolithic era... none of this Flintstones malarkey)


VS


Astronaut

side note: i will use Fred Flintstone because he is funny... but the paleolithic era and the cretaceous period (dinosaurs for the kids at home) do not overlap.

caveman:

:astronaut

ignoring the fact that the fight would be a little difficult considering that the astronaut would also need a time machine (for you taylor, i do this), then i suppose it would go to the cavemen.

reasoning: they don't have flashy equipment to take with them on trips. i guess they could hunt in parties. but cavemen didn't eat if they didn't kill something. granted that was in a group setting, but still, it's possible living the life-style we do, if a caveman spoke our colonial devolved english, and said, "bring. it. astro-NOT." it's entirely possible, unless the astronaut was an ex navy seal/green beret/ranger, then it's more than likely his muscles have atrophied in space, so he's weak to begin with, and he has no weapons other than a suit that will impede his movements but likely not protect him from spears and the like. is he going to use the american flag as a weapon?

win: "caveman!"

as promised: Ninja VS. Robotic Godzilla! who will win?

so yeah, here we go into the land of awesomeness...

                                      here's robo godzilla in all of his epic glory:

                                                                     

and just for a general size:
here's a robo godzilla vs king kong
(with rockets being thrown to no avail. silly humans.)

not looking so good for the ninja is it?

but let's not forget:

godzilla is a large robotic angry primal robot (i'm guessing here... i don't know if this version of robo godzilla has any sentience whatsoever... i'm going to say... not so much other than: SMASH!)

so here's our ninja:

 i know, right?!?


so let's keep in mind that ninjas are
1. trained killing machines.
2. very fast with both weapons and their deadly
trained bodies.
3. are sentient beings.
4. are trained to expect anything and everything
5. are much smaller than an enormous robotic godzilla.
6. have many skills
7. can probably disable crazy large monster so fast it would be silly to time it. 

<------robot

                        meet magnet------>

and even if the ninja couldn't find a super large magnet (cause this baby wouldn't do the trick... mass, magnetic pull, not nearly enough... he'd have to go to... off topic never mind.)

anyway, our ninja buddy could use his previously mentioned many skills to find the weakness, remove weakness, and bye bye robotic godzilla. 

so yeah:

the winner? NINJA! 

as if there were any doubt. c'mon son!

please leave any arguments or general comments in the very unclear box at the bottom of this page. i'm working on that... but i don't understand this lappy-tappy-writing-thingy-majig or whatever this machine is.

i'm learning. ok?

hope you learned a thing or two tonight.

ha!

you thought i was serious? 

wow, this group if gullible. 

hopefully you laughed, thought this was absurd/ridiculous/silly. 

either way, i'm happy. 

have a good one!


[(sorry about the whole "promising T-Rex and delivering ROBOT Godzilla'' but there was a ninja.... so that should count for half a T-Rex,) besides T-Rex? ninja win all the way!]

if blogging were school... i would have a lot of absentees on my record...

ok


so basically my body occasionally says: "no, no today you will not write!"


and i'm all "but PLEASE! sometimes i say interesting and/or funny things!"


body: "honestly, you're really not that good... i honestly think that's all in your head."


me: "i'm not feeding you today."


and then i got sick.


so there you have it.


my absenteeism is related entirely to a theoretical conversation i had in my head...


i'm sure that's entirely healthy.


right?


guys?


bueller?


damnit.


tune in tomorrow for: t-rex vs ninja: who would win?


to find out... you should probably read my blog.

art is creation

i've been reading a lot of comics lately.


let it be known to one and all: i'm generally a book person.


i love the smell of them, the feel of them, and if it's a used book i love to think about the history of it, who owned it, who bought it and for whom, and the best question of all: why? i love those possibilities... the stories behind the books themselves, i love those, almost as much as i love the book.  


but lately, it's all been about the comics (yes, i can hear your collective sigh: give me a break!)


i think the recent comic obsession is, in part, that art inspires art.


(oh shut up, comics are art, if properly done and all.)


art inspires people. art inspires scientists! art inspires, well everyone! it's important.


(i'm using art in a general sense right now.) 

art is dancing, singing, writing, drawing, painting, street art, graffiti.


art is, and yes, this is the perfect word: creation.


hell, art is screaming your soul out loud, and hoping to god, the gods, goddesses, hell anyone with ears that is mightier than us mere mortals, that someone cares and listens and feels something when they see/hear/watch it. 


but, despite the god depute, art is for the people! to make them feel something. the goal, for me, is to have that feeling, ponder in the person, and then, to create their own. 
maybe it's an essay.
maybe it's a piece of graffiti that makes the world cry.
maybe it's destruction for the purpose of making people feel something deep inside their soul.

all it takes is one person to create a piece of art that speaks to a generation.

in this world of technology, it's so easy to forget that, when we, as a species, had very little in the way of technology (by little i mean, we had fire), but we still told stories: on walls, on pottery, around the fire to explain the inexplicable. because art is important. art inspires, it gives us common ground, sometimes it gives us answers, more often than not, it gives us questions.


and yet, here in america, we are so obsessed with jobs and occupations, that it's part of our culture to assume that it is proper and important to ask what our occupations are.
yes, it is necessary to have shelter, food, health insurance. 
and, yes money makes life easier. however, whenever you get to know someone, the first question you will most likely ask is "so what do you do for a living?" or, if you're in school, "what do you plan to do for a living?" what is wrong with our society? how did we let this happen?

the important question is not "what is your current occupation?" here are some questions if you want to get to know someone: "what do you dream about?", "what makes you laugh?", "if you had a super power what would it be?", "what's your relationship with your family?", "what is your greatest fear?", "what was your first happy memory?", "what makes you feel alive?", "what was the craziest thing you've ever done?", "what's your favorite food?", "what's the first thing you do when you arrive in a new place?", "what would be your dream vacation and why?", "what's your favorite place in the whole world/what's your happy place?" these are questions that are worth something, in my mind at least (which, to be fair, is a crazy place indeed.) 


hell, have them take the free myers briggs type indicator online (because we know how reliable that is), that will at least give you something based on jungian typology... and that's online! sorry to lose my cool, but i was trying to prove a point.

there are so many other interesting questions that give us a way to get to know a person. but that's what we're conditioned to ask, culturally speaking. i do it, despite myself. but it's absurd! yes, eventually, the question of "what do you do for a living/where do you work?" will come up, and yes i understand it's relative importance, and yet, it shouldn't be the first question you ask someone because, let's face it, it's just not that important. very few people actually have their dream job. the rest of us are either working a job we hate, or if you're like me, you're not healthy to work, or the larger majority being that you can't find work/a job. so my occupation is "writer... waiting to be discovered, and hoping it'll happen sooner rather than later." 


so, if you're reading this and happen to be an artist, but you have to support yourself in some other way, and someone asks you what you do for a living, please, proudly answer (if you don't already), "i'm an artist."

now to address the possible cynics reading this... here we go: 
some might say: "hillary, is this why you wrote a rant about the relative unimportance of occupations, and why it shouldn't be the first question someone asks because it has no bearing on who you are as a person? are you a little bitter about the whole occupation thing because you are currently unemployed?" well, i have to say, of course i'm biased. we all are. it'd be a lie to say i can write without any bias. with that said, i stand by what i wrote, because i have believed this since i was a high school student, hell, since i was a middle school student. so there you go, naysayers/cynics. but, then you have to ask yourself, are you truly happy.

Operation! the game is not so much fun in real life...

dylan played a fun game, 3 days ago, called "operation!" dylan was not amused.

i on the other hand, am a little amused because he looks a little bit like a retro astronaut

well, i guess not quite this guy...

yeah, that's about right.

well, dylan is on quite a bit of puppy pain killers... so saying he's in outer space wouldn't really be stretching the truth. today while he was playing with his new toy, a duck that squeaks...as a vegetarian, i feel that's not really the right way to teach animals, or children for that matter, about interaction: if you bite something, it's not only fun... but it makes a cool sound! WEEE!!!!!!!!!!

i'm just saying. but back to the duck: dylan was playing (insert "chewing" whenever i use the word "playing" for dylan) with his duck toy and then abruptly stopped, tilted his head in the way only golden retrievers can, as if he was listening. he dropped the duck from his mouth, so i'm guessing drugs do have a good side: they teach dogs proper etiquette. for example, when conversing with someone, remove your jaws from their throat first (hey, i'll take anything at this point.)

but he continued to, what i'm assuming is listening, to the duck, ponder what the duck had to say, responded with a short bark, growl, and something that we like to call the "pre-bark noise" in this family.

if you're curious the pre-bark noise looks like this:

(any dog owner recognizes this face... it's the face of impending doom.)

then he lay back down and waited for the duck to respond. he did not. now in terms of how long dylan's toys last... well it depends. if they are durable rubber toys, well, they will live a long and healthy life. if they would be classified as "fauna" in anyway real or imaginary... well, let's just say, those little toys should absolutely seize their day. no, i did not misquote: they literally have, on average, a day to live.

however, because of these wonderful and yeah, i'll say it: magical happy chill drugs dylan went from this:                                                                                                          back to this little guy:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                so fortunately, for the duck, dylan is having sleepy pill time
now. those pills have pardoned the duck's death sentence.

cute, right? little drugged out dylan, enjoying a cone of silence nap with his adorable best buddy in the  whole wide world, ducky the duckster,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   [the cone of silence, is what my father calls it... which is when he made the ill-advised suggestion, against mom's pretty obvious face not to go there,  that we try it on me to see if i would be silent for a week, which was when i reminded him that, despite the chronic pain, i'm faster, i have a bow and arrows (yes, multiple), and i have good aim. there were no further suggestions from the peanut gallery.]



well, until he recovers from
losing his balls... realized what he had lost and i'm pretty sure there will be a dylan reign of terror. until then, this little
puppy is a doped up little
angel.

sometimes life gives you lemons...

and you turn it into lemonade. but when life starts throwing lemons at you... well that's when shit gets real. my answer? throw a grenade of words back at life. or maybe just a grenade. so why haven't i been posting? well... (prepare yourself for a long ramble, maybe grab a snack or a cup of tea... i'll wait. oh good, you're back!) because i have chronic pain. it's chronically a problem. you know those fibromyalgia ads? where nice older women just want to pick up a potted plant? then they take a pill and YAY they can garden again? yeah... that's not what i have. i have the version of fibromyalgia where, on a good day, a snow storm of acid is flowing throughout my nerves. on a bad day, that snow storm becomes a blizzard from hell (i'm just guessing in hell they probably want to switch it up sometimes, you know hellfire can just be so monotonous.) so that's been the norm lately... well for the past 13 years. chronic pain started when i was 14 (those at home doing the math, yes that makes me 27), so i've grown accustomed to chronic pain. have you ever wondered how people deal with pain? one of two ways: 1.) let the pain run your life and depression inevitably sets in and you give up; or 2.) you allow the depression to set in... decide the depression doesn't suit you very well, and say "fuck you pain!" and instead decide to live your life as best you can and laugh as often as humanly possible. so i'm 27, living at home with my mother (think diane sawyer with more silliness and love), my father (the doctor with a dash of curmudgeon and a pinch of sarcasm and again love), and our dog dylan (the adorable golden with a heart and mouth of a shark.) so there it is. for now. the start of something new. this blog is about to get very seriously funny, awkward, accidentally brilliant, and hopefully entertaining. welcome back!