As Dreamers Do.

Generally speaking, this has been an excellent week home.  I've gotten to see and talk to and hug so many of the people I've been missing, like Brian, Mike, Chelsea, Sarah, Sean, Eric, and the ENTIRE Lifeteen congregation.  Do you ever get that feeling that your body may actually explode because your heart swells so much to fit all your happiness inside? That's been my last six days, and it's beautiful.


Lunch with Brian was wonderful, as we never got to have one over Christmas break.  Favorite quotes of the day:
Me: "How many bass players does it take to change a light bulb?"
Brian: "It depends how much weed they have."


"It can be explained by a diagram of the diffraction of light.  Except in your case, it's the diffraction of a bullet.  And the distribution of them."


"The time has come to pick something off the menu and enjoy it.  Not eat it!  Just enjoy it."


Twins <3




Meanwhile, the drive to Chelsea's school with Sarah and Christie was full of excellent banter and girl talk, as was our lunch date at Panera.  Trouble is, you can't be nearly as loud or as honest in public, so we relocated to a nice deserted picnic table.  Cheers, girlies.  




There is a small part of me that is heartbroken.  I very much enjoyed making the candle holders for Delia's Disney Princess themed party, and blast Disney classics via Spotify whenever I work on something party-related.  I decided the other night was the night to watch a Disney classic, so I went for Snow White since it's one of the Princesses for the party and it was the predominant movie of my childhood.  I put the VHS in the VCR... and it got eaten.  Since I had to physically pull the tape out, I was actually the one to break the tape.  I cried.  I feel like I've personally murdered Snow White with the huntsman's dagger.  


The obvious move was to put in Pinocchio, another childhood classic.  What do you know, the first advertisement to come on is for Snow White.  Ouch.


That movie is so stereotypical in its portrayal of Italians.  Stromboli's Italian ramblings actually have Italian in them, just incomprehensible Italian.  Also, the Blue Fairy is totally Marilyn Monroe.  And Jiminy absolutely cat calls at her.


And on that note, now is a good time for a Disney-instigated rant on the sacredness of childhood.  I have very capital R Romantic tendencies-- think Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Hoffman, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge--and many of these apply to the natural wonder and beauty that are childhood, for the Romantic Era was about faith in untamed nature and feelings, not in knowledge.  There is something inherently beautiful about childhood, perhaps because it's so dependent on nature and feeling.  The Disney Classics all draw upon these in their development.  Although Disney gets a lot of crap for its stereotyping and its less than worthwhile messages, it somehow still ignites the same feelings of grandeur and the power of imagination that are emphasized by Romantics.  This may have a lot to do with Disney's gift for excellent scoring.  (Reader, if you're familiar with my blogs, you're aware how dangerous it is to let me openly ramble about music and yet here we go.)  
I suppose a better question is whether my childhood memories of Disney movies, and consequently Disney's classic hits--think Someday My Prince Will Come, When You Wish Upon A Star, Once Upon A Dream--make these songs meaningful for me, or whether these songs are what make my attachment to Disney so profound.  Just Googling "Disney's Greatest Music" brings you to a page of Disney's Top 100 Songs.  Even the last page, numbers 76-100, is filled with songs I know and love.  Of course the top twenty five are undisputedly the best, including Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Waltz, now called "Once Upon A Dream," the classics listed above, Part of Your World, and A Whole New World, which was apparently playing when I was born.  Listen to these, or look at their lyrics.  They will all take you somewhere else entirely.  They draw upon wishes that we have in our hearts, however illogical or silly, and let us dream openly about them.  And so Disney's masterpieces foster imagination and the ability to dream and love and everything that's important in childhood.  And so Disney is beautiful.




On a vaguely related note, I am an expert at making bows.  I made seventeen for the candles, but each of those seventeen consist of one tulle and one ribbon bow, each tied with wire, then tied together, and then tied to a glass candle holder.  Each one takes like a half hour to make.  I'm just a wizard.  Also, Bow is the name of my street and it just feels like destiny.


Lastly, I finished Season Five of Doctor Who and I had to watch each part of the season finale twice to fully get what was going on.
"Something old, something new, something borrowed something blue; I remember you, Raggedy Doctor and YOU ARE LATE FOR MY WEDDING!"
Spoilers ;)