Up up and away!

It has been a long time since a movie has lifted my spirits and had me leaving the theater with a smile. Up is a masterpiece in storytelling. This is a movie that shows that you don’t need the wittiest dialogue, or the flashiest animation, or the most inventive imagination to please audience- although Up has those in spades- what a movie really needs are characters that the audience can relate to, and cheer for.
Up is the story of an old man who has recently lost his wife, and the fulfillment of a dream he and his former wife shared. Up is the story of a boy, who isn’t he brightest, or the coolest, who aspires to get the last badge in a boy scout like organization. Up is about the dangers of obsession, the value of true friendship even when it extends beyond our own species.
Sounds generic? Sounds boring? No! This is all given the Pixar flair, which will leave you wanting more.
Relationships are the true heart of this movie. While moments like when the house flies for the first time, widens our eyes with wonder, it is really the small, personal, moments that make this movie a joy. In one particular scene Russ the old man sits down and looks at a book that shows the life he and his wife had lead together, their adventures, the music is soothing, and the moment touching. The wild action of the movie created some wonderful thrills, but it was those soft, touching, human moments that lifted this movie from a mere summer animation movie to a Pixar classic.
This film is a Herculean feat of imagination. Pixar has done the impossible and has made not only made the idea of a house floating from the power of a million balloons seem credible, but they have also given credence to the idea of technology assisted dogs that talk, serve and act as much as human as humans do, until of course they don’t. The roadrunner like bird that likes chocolate and the boy it loves shows us that friends can come in all sorts of packages.
Of course this being a Pixar movie means that the animation will be top notch, and it is. The landscapes, the waterfalls, and the skies look like they took pictures of everything and then rendered in cartoon colors. Everything looks real. Inside the house is no less spectacular, the pictures and vases, the things that make a home, home were crafted with perfection.
Pixar shows us the power of the imagination, and once again illustrates the flexibility and power of the human spirit. Kids and Parents, as well as other human beings will enjoy this movie, if only for different reasons.

The crossing of the desert of the real.

OH, NO! Not Again!!!!



AHHHHHHHHHH

Just the feelings of this morning.

Everybody wants to hear what they know
Everybody wants to be part of the show
Everybody wants to think they grow
Everybody wants life to glow…..

But I can tell you right now
That these feelings are impermanent
That life is something of an illusion
We live for a second of bliss

The time is ripe for ourselves
To shine through the darkness of our shells
The change has been coming
Since before our singing….

The days are brighter now
And the birds are in flight
And I know that the sunshine
Isn’t forever in sight

You got to plow through the fields
In darkness and in light
Just throwing those seeds of tomorrow
No matter what’s in sight.

Just keep moving forward
Keep challenging,
The days are getting shorter
But we can still sing.

So the first line is stolen... from somehwere.

I am a thinker, a liar, a magic bean buyer.
I am a philosopher, a danger, a wonder;
A thunder, a soul, a thinker of magical things.

I am a room, part of birth and doom,
A soul flung to the far reaches of the universe
A lost man, blind in dark alleys.

Sweeping meadows with a soft breeze
That is what gives me hope
Clouds rolling across azure skies: that’s the dope.

Wonder is my fodder
My stories are spun with just enough truth
Just enough facts, that they can be drunk like juice.

I don’t have any faults, but posses all the virtues
Or is the none of the virtues and all the faults?
I can’t decide. I will just go down this path and find out.

Surbia

The day was slowly falling into night. The lights on the street were starting to come to life and the kids on the street were protesting their mother’s calls. Eventually parental rule triumphed and the street became quiet. There was nothing to think about on those lonely summer nights, except perhaps the existence of this absurdity called life. But there was no time to think anyway, fathers came home, meals were cooked, and children put to bed. TV’s were turned on, drama played from sea to sea, across the entire country. What good was it to think at all, when really, life required very little of it?

The mornings.

The wind ripped and roared as I drove down HWY 1, causing my car to sometimes slide out of my lane. Luckily, I was able to maintain control of the 1984 300 TD Mercedes and I drove off to school. The morning spring sunshine started to warm the day and if you looked to your right you would see the pacific ocean, with waves rolling because of the wind and the pale blue sky kissing the horizon. The oil tankers are the only thing that kills the illusion that the world could just go on forever and ever.

I keep driving down the highway at a steady pace of 70 MPH on he 65. There are a few cars on the road and the most of them are passing me. I keep going up the hills, and down the hills, my view of the ocean rising and falling, like the waves. I see a hawk in the sky, catching the early morning heat and going higher, and higher. The two lane highway continues to go on and on, and I am not ont eh road driving, my body is on autopilot, I have done this millions fo times before.

My mind thinks. The morning poems and songs creep into my head, the newest additions to a vast collection of nothingness. I never write down what goes in my head, I am top busy.

"Ohh, I see what i see/ I know what I know/ I feel the day will go on forever/ I just want a breeze to blow/ and take me away to the heavens above/ to take me to the peacemaker/"

crap really, nothing that matters. But I drive, and drive and eventually the pacific ocean disappears, and I start driving inland, into the city of Santa Barbara. But I do not notice the city at all. There is nothing to notice anymore. Spanish tiles? check. Houses on the hills? check. In and Out Burger? Check.

I drive and drive until I find my Castillo exit and turn right, and right. I go up a small hill and see the pacific ocean again! I drive straight through the light and find the parking lot next to the baseball diamond. Free parking!

I park and without even thinking start my journey up the stairs and through the forest to the campus...

The world is so invisible. The next thing I know I am sitting down in a classroom, forty miles away from my bed. How did I end up here?

The man on the moon looked like he had a clean shave and shone brightly. The stars didn't twinkle and long amber grass could be seen swaying in a far off field. There were cows clustering in the near pasture, eating and walking and shitting and mooing. The crickets were in singing their nightly opera. Across the valley there was the highway, about a mile from where I stood, little trails of light speeding by to civilization at three am. I looked up with my binoculars and could see the moutain ridges indent the edge of the moon, I saw the craters and other details of our celestial neigbhor quite well. I put my lens down and sighed, here I was, alone, on a peice of land that once had been the home of a proud indian tribe, trying to find meaning to my meaningless life. At least the Chumash actually used that land, I thought.

Suddenly I saw a streak of something dive into the the earth and scoop up a gopher. It was an owl that figured the now grazed pasture was a perfect hunting ground. The crickets were silent, resting, ready to sing their third act, the act of conflict, the act about the battle between good and evil and fall of the angels. Soon they would sing their sad song.

I sat down on the bare ground and thought. There must be more to life than this, more to life than crickets, and cows, and death, and life. There has to be more than survival. I looked up to the bare sky, dominated by the white glow of the moon sighed, it really never ends, ever.