Random search surfing around youtube and this caught my eye. "Somebody once challenged me to make a Heroes music video to a song by Britney Spears and still make it seem badass." I had to watch it immediately.
And from there it was me and the headphones while Bunny tortured Papa after he got home from work.
I have missed so much live tweeting this year. I'm so torn.
I'm even regretting saying I was tired of so much TV last year.
Sorrynotsorry.
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Now it's later. Still wired on the pred, everyone else is in bed. It's so weird being pred-jacked during a crash off a long euphoric ep, even though it was semi-controlled.
I've had 8 years to think that all through. I've spent 8 years working on becoming more emotionally healthy and regaining back some of what I lost sinking into physical disability. I have worked very, very hard on not being selfish and being present in the moment for the people I love around me. I can honestly say I'm no longer hateful, but I have to honestly admit I'm still very angry, and I don't foresee ever not crashing through so many painful memories every time the first week of October rolls around.
I am quite jealous of people my age who still have both their parents. I feel very sad for people I know who lost both parents already at a younger age than I did. I can't imagine either scenario. All I can feel is jealousy, sadness, pain, and all kinds of anger.
Two years ago I wrote interpretations. My mom had absolutely no moral support raising an autism spectrum child in the middle of so much other stuff that she was dealing with. I am finally old and wise enough to see all that from the eyes of a peer instead of a child. I feel so bad for her sometimes looking back that I can't stand it, and I hide that I cry, like she used to hide that she cried. I can't go back and fix all the misunderstandings, and even if I could try, I would probably make it all worse somehow.
I spent most of my life in hard shutdown because I was very strictly not allowed to have meltdowns without what some people would now consider fairly severe consequences. I've spent the last ten years talking to a psychologist untangling so much mess, and that is very seriously only the tip of a very big iceberg.
If there is anything I can say to parents of autism spectrum kids, of any neuroatypical kids, it's please just love them. I've seen people treat dogs better than they treat their own children, and it breaks my heart. I've seen people treat strangers more kindly than they treat their children, and it shreds me. To judge anyone for something they cannot help, never asked for, and don't yet have the capacity to deal with is really harsh, especially when it turns into corporal punishment and very mean faces and words. Children on autism spectrum, especially, can be notorious for retaining hardcore highly detailed memory recordings for decades, and the behavior you exhibit might be either replayed or spelled out years later.
I'll be spelling mine out. I won't be doing it to be mean, but to be kind. Sometimes it's important to see how ugly something gets in order to veer away from it in future. And, honestly, I'm older now than a lot of the autism parents out there freaking out, and they really do need to know that giving birth to 'broken' children isn't the end of the world. We're all broken. Anyone who can punish a small child without any rescue or defense for simply being broken is broken themselves.
My mom was very broken, and I want to go back in time and scoop her up as a tiny child and rescue her. I'm very sad she never got to see me arrive to this point. One day I'll share a picture of her looking so sad as a small child that everyone will wonder what happened, and then the smiles in all the rest of the pictures after that will look different.
I drown in empathy. Don't let anyone ever tell you auties have no empathy. I had to turn mine off and get mean and cold to survive, but all the soft sad stuff is very intact and the recordings are all still there. I wasn't even five years old when I asked my mom why she was sad, and she never allowed me to ask her that again and never talked about it. Imagine what must have gone on inside of her to stuff that back in so hard and never let anyone see it. We saw her anger, yes. I've come to realize it was a privilege to see her sad. Not depressed, not fearful, not anxious, but sad. Why was it so important to hide the sad?
Dear autism parents- You have my full support. I was a difficult child, and once I realized I had power, I sometimes made it more difficult for my emotionally weak mother to function. We were quite a pair. I sabotaged her in very subtle ways, and she crumbled and did some very mean things back to me. By the time I was in high school our relationship was so broken that we never recovered from living without that parent/child bond. I felt unforgiven and she felt hated, because she didn't forgive me and I hated her.
Stuff like that is really simple to fix once you realize that's what's going on.
clicks to source I'm borrowing it a few people will get it
I wrote this on Sunday afternoon of the 28th when Pinky blog was still closed.
click for wallpaper
So I put myself on bed rest, because I'm terrible for grinding myself to an actual standstill even when all the sirens are going off and defcon warnings are going on system wide. I've made it, what, about 3 years now since an autoimmune flare? I'm in severe fibro flare, and some kind of spinal nerve trunk flare, because my left leg and foot ache really bad and all my toes feel like I broke them on a coffee table or something, but so far so good on appetite, sleeping, and the usual restlessness. I'm trying to medicate more, y'all know I really hate that and any doctor would heartily laugh and then go, Yeah, NO, like this, and then triple everything I'm taking and then I'd morph into a lethargic reptile. I mean, no offense against reptiles, but srsly, I'd be like that.
Played single player for a little while in between surgey power stuff because big storm last night shredded the forest a bit and threw a few branches around, hit a bored jag and dug through wallpapers for awhile, then played around with the search bar, plugged in variations of Pinky, by the way here's other Pinky if you really wanna check her out, she's actually pretty cool.
Anyway, I'm flipping search engine pages and run right into 'pinky, guerrero, hypertorus, rulz- giphy' and thought, hm, I've never loaded anything to giphy, what's up with that? So I went over there and saw that, indeed, there was Pinky blog listed as a source for this thing.
And it does click to the post I used it in, but MY post sources it correctly from blingee. I don't know how and why stuff like this happens, no idea if it's auto curated or someone manually loads.
K, just discovered I have more followers on Quora... I never go there. Not even going to link it.
Yeah, I know I'm talking to myself because Pinky blog is still dark, I'm just waiting for it to flatline. I mean, srsly, my stats have looked like a heart rhythm for months. Too bad most of it was from one source or that might've been cool.
Personally, even being a search engine queen and a super lurker and part time stalker, I have *never* opened up anyone's page multiple times a day, certainly not for several days in a row, much less for weeks and even months at a time, and even though I have actually been lurked hard in the past (my heaviest lurker back in 2008 opened my blog nearly once a day for 8 straight months, and I had full stat details every single time, including location and service right down to street address) by a number of people with no idea how in the world I could possibly be that fascinating, ok long run on sentence where was I. Oh, yeah, even with my own skillz, I've never been obvious. I imagine there are a couple of people who have noticed me because they're like me and pay attention and I was actually stalking a little bit, but dang, I never did it like anywhere even close to this level. It's completely not like anything I've ever seen in all the years I've been blogging. I'm very experienced with stats and being super lurked and even stalked.
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Now it's Tuesday.
Monday was hard.
Ok, Sunday evening I got some stuff thunked out. This last month I've been snacking. A LOT. Especially this last week. On carby stuff. A LOT. Years ago before I got my diabetes dx, I remember all my joints hurting real bad and feeling miserable, and my doctor back then kept throwing prescriptions at me instead of letting me see an endocrinologist (she finally relented after several months and we discovered my TSH was horribly flying right out of the solar system), and it helped to get that med adjusted FINALLY, but it didn't fix all the things. I remember back then that she wasn't worried about my blood sugar reading, which surprised me looking back once I discovered she had noted my ketones were high. A new doctor in 2011 dx'd diabetes and my whole life changed and I started feeling better, and everything since then has been about recovery and healing and coming back from years of immobility and excruciating pain. My diabetes has been well controlled for 5 years.
Until now. I checked my fasting glucose Monday morning, was 110. There are jobs out there requiring their workers to keep their fasting glucose below 100, so you KNOW that's the best predictor of lost work hours. I started sliding all through May, since my empty nest routine has been skewed into a whole new lifestyle and I'm surrounded by high energy people eating very high energy food. If I really look at what I'm doing, I bet my ketones are going back up and that's why I hurt all over and feel so tired. I'm dragging through sticky blood sludge and backed up getting the trash out of my body, and simply calling this a fibro flare is just me being stupid. Time to get back on track.
Point blank, I did this to myself, and I know better. I created this internal misery that affected all my systems and other health problems and threw my psychological balance off on top of it all because I felt so rotten. I felt in the way, got super crabby and peevish, and we can't just blame all that on autism spectrum complicated with anxiety and depression. Diabetes affects brains. If I don't want to be a drag on my family, NO MORE JUNK FOOD. My brain cannot handle carb loads, and woe be to ye if that's what I'm doing.
Aside from that, Monday sucking was a whole lotta neurodiversity hurricanes going on in my area that would make for great TV. I just stayed out of it as much as possible. I know the brains around me only see the klumsy outside of me, and I don't always make sense, and I don't emotionally connect well, so they can't believe that on the inside of me I really do get how their brain styles shape their world views and that they can't see several moves ahead on the chess board like I can, and they don't remember and learn from the past the same way I do. They don't see themselves objectively, the way they assess their situations is different from the way I assess mine, and their missing gap is a vital problem solving skill set that I was born with because I'm autie. ADD and autie working together makes a great team, but when we're all stressed, it can be pretty disastrous. I know I'd have handled things better if I'd been taking better care of myself physically, and I see controlling my diabetes as first line of defense against life sucking in all other ways. I cannot have a good life if my brain is flailing around in sticky blood sludge and I hurt all over.
THAT is aspienado's problem solving skills. Start with me first, assess, organize, prioritize, schedule. Get my own stuff lined up before I step into trying to fix anything else. Other people's lives are their own business, but I can make things easier by smoothing out the wrinkles as they fly by, and that makes me valuable. I like being a valuable person. I can't be valuable like that if I'm stuffing my face with crap.
So here we go, #transparency. Going to spend the summer getting the fasting glucose back down, shedding a few pounds, getting my workouts going again, and focusing on positivity and feeling better. That's my job. Sliding into depression fueled by carbing out and chain reacting a serious disease across all my other issues is stupid stupid stupid. It's one thing to live with depression, it's another thing to coddle it and support its cancerous growth.
That was fun. What else is going on? Hang on a sec, I need to say something, if stalker person ever actually reads all my stuff instead of just poking me over and over. Dear Person Doing This- I'm not a mind reader, and I don't do head games. I'm busy. You could be Christopher Pike stuck in a chair pushing a button, or you could be a brilliant psychotic enamored with Pinky, or you could be a 5 year old with someone's stolen phone, or you could be... you get what I'm saying. If there is a point to this, it's getting lost. But if this is what I think it is, maybe this (below) will make sense, and if it does, then I hear you. And that is all that needs to be said as long as this continues without real change. All I care about on my end is what I got out of the flatline and then the resuscitation.
Don't worry, not going there. I don't put that stuff into my mouth any more. I'm just stuck on a word smash week where words ping around in my head and won't leave me alone. Like sternocleidomastoid. Why in the world that word popped into my head is beyond me. Those muscles aren't bothering me at all lately, which is a nice change. I really was bouncing philosophical stuffs around for awhile yesterday, though. I think my stomach butted in because I was too busy to notice I missed lunch.
I've had a few very interesting private convos this month, each were completely different subjects with completely different people, but they all had a common theme- I clearly didn't know what love even was growing up. I didn't question it, didn't expect it, didn't care about other people bringing it up, didn't feel sad about not feeling it, and almost never applied it to myself or anything going on around me. I did know, though, that I didn't feel it, even though I could feel protective or enjoy hanging out with my sister.
After I had a child, I spent a few years filtering through all the social pressures and expectations that becoming a parent opened my eyes to. By the time she was five I was eyeball deep in a relationship that would strip every last shred of innocence that my first marriage had somehow left tatters of still clinging around like old wallpaper. By the time my little girl was seven, I knew exactly what love was NOT, and wrote out 3 pages of gripping philosophical sadness that concluded humans discarding each other like used dryer sheets could only be cured by at least one person rising above the expectations for love and hope to become love and hope. While we wait for love to rescue our pitiful lives, love can never really happen and no one has hope, because waiting around for love to 'happen' cancels out what we think is supposed to be coming from someone else. If we are expecting it like that, we can't be it ourselves for someone else. But when we rise up and love anyway, hope becomes real for someone else. The one who does the rising up must do it not only without hope, but against all hope. As long as people discard each other like used dryer sheets, 'love' spreads like a virus, and we teach all the bad habits to new loves, and they in turn teach it to new loves, because love is a throwaway item. The baggage we carry infects more and more people around us until we grow bitter and lonely in our old age. I found that unacceptable. The only way to stop it is to stop treating each other like dryer sheets, objects that are supposed to fluff up our emotional lives, hold down the static, and make everything smell fresh.
My second marriage is well into its 23rd year, and not because it's easy and we're romantics. I am one of the most fortunate people I know, meeting someone who thinks the same way (not in so many words, but more intuitively after a painful childhood himself), and what makes it work for us is we're so terribly stubborn and not easily swayed with every little breeze of emotion. Oh, there's been emotion, long years of gritting our teeth through mess after mess, challenges upon challenges, and it all boils down repeatedly to neither one of us would ever abandon the other even on our very worst days, weeks, months, and years. We've both been abandoned, neglected, ignored, used and abused, and we both know what love is NOT. We know that looking around for something we don't create ourselves is a ridiculous lie to tell ourselves. We. Are. Love. Why look around for it and hope to find it when the next person is doing that too, looking around and hoping. How can we be what the other person needs from that point of view?
I don't feel emotions right like other people do. I don't feel loving. I don't feel kind. Love and kindness are philosophies of emotional logic I developed to survive, because without them I am terribly alone and deeply sad. I don't think I am capable of being in love correctly, yet I'm in love all the time. The euphorias I've developed in later age (hormones out of the way?) can now easily be triggered, and they are the only thing that's ever connected me to feeling happy, especially the first time when my brain was so chemical soaked that I was high on chemically induced love and felt happy for the first time in my whole life. I enjoy people and things, I laugh quite a lot, I am pleased with this and that, but outside of euphoric episodes, I don't feel happy. And I don't even think about that, whether I 'feel happy'. This has been discussed at length with a psychologist over several years, looked at from several angles that include autism spectrum with complications like synesthesia and narcissism and possibly even dissociation, the way my parents raised me and my years of wrangling with a conflicting belief system, my best friend being maliciously murdered, injuries from a nasty accident, a first marriage to a pedophile, an affair that wound up in what boiled down to a 'forced' abortion (reverse rape, complete with restraints)...
Did I just keep switching it all off? How do I switch it back on? Did I survive because I couldn't turn it on in the first place? Yet I puzzled it all out into a philosophy of being that my psychologist thinks on par with extremely advanced awareness levels and thought processing skills for young child, preteen, adolescent, and young adult. I absorbed philosophies like people around me absorbed holiday candy and TV shows and the other lies of social structure, stuck on roller coasters of feeling happy and unhappy because that's what modern society insists that we constantly assess in ourselves. Are we happy? Personally, I think that feeling is so easily mimicked putting sugar in our mouths that we've become accustomed to habitual feeding frenzies and then agonizing over all the ways food makes us unacceptable. Food porn. There are stories throughout history of socialites alternately gorging and starving themselves, but what darker secrets lurked beneath?
The reason the questions are coming back up is because I noticed I didn't feel anything doing something that another person would likely have found exciting, possibly even exhilarating. Sometimes I do something that other people would feel prone to brag about or use as personal resume padding, and I feel nothing, even though I know now that I should. I'm aware nowadays that I'm numb most of the time. I used to harbor anger like Dr. Evil petting Mr. Bigglesworth, but I've mostly let go of that, so I'm on a sort of testing ground, poking myself here and there to see if I'm feeling anything.
Happiness is conditional on people and events and material things and feelings affecting me, and there is nothing in this world that makes me happy, although eating certain foods used to come close. Nothing *makes* me happy. I never understood what happiness was even supposed to be, like what does it mean when people say they don't feel happy. I grew up completely missing the ability to grasp that concept. I've tried to word out my thoughts on it through the years in some of my silly surveys at Surveypalooza, but after I went through the initial euphoria (almost completely stopped eating and sleeping for 12 days and was continuously gurgling in a love state, which alarmed my psychiatrist), anyway, after I *felt* that, I finally had some kind of context, because I was able to say "I feel so happy." I had never felt happy before. No meds or drugs or events or people in my life had ever induced any kind of happy feeling even remotely like that, but as soon as I was in it, I recognized it. And then when the euphoric episode crashed back down, the happiness was over and I haven't really felt that kind of happiness since, even though I go through euphoric episodes fairly regularly now. I felt happy for 12 days out of my entire life, and the whole thing was a brain chemical imbalance.
Love and happiness are important, I know that. I know it's important that I help the people around me feel loved and happy, even if I can't or don't feel these things myself. I care deeply for the people around me, and I know I'm very lucky I actually have people in my life who love me back, even if I don't have any desire or need for them to go out of their way to do and say things to show me this. Well, poor @bonenado caught it a few times, but we're both hung up on our conundrums, and pretty much apparently nailed the love thing out of sheer stubborn devotion.
Not everyone is so lucky. Not everyone finds the glove that fits their weird hand. Not everyone feels understood and accepted, quirks and all. Not everyone feels comfortable just being themselves around people who are supposed to be the most important loves of their lives- parents, sibs, offspring. It's not something that came easily for me and Scott, and yet here we are, out of nothing more than sheer stubbornness and an unwillingness to drift alone again among the dryer sheets. Neither one of us can ever go back to that kind of thinking. We make the love we want and we live the love that we need. We've become for others what we desperately needed and didn't have for ourselves. It's been hard and it took time, but we are who we are and there was no other way to survive. We draw firm boundaries around misconceptions and dysfunctions, and we don't tolerate that crap in our own home. Our love depends on utter honesty, utter trust that the other won't leave over something stupid. My home is my sanctuary, and my people are exactly that- mine.
A great big part of this was letting go of and walking away from the kinds of things that perpetuate emotional codependency (dysfunctional relationships doomed to fail because they are not love even if they are disguised as love), chemical dependency (alcohol, drugs, meds), experience dependency (things inducing rushes of adrenaline and euphorias, shopping, thrill seeking, for some people gambling would go here), pretty much anything that masks pain, to put it very simply. To feel pain is one of the privileges of being on this earth (it seems designed especially for pain), and if souls and eternity exist in any form at all, then my being here is by choice because I wanted to learn something important. Blocking that process only slows down my spiritual progress and hurts other people. Even if I can't feel remorse or guilt, I know that is a bad thing and that I will be held responsible for being stupid. Years of deep reflection point no other direction than this- that we are here to learn to love through the toughest kinds of pain imaginable. It's ok to be weak and fall on our faces, but it's not ok to *not* learn from that, and once learned, it's definitely not ok to turn our backs on it and be selfish. I think this holds water in any religion or belief system you'd care to bring up.
My name is Broken Dragon, and that is my phyllosopapilla on life, the universe, and everything. I was 42 when I woke up. The next year I made a blog...
So I'm coming out of a negative spoon slug haze waking up from #napclub after going to an appointment and running errands and doing my grocery shopping in 104 heat index and the very first thought that hit my brain was someone on Reddit called me a blog spammer last week, because I posted *a* link.
Here is my comeback, because it takes aspienado forever to process, interpret, and respond- It's blog*whore*, nidiot. No upvotes for you!
Now I want the mug.
today
Was I complaining about sleeping too much? +_+ Kinda want that back... 3 a.m. feels way too early on a day where we might be up till nearly midnight with a very hyper birthday Bunny.
I am loving all these new adult coloring books. First The Bloggess announced hers, and it's really awesome, and now Lisa Frank. I don't care what anyone says about 2016 being awful, this is the year of the really cool coloring books. Plus the ones we already got from sploit!!! Latest one Lord of the Rings for @bonenado's birthday on Sunday. He also got a time machine...
I'm losing track, but we are good for coloring books. I may need those to get me through the holiday season without cracking this year. Oh, and let's not forget the new Harry Potter book.
I've decided I'm making a small pan of brownies today. I'll have cake around me all weekend and a single serve nacho binge won't feel like retribution. In case you're new, I'm allergic to wheat (yes, actually, among other things), and even though I've gone 5 years now without guacamole and lemon pie and nuts or peanuts of any kind and at least 2 years since I had to let go of pasta and pizza and sandwiches, it's still a little difficult being around cake. Nothing else bothers me. I can waltz through a restaurant and never once feel phased or envious, and I very rarely mourn or wallow about not getting to eat an old favorite something when I'm grocery shopping, but this weekend I may need to buckle under and allow a rice flour chocolate treat so meemaw won't get crabby and go to the dark side. Besides, it's easy to portion out and calorie count brownies. I'm really good with it and I trust myself.
Btw, I use Hershey's 'best brownies' recipe from their Chocolate Treasury cookbook (1989), and seriously, everyone says it turns out better with King Arthur gluten free flour than regular flour, more fudgey with a crusty top, and no worries about xantham gum, those other flours don't work right.
Since that recipe is different from the other 'best brownies' recipes they have online, I'll write it down here.
Blend 1/2 c oil or melted butter (I use olive oil), 1 c sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla. Add 2 eggs, blend well (I use a spoon, works just fine). Combine 1/2 c flour, 1/3 c cocoa, 1/4 tsp baking powder, and 1/4 tsp salt, blend into egg mixture.
Bake at 350 in 9-inch square pan for 20 minutes.
Rice flours generally don't work well for me in baked goods, so I've pretty much stopped baking sweets at all (which makes controlling my diabetes way easier), but that brownie recipe is a great fallback for just in case.
Heat advisory has been ramped up to excessive heat warning, 110 heat index through Sunday. After today, I don't plan on leaving the house at all. I've gotta pick up Bunny's cake around 10 and then pick her up around noonish maybe. Papa will be the one taking her up to the pool and swinging outside and stuff. I'm sure they'll melt. I have a freezer full of freezy pops and a big bag of ice cold grapes, plus we already have some homemade ice cream. The recipe for that is super easy, especially if you've got an electric freezer.
Stir together 1/2 pint whipping cream, 2 cans evaporated milk, 1 c sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, and then I crush in one strip of oreo Double Stuf cookies, follow the directions on the electric freezer, then pour off into little containers and put into your freezer.
My side of a convo with Kai yesterday about Austin Powers, my pegasus on minecraft.
Chenopods are finally noted on pollen.com for my area. That's thistle. Lotta thistle around here.
OH, I need some Benspiration this morning. Yes, ~blogwhore~.
To carry another's pain On top of my own heart sprain Isn't so easy When fun and breezy Is what I'm told to feign
Playing a game that's not fair Is a difficult burden to bear When one is hiding That worlds are colliding And hanging on hope and a prayer
Imagine a soul nearly rent Being the one who is sent To hold up another Who won't even bother To get their own life unbent
Honesty is who I am Faith is the heart of my plan I must do what fate calls Or I'll fail at my clause And die curled up in my own damn
A dragon is born to set fires And leaves behind funeral pyres It can't be a pet To assuage a fret Because soon it comes bursting From terrible thirsting For knowledge beyond And a heart that is fond Of consuming philosophical briars.
I've cried for the last two days. Because dragons do cry.
Some people can sit back and let the world wash over and cry to the stars that life hurts. Others tear open the dungeons that keep our souls from seeing the blazing sun all around us.
Perspective. Or, if you prefer, the allegory of the cave.
One of my all-time fave authors, Madeleine L'Engle wrote a wonderfully done biopic of a minor character turning out to play a major role in her Time Quintet series (I think there are actually 8 books that link together). Calvin O'Keefe's mother, Branwen, was a broken down woman going past middle age, the very picture of the ugly side of how unkind life can be, and easily dismissed as someone of very little consequence. But as we journey with them through A Swiftly Tilting Planet (spoilers coming, but the book is decades old), Calvin's mother is the one who invokes St. Patrick's Rune, which I quote at the end of my A to Z survey. Might show up better in the original post here, but I can't guarantee mobile viewing.
I once tried to list fave authors. All I can confidently settle on is that Madeleine L'Engle, Terry Pratchett, and C.S. Lewis are my top three faves. I've read, owned, and given away everything they've written because I can't help sharing, so, oddly, I have none of their books in my house even though I've spend hundreds on multiple copies. I otherwise have so many more favorite authors that it's ridiculous trying to keep track.
Anyway, me and dragons go way back, as they probably do for most people. My first dragon love was Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon, given to me by my best friend from school before she was killed. It was the third book in the Dragonriders of Pern series. Like everyone else around me, I like drawing dragons, and I love seeing dragons in TV shows and movies, especially now that CGI is becoming so realistic.
One of my very fave Jackie Chan movies was originally titled Heart of Dragon and the only pre-American Jackie movie I've never owned, otherwise have a complete collection up to The Tuxedo. I have deep respect for Sammo Hung.
The film is unusual in that although featuring Sammo Hung and Lam Ching-ying, two actors famed for their kung fu abilities, neither actually perform any martial arts. Golden Harvest had wanted Hung to perform fight scenes in the film, but he refused, rationalising "My character was mentally retarded, mentally disabled, so how can you ask me to fall down and suddenly become well again? And fight? They knew my fighting skills and wanted me to be part of the action but I thought that would have completely destroyed the tone of the film, the principles behind the film."
If I remember correctly, that movie also has one of the longest uncut action scenes ever filmed. The movie was a bit of a ground breaker at the time, centered around a mentally retarded main character and fairly honest and unabashed about how he was treated at a time when people with disabilities still didn't have very much protection even here in the States. The question over who, exactly, is the dragon never gets answered, making the title seem incongruous with the movie, but I dug through Jackie's biography and everything else I could find (he eventually started keeping video diaries), and I think the title is apt for the intended audience. Anyone can be a dragon. The reviews on Amazon are pretty good, and I guarantee the movie makes way more sense after you read how Jackie grew up in his biography. You can read a faster 99% stripped watered down version for Americans here.
The thing about dragons is that they are world changers. There aren't that many dragons around in the first place, much less those who manage to effect real change without the cushion and comfort of sponsorship, but you've probably met a dragon sometime in your life. You know, someone who stood up when no one else did. Someone who didn't wimp out because things got hard. Someone who hung onto a dream in spite of every bit of it being torn to shreds. Someone who didn't even know they were a dragon.
The dragon at the top of this post is a blind, broken dragon with heavy chains around its neck, and look what it's doing- at the first opportunity that presented, it was ready to GO. That crippled wreck of a dragon ripped through the most spell protected building on the planet like it was tissue paper and took off even though it couldn't even see where it was going, and it happened to be carrying exactly the right people at exactly the right time to exactly the right place to go do exactly the right thing. The dragon isn't a very big part of the story, but without that dragon, the rest of the story wouldn't have happened.
You can be so broken and lost that you think you'll never find a way again and still be the right person at the right time in the right place for the right stuff to happen. You only need to be ready to GO when the opportunity pops up. If you think you can wait until you believe in yourself or until you're in better shape or when it's easier, you'll miss it. Every life we touch is affected by our being here. We create ripples through time.
You're right, I need to get some lunch (it's nearly 2:00) and find a video so I can change brain tracks and work on other things. This has been a mind blowing week for me, a great big touch base kind of week, a looking back and seeing how high up the mountain I've come without realizing it kind of week. I'm excited and happy and exhausted and worn out, not sure how I'm doing it but still hanging on to a bit of crag sticking out and figuring my way up the next bit of scarp. This has been my jam all day. You never know what's going to come out of a big pink dragon egg, lol.
