Tag: hero

Posted in Blogs, Canada, Family, Televison, Uncategorized

We’ll Be Counting Scars

Posted on by D. Parker

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Doesn’t age have any advantages? I still don’t sleep well. Stars glistening, moon beaming, I think of bills, appointments, problems… I make lists, read, try to write (curse your inevitable betrayal writer’s block), and tried to simultaneously organize and turn off my thoughts.

It gives too much time for reflection. I ponder if my life would be easier if I had a hero. He can’t be just any hero; the term so loosely used nowadays. He’s gotta be strong…he’s gotta be sure… and he’s gotta be larger than life….my exhausted brain sighed, you’re just tossing and turning, with that Bonnie Tyler song in your head. I think of heroes as I slip into the arms of the sandman.

1hero18As a teen, I was a soap opera junkie. I couldn’t get enough of the endless tangled story lines, because like sands through the hourglass, so was that phase of my life.

I was breathless as Bo, a streetwise Hercules roared in on his motorcycle and saved Hope from a fate worst than death (really?). Her excessively cumbersome 80s wedding dress bunched up, arms around her hero, they rode off on his fiery steel steed, impossibly large 80s hair rarely moving in the wind.

Strangely, I didn’t find them nearly as amusing once I had some soap trials and tribulations myself.

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We love superheroes because we are them. We may not have the capes or gadgets or tights (ok, some have tights), but who hasn’t felt like they’re from another planet? Been of two minds? Felt like we could do more? Wanted to save people? To help? To do good? Felt guilty because we could have done more? Tried to prove ourselves? Wanted things back the way they were before something horrible happened?

Life gives us chances to be heroes or villains.1hero19

Chances for joy and loss.

Chances for creation and destruction.

Sometimes, scars are born, on the surface and others deep inside. Too often seen as disfigurements, as imperfection when they’re actually signs of resilience. So much is written in the scars. Never the same, but no longer bleeding, no longer open. Healed.

We can heal. We may never be exactly the same as we were.
We may never get back to our ‘old self’.
Things may never get back to ‘normal’.
There’s no time limit for healing, it takes as long as it takes. 1hero5

It doesn’t matter how many times we get knocked down and there’s no time limit on getting back up.

Hopefully, not destroying everything around us in the healing process.

So we rise again and again, getting and giving help along the way.

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Posted in Movies, Televison, Uncategorized

Charming Savage Events

Posted on by D. Parker

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When did we start cheering for the Black Hats instead of the White Hats?

Classic movies, TV and books were easier. There were good guys and bad guys. You knew your protagonist, even the flawed ones were always good and your antagonists were always bad.

Then the lines not only blurred, they splintered apart.
We started cheering for a serial killer because he kills bad guys the law can’t put away.
We felt empathy for a teacher with cancer who became a drug lord.
We couldn’t wait to visit a family of mobsters.

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We used to know who the bad guys were and hated them, now we’re worried if they’ll be ok.

We seem charmed by the savage events we witness; repulsed yet mesmerized by the violence, greed, self-absorption on-screen, in politics, the news, and in books.

Maybe we pay more attention to product placement, ads, and merchandise with the glamorized ugly.

Have years of governments and corporations flaunting their corruption, immorality, greed, and dissolution made this all seem normal, even appealing?

Or are we simply being more honest, realizing that good people sometimes do bad things and bad people sometimes do good things?
Noble people can be ignoble and vice versa.

Flawed heroes,
or villains who are heroes in their head,
bad guys who we love,
are all gaining speed:
Tony Soprano, The Fonz, JR, Philip Marlowe, Jason Bourne,
Dirty Harry, Snape, Jack Bauer, House, V, The Lannisters, Hellboy,
Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington, Loki, Jax1antihero2
Stewie, Batman, Shrek, Blackadder, Daryl Dixon, Kirk, Raylan, Hawkeye Pierce, Gallaghers, Klaus, Scarlett O’Hara, Don Draper, Nancy Botwin, Tommy Gavin,

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The Winchester boys, Kratos, Sherlock, Dexter, Walter White, Emily Thorne, Mal, Wolverine, Aiden Pearce, Captain Jack Sparrow, Holden Caulfield, Brody, Archie, Francis Underwood, Bane, Eric, Bill and well, most of True Blood characters…
and too many more to name.1antihero10

Strangely, while our governments and the news try to convince us that one group after another are evil and scary, and we agree, in theory, but applaud evil and scary, worshiping at the cult of ambiguous moral codes and hazy regard for the law.

They’re selling us Black Hats while we watch The Blacklist.

We’re told about atrocities, torture, and murder, to make us scared enough to toss away our personal liberties, while we wait to see who gets tortured and murdered on Game of Thrones. GOT4

Escapism? Entertainment? Or evolution?

Fleeing from reality or seeing its fuzzy reflection?

Dastardly is the new valiant.

Posted in Books, Movies, Poetry, Political, Uncategorized

Goodnight Nelson Mandela

Posted on by D. Parker

mandela10There are people in this world that build it, grow it, strengthen it, enhance  it. They bring principles. They bring love. They bring compassion. They bring hope. Nelson Mandela believed in justice for all and fought for it.

Known by many as Madiba (his Xhosa clan name) or Tata (Father), Mandela gave more to this world than he took. Was he a Saint? No. Was he a champion? Yes, in the truest sense of the word. A hero who showed that strength and power come not from force and oppression, but from hope, kindness, love, and peace.

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Nelson Mandela had this poem on a scrap of paper during his long, unwarranted incarceration…the strength of Mandela (and the poet, William Ernest Henley) are truly inspiring and have inspired others.

Invictus (Unconquered/Undefeated)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

~William Ernest Henleymandela3

The world is a sadder place today because he is no longer here. It is a better place that he was here.

Goodnight Nelson Mandela. Thank you for showing the world that nothing is impossible.

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