Edward’s Return
If perplexity
is what he seemed to be
struck by presumably
towards his end.
I’d say one may assume
his vision showed a room
where he would enter soon
as welcomed friend.
Where despite the pain that he inspired
What happened next
is what I think transpired..
Surely he felt a shock
finding the door unlocked
God urging him to walk
back home again.
words by Ramsy
photo by fotobieshutterb
The slideshow features my latest holiday projects from the shop-click pic above to see a few more.
The following are additional sweet Halloween tidbits from my Etsy neighbors-click each photo to browse through each individual collection.
I could spend days with these character couples..
That is, if I hadn’t already had the binge pleasure of doing so.
photo By Nailia Schwarz
There will be spoilers in my following review of “Skin of the Wolf.”
They will be more like ‘subset’ spoilers; I won’t divulge the entire film, however, I may make a couple of time specific comments that will ruin whatever bit of suspense one may be looking forward to as part of the experience. We’ll see. To be on the safe side, watch the film first.
If you’re familiar enough with what it’s about or have seen it already…
It’s not easy to find a good film that addresses the loneliness of an outcast or, better said for this film, loner. We have gems such as “One Hour Photo” but it’s usually standard to feature the quiet sufferer who loses whatever is left of his/her mind to stalk and destroy the focus of envious obsession.
I’ve read criticisms ranging from how little dialogue there was in “Skin..” to the story having been told by a “dull speaker.” I’ve watched hundreds of films and I must say that despite the deep extended periods of silence, it spoke tender volumes throughout, to me.
When you end up as a perpetual loner, silence is indeed the majority “noise” that fills your days. Weeks. Sometimes years. Although there may be bodies around it doesn’t guarantee connections will be made that can count for much in short or long runs.
One eventually gets used to being alone. One has to in order to acquire basic necessities, do what needs to be done and simply live life. Not much can be accomplished wallowing in pity or expending energy to “find friends” after a while. So, many so called loners do manage to get through their days and nights slow and steady. Just as the movie illustrated perfectly.
What doesn’t get through in most of these films are the unfortunate things which can happen when “outsiders” come in.
What else doesn’t make it through is that many of us, despite overall and long running circumstances, still want to try. We may have tried countless times and turned up worn and short, but something keeps warm in a part of the spirit that remains hidden from the rest of life’s reports of failure. The movie showed that also. Very well.
I spotted each time he went a little further when he didn’t have to. I took note of how he wasn’t abrupt or bitter aside from natural habits of a man left on his own to survive in the harsh elements for years. They were hushed moments that could be missed by any number of audience members “wanting more”. To me they were perfect surprises and I felt relief in seeing them woven in, without him purposefully hurting anyone.
Despite the hints and evidence of his being a decent man, there is discomfort and disappointment from the characters who interact with him. Assumptions are made over what lies underneath his rough habits and exterior. And despite the low key moments that one can tell that he goes an extra pace or two, their very pessimistic outlooks from the start is what remains.. no matter what.
As in the movie, the lone wolf can be marked by opinions and fear coming from people who refuse to accept the possibilities of what “could be” and choose to stick with what their imagination insist upon as “probability”. This can and does lead ( once again..like the movie) to desperate measures taken that need not be taken.
The end of the movie was deeply moving; finally saying what I’d been waiting for the movie to say.
It brought us the character expressing what many of us have ended up feeling way too many times. When the worst is expected from people we meet time and time again. People who end up determined to not trust and often times determined to destroy that which they can’t understand. It tugged at my heart as I soaked in the ironic sadness of him being left even more hurt than before the choice was taken to avoid the ongoing hurt of being alone.
It’s not rage that he expresses. It doesn’t involve us watching him spend three quarters of the film stalking or preparing a “special room” to do awful and “special” things.
It’s a deep wounding of the heart that he feels. The type of frustration and hurt that drives even the best men to feel invisible in the least and worthless at best.
It’s a beautifully shot movie about a lone wolf who (for once) isn’t an animal but has to face the insult of man’s primitive fears.
featured photo Kirill Kurashov
By a perpetual loner Herself.
featured photo by Christian@adobestock.com
It’s when I’m walking from one room to another at an estate sale, when the thoughts quietly file in. When my eyes slowly scan the carved cologne bottles on the dresser. When my fingers trace the hounds- tooth design of another woolen jacket jammed in tight between the other jackets. Shirts and slacks, still creased from ironing She did over the course of five married decades. Waiting upon their hangers in the closet, unaware that He won’t be coming back. I look to the floor, see square tips of white dress shoes and then close my eyes to see a little more of their old life; supporting strong young man feet carrying his bride, to embracing aching old arches shuffling on the sidewalk. I quickly look over the quilted bedspread where her robe is folded neatly on top of a pile. I mute the words of lovemaking that were certainly whispered there long ago and choose instead to hear the sounds of sizzling bacon, Christmas laughter and songs sung until baby’s fever broke-the sounds that only robes can best recall.
It’s after I’ve marveled over the exceptional condition of the television console. After I’ve slowly slid the kitchen drawer back into place, is when I start to wonder. I start wondering how many times the screen door was slammed shut through the years and I hope the reason was more about windy days rather than angry words. I’m left wondering how many tears were shed under the dim kitchen bulb. I’m left hoping there were more hands of Canasta played on the dining table underneath than there were hands clenched in frustration or wrung in grief. I wonder if they were reminded of how much times were changing and if they’d ever been insulted by their children mocking the old fashioned foolishness of their marriage and traditions.
As I turn over a price tag in the garage; tied to some long and rusty reminder of how He survived retirement, I wonder if they ever suffered angst over choices which couldn’t be changed anyway. Reminded by a loud and haughty generation about old folks wasting their years staying together over some piece of paper, I wonder how many times they secretly surrendered to believing the same-depressed and panicked about their lives being over or things being too late.
When I’m sitting in the car, faint traces of Lily of the Valley and Old Spice still with me from the house , I can’t help but think on a sad and silly thing. About us. On how we were so smart yet ended up unable to earn or maintain even a portion of the happiness they had. Or even a smidge of the certainty.
I think about how they had each other to privately observe the lumping and changing of flesh; accepted with loving forgiveness due to decades of familiarity-mercifully spared the harsh scrutiny of a modern world of mating rituals which are rightfully, by nature, domain of the fertile young. They had the privilege of being known, understood, sought after, tolerated, cherished, admired, fought with, hated, taught and loved by one companion over the entire journey. While we end up starting over and over again, forced to bend and often break in too many different directions. Needing to retell one story too many times to too many question marks with faces. They had the blessed fortune of arriving at forgiveness much quicker, despite the occasional separations they were never that far from a home to return to. Unlike us in this world today-lucky if we have a home at all where we’re tolerated. Or even known. Each being the other’s witness to his or her evolution-while we exist as perpetual strangers with pasts unknown with no appreciation voiced for progress made each time we bloomed into someone new. Many times, new and better..for no one.
For these reasons and more, after each estate sale I go to, I carry great appreciation and hope. Hope that from somewhere and by some fantastic way that They know how valuable the things are that they left behind. Like the example of true and enduring love being a real possibility worth working for.
For the time a future generation is going to need it in order to recover from our pathological insistence on it being a broken concept.
words by Ramsy
photo By TomFreeze
The man who raised me gave me good advice for my lifetime. Not only was he a twenty -five year Army veteran (having been in the trenches in Vietnam), he was also born in 1932. What he had to say about life was of much more value than any baby Boomer parent could have ever offered me.
The most valued words were his advice and views on my being a mixed race child. Growing up in the 30s, in the deep south no less, as a black man, he had a different viewpoint than most as I was growing up. From personal relationships to business matters, he had wisdom on what to expect regarding the human condition that popular media and society at large wasn’t dishing out.
Without spending time knocking out pages of specifics, I’ll jump to one single point. He always stressed my needing to be “better than most people” in all that I could, whenever I could.
He had predicted certain troubles and obstacles coming at me from both sides as an adult. As a modern 80’s child I rejected what he had to say. Decades later, I’m grateful for the hardships I avoided by taking his advice to heart.
It’s something I decided to try to teach my children.
I “being on the spectrum” with an ASD as I am, naturally, I had offspring who inherited similar tendencies from me-whether in part or in whole.
We, now deemed “ASD” folk, have been around for a very long time.
Whether there is an actual case of growing numbers or simply an uptick of incidents being reported , it’s beyond my paygrade to know. I just know that we’ve been here and have managed to make our way in life with the rest of our beautiful and also broken neighbors.
My father’s advice on “being better…” can certainly be of good benefit to my and others’ diagnosed children.
People have a hard enough time distinguishing the differences between the most simple of things as it is…never mind intricate conditions.
The fact we’ve been blatantly and officially listed as “mentally ill” means a lot.
One of the facts becoming lost is that we come in many variations (as all humans do).
Oh, people say the words about “equality” and things about us all being “the same” with a tear in their eyes and hands patting each other’s backs, sure.
But truthfully, there’s only so far an average human being is willing to imagine about a person’s abilities when the label “mental illness” is attached.
Certain characteristics and unusual habits are present in all sorts of groups, but they’re not groups currently being scrutinized and paraded in front of a panic stricken public.
The one tendency I have witnessed, struggled with and engaged in (though I was a teenager when I last did) from the spectrum involves this famous “fear of confrontation.”
What most won’t be aware of is that it leads to many choosing to engage in a certain behavior which unnerves many people. Even people with ASD.
It’s the habit of telling lies and sneaking in and around people’s lives (without permission or knowledge) to gain information otherwise not easily gotten. The telling lies part is often done for the purpose of misleading other people into a false sense of comfort so that they “tell truths they wouldn’t tell otherwise”.
It’s one of the most embarrassing tendencies I believe any human being above the age of seven can be engaged in.
I understand whole heartedly. Having had a horrid understanding at “reading” people and ending up on the ugly end of ridicule or abuse, as a young girl, I thought it was the only way I could defend myself. Better yet, to be ready for something before it could happen.
Many of us are graced with notably above average IQs; making up for the deficit in socialization.. in a poetic and useless kind of way.
As a result, we can tend to hatch intricate schemes quite a bit. Unfortunately, what we fail to realize is when we indulge in deception in matters of personal relationships…we aren’t as “invisible” as we convince ourselves we are. We end up ruining much more than what little was gained.
This is one of the disturbing behaviors which stigmatize us further into the category of “unsociable”( termed by the polite) and “creepy”(termed by the rest).
All it takes is one time for someone to be holding tangible proof of an obvious untruth and witness the liar calmly continue the lying .. to earn a permanent reputation of being “wrong in the head” or “avoided at all costs because if they can lie about something that simple or stupid…?”
All it takes is one time for a room mate to show the hidden video coverage of you sneaking through his belongings in the dorm, while he and your (former) friends in their open mouthed horror wonder why on earth couldn’t you have simply asked..to be seen as an inhumane and unsuitable companion. Or a joke.
It would do our children a world of good to learn the importance of humility when tackling this behavior.
Bright eyes and genius test scores or not, to take other human being’s intelligence for granted by purposefully misdirecting them for selfish gain is an ugly thing to do. It is no better than groups of children at school who whisper, point and giggle at the target of their gossip. As if she or he doesn’t have eyes or somehow has forgotten how the children have been treating her or him the entire year anyway.
No person deserves to be insulted when they haven’t harmed anyone nor given any cause to be deceived.
Somewhere along the way we’ve ceased stressing this to our children; ASD children being naturally expected to not care for others are at a greater risk of it not being taught at all.
With the “lack of empathy” reputation many people will be unaware that many of us can and do learn to respect how we make others feel.
Taking the time to introduce the foundation of humility will go far towards keeping them grounded. It is certainly worth a shot if only to lessen the notion of how “cold hearted” we “are” as a people .
Especially as terms “lack of empathy” and “loner” continue to be associated with criminal profiles and crimes with increased frequency in the media.
Life’s going to be tough anyway, I would say to an ASD young man or woman.
Life has never been that fair nor have the people who’ve lived in it.
People are going to have opinions and assumptions of you that will embarrass you. They will say things out loud that you won’t believe they said to your face. But it’s only because these things will have been said by the media and experts unchallenged for years.
You will be insulted by some who will treat you as if you’re unable to do or say the most simple of things, without knowing how bright you actually shine and how tough you truly are.
Learning to be humble will help you learn that not everyone is going to try to learn how to respect other people. Hopefully, you also learn to respect that it’s their choice to do as they wish, that it has nothing to do with you.
Humility will help you learn a little something about it being okay if you don’t know everything about a person. It’s not your right to. Just like it’s not their right to invade your privacy uninvited.
You gain nothing from sneaking and/or deceiving others except maybe a private moment of how clever you must be. A sense of superiority that means nothing and should mean nothing when you become a grown adult, because of what you risk.
You can either be content at “being in the dark” or you can opt for being known as a creep…a sneak…dangerous…untrustworthy. And if your lie was so painfully obvious, in part due to things like signals from your body language that you’re unaware of, you will risk the humiliation of being seen as a “moron”. Often times, depending on how long you insist on playing such games, for the rest of your life.
Like I said, life is hard enough. The last thing you need to do is be the one to paint yourself in such a humiliating way.
Being humble, most simply of all, will at least help you understand that neither you nor anyone else is ever guaranteed to be “that smart” at any given time. You are , however, too smart to risk so precious much for something so trivial.
You’re better than to spend your life that way;
being seen this way, as a weasel or some lowly creature.
Instead of as a proud and decent human being, the way you should be seen. The way you are.
If you are compelled to manipulate in such a way because of something bad they did in the first place, then you need to know that you’re certainly worth making better friends with better people.
Then I’d show them an article like this one:
http://storylineblog.com/2015/05/22/the-devastating-power-of-lies-in-a-relationship/
It’s a perfect summary of the personal damage they can do to themselves by lying and basically padding the odds of them becoming despised and eventually alone.
A fate no parent wants for their child-not in this world or the times fast coming.
photo By Robert Mizerek
