Love to love to love

I turn 33 today!!

This is me at seven years old. I couldn’t make a snowball for shit and I would just throw uncompressed snow at people. I would get wrecked every snowball fight. Tbat snow on my jacket is from my Brother who is ten years older than me and he could make very good snowballs. I nearly died this day.

I get scared to watch movies I adored as a kid for fear of tarnishing the memory. I have taken enough trips down memory lane to know that not all the houses are quite how I remember them. What I feared as a child is no longer frightening, and with a steady heartbeat, Goosebumps just don’t hit the same. I would give a little too much to be able to go back to the innocence of childhood, where movie magic didn’t exist and instead just lingered a blurred line of reality. If I had seen ‘Transformers’ at seven years old, my head would’ve nearly blown clean off, and I would have wandered around the neighbourhood talking to cars. As a child, I was amazed by such unimpressive things. Special effects that barely deserve the title of being called special. I was also raised in the cheeseball era. I grew up on Power Rangers and the drowning grunts and ‘HI YA’ sound effects that makes Tennis look like a quiet sport. I was even engrossed by the American attempt of ‘Kamen Rider Black RX’ that they dubbed ‘Masked Rider’, which only survived a forty-episode stretch, but I had all the toys they put out and never missed an episode. I haven’t seen the movie ‘Signs’ in nearly a decade, and all I truly remember is the greatness of it. I have no real idea whether it is a good movie, but the fear I felt when watching it years ago stays with me, and I am more afraid of the nostalgia being somewhat underwhelming.

I turn 33 today. Time has this strange way of feeling long and short simultaneously. On one hand, being eight years old doesn’t feel that far, but on another, it feels like light years. Most importantly, I have learned not to hurry through these years. Whether it is your childhood, teens, twenties, or beyond. Create memories and savor them while they are happening. Remember that the average lifespan is around seventy years, roughly 25,500 days. That is a lot of freaking days! It is an absolute certainty that you will suffer, but it is also a guarantee that you will be happy. That promise cannot be broken. The balance alters from person to person, but mathematically speaking, there is a high chance your best everything is ahead of you. You will evolve a few more times before you are gone, and what was once magnificent might fade and become mundane to you, but some other miraculous thing will take its place.

I am still young. More so in my heart than anywhere else. I still find this childlike wonder in monster movies and turn deer-eyed at the sight of cookies. I would probably eat cereal for every meal if I stopped fighting against the desire. I still enjoy Saturday morning cereal and cartoons more than most things even if some cartoons have lost their charm. I have brought this with me through my years and will continue to participate in it. I consider it somewhat meditative. A revisiting that never lets me down, and that is another thing. The world is so full of so many ways in which we should be coping it can be difficult to discover ways to actually cope because where do we even begin now? With so much information at our fingertips, what should we follow first? And I will say the heart and try and not to sound cliche. It is not always a practice from centuries ago that will get us through these hours, but it is often a ritual we have created with our hands.

When I am sad, I revisit movies that sometimes disappoint me, but even in the disappointment, I relive the time when I believed ‘Surf Ninjas’ was a five-star movie and one of the greatest things that ever existed. We have become a world that is so critical of everything bad, but as children, we find the greatness in awful movies and then put them on t-shirts and shout our love for them across rooftops if we must because, as children, we have no shame, only love, and passion for the things that make us widen our eyes. I wish we could bring that forward and have pride in the things we love without labeling them ‘guilty’ or having to explain ourselves. Some of us see magic in things that others do not, and you owe nobody an explanation for what makes you happy. You might watch a movie from your childhood, see the bad in it, and decide you no longer love it, or you might see the bad and love it just as much. I will battle you to the death, battle of hastings, 1066 style if you try and convince me that ‘Willy’s Wonderland’ is not an instant classic or that the Meg is average. Let people love what they love even if you don’t love it, and be proud of everything you love and be happy about the things you once did, even if you don’t anymore. There was a time that something brought you great happiness and possibly got you through a tough moment and because of that reason, it still deserves your eyes. Not every good movie is good some are terrible, but we love them anyway, and that is the childlike way of viewing what we take in, one we should continue without worry of judgement or being ridiculed. Love what you love within these twenty-five-thousand days. They are yours. Do with them what you will.

my Halloween zines are also just $3.33 for today only! You get all three zines and they are my favourite little things. Hit the button below to check it out. I’ll see you in a couple days for the readings!