My Precious: A Post About Real-Life Horcruxes

"The Precious will be ours!" - Gollum (The Return of the King movie, 2003)

"Courage can be what it takes to do something great, but sometimes it takes more courage to refrain." - Me (I hope I phrased it right)

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." - Jimi Hendrix

People often have a sacred item which means comfort to them. This may be something from childhood, like a teddy bear or blanket, or it may be an heirloom of some sort. It could be many things. But I have nothing but my own flesh and mind, and the support of my beloved friends. If I poured my feelings into a material object, then I would be damaged when something happens to it. Since there is no One Ring of Sauron, and horcruxes a thing of Mrs. Rowling's brilliantly imagined fiction, I do not feel I am placing my eggs in one basket in any way. I think of it as - you guessed it - simplicity. Besides, said eggs would likely be materials as well. I'm training myself not to become overly attached to things - sure, I love my vast collection of books, and my animals, and my small-but-growing assortment of faux swords. But it's not as if I put everything into them. Well. I do tend to value the living things a bit more, as they are alive and deserve to keep living. However, I think my point is clear. As long as I myself am intact, I shall be willing to survive.

Pensieve: Key West 2009

Of late I realized once again that I have a very interesting life, despite its setbacks, and that I have only done one Pensieve (which, of all things, was about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). Here's another, although it's not quite about the Boy Who Lived - well, not the one most Potterheads would think of, anyway.

In June of 2009, my immediate family and I ventured to the land - and waters - of Florida. This was not my first time, which was indeed mere weeks before the events of the first Pensieve. It was as great a place to relax as I remembered it from 2005: we stayed at a Hyatt Beach House, which was a quiet retreat with nice rooms and screened-in porches. This time I wrote what I called my first novel in a matter of days on my dad's laptop, as I would not receive my own for another few months. It was a perfectly atrocious story (and a little over 7,000 words filling forty-one pages - I still called it a novel because I didn't pay attention to its size and I was also too excited that I had finished something "sizable" for once) - atrocious because the characters were mere lifeless pawns (something with which I still struggle) and the whole story was a shameless ripoff of Paolini's Eragon, which is in turn a story stolen from Star Wars (which, my friend Ezra argues, is yet another ripoff of Lord of the Rings - I still need to find out why this is). Even so, I was proud of my blue-dragon story and still am, not because it was any good, but because I was on my way to being better. Which, I suppose, many of us are.

The Hyatt Beach House had a small enclosed beach - not one of those crowded stretches of sand with seven quadrillion tourists and obnoxiously-colored umbrellas and towels everywhere, but a small area with a tiny pier and a rocky wade-in waterline. There was still the giant cracked ball I remembered from when I was ten years old, covered in coastal sea-plants and invertebrates, and young barracudas, which would swim up to greet us. I am not afraid of barracudas, or most sharks for that matter, because if they have nothing to fear, then what have I? Caroline, my sister, said she was followed around by a six-foot barracuda; I wish I had seen it, but the juveniles were beautiful in their own way. They were light brown with stripes, as opposed to the more mature silver bodies. The water was perhaps ten or twenty feet deep by the pier's end, and I would take a gulp of air and plunge down to view more intimately the sea stars and urchins and sand dollars on the ocean's sandy floor. I think I need another vacation there; relaxation would do me a lot of good these days.

Top Five Best Movies of 2011

I decided on five as I cannot currently think of ten. And yes, I do realize this is a few months late. And these are in my opinion, although I think I am being as objective as possible. In no particular order:

1. The Artist
2. War Horse
3. Super 8
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
5. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I am in a bit of a hurry, so feel free to suggest movies to me. I did not see all of them, and I enjoyed several that I simply do not think ought to be honored due to my critical side. But I definitely recommend all five of these to anyone who loves a very well-made picture, regardless of genre.

-- Lewis

Movie Review: The Woman in Black (2012)

My three favorite genres in film and literature are, from greatest to third greatest (because I hate to say "least"), fantasy, science fiction, and horror. This film is the latter, so I had dearly hoped it would not disappoint.

But first, let me say this: The Woman in Black, so far as I know, is my first Daniel Radcliffe movie other than the Harry Potter franchise. I know he does, or at least did - I hope he still does - live theatre back in the UK, such as David Copperfield and Equus, as well as the American Broadway hit How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I saw none of these; I had not the fortune. So he's a great actor. If I haven't established that opinion already, I do it now in a frank manner. Acting aside, this movie had loads of "jump" scares. And I didn't like it.

I loved it. Even if it did have a lot of loud and startling moments, it was very creepy on both literally morbid and deeply mental levels. The plot, to put it in my own "pitch" form for brevity, is "A lawyer must travel to an old cursed house for business purposes." There's the whole not-believing-it factor, which one could call cliche; but then I'd permit one to call human main characters cliche. I think it's perfectly realistic to be skeptical in this sort of situation. The moments with the titular Woman in Black honestly chilled me to a degree only a few other things have:

• Dracula's moans of pain as Van Helsing stakes him off-screen in Dracula (1931)
• Mina (Lucy in the book, for some reason they like to trade names in movies) coming to her father as a pale vampire ("Pa-pa?") in Dracula (1979)
• Danny Glick floating outside Mark Petrie's window and tapping softly-yet-eerily to be let in (Salem's Lot [1979])
• The ending to The Blair Witch Project (1999)
• The corpse of the evil queen (The Tenth Kingdom, 2000, but the same one who poisoned Snow White; TTK is a fairy-tale spin-off, and remember, I was nine when I saw this scene, so it might or might not still horrify me)
• The greater part of everything in 1408 (2007)
• The "dead" people in The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
• Voldemort, especially in Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)

That may look like a lot, but I've seen many, many movies (although I still have so many to see) and I really don't spook very easily. But The Woman in Black was truly a very frightening experience. If you're up for that sort of thing, go see it! It's well worth the money in my opinion. And little Harry Potter is a grown-up now.... He's older than I, true, but I still watched him grow up through the HP movies. I think being scary is harder now than in past decades. Even I am not scared by most horror flicks, even if I love them. The Shining with Jack Nicholson comes to mind: creepy, and a great movie, but it didn't send me to bed with the light on, if you get my drift. I need to finish that book, and the Mick Garris remake.... Anyhow, there's a very precise art to being scary. You have to probe the mind, I think. Something along those lines. I've seen at least a couple of non-horror movies which I found unsettling: The Silence of the Lambs; Coraline; and Inception. Arguably the first two might be considered horror, but my point is that scary is harder now. I do wonder if vampires will ever be scary again: even if (WHEN) the fad wears down, it will still have existed. Pity - as you can probably surmise, I'm a vampire geek and a Dracula nerd. The same applies to originality in any genre: there are so many writers, and even with many writing the same thing - in fact this may be part or all of the cause and/or effect - it's hard to come up with a decently original idea. Trust me, I know it!

According to the amazing Cory Doctorow and the late, great Blake Snyder, nothing is one hundred percent new. Even if it seems that way, the core of the story is one of (ten?) formulas. I don't like Stephenie Meyer's books, but I must say she seems to have hit gold (even if Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992, had demonic romance in it). I love the Hunger Games Trilogy, but as I understand, Stephen King had already written The Running Man - I have yet to read or see that one, but it sounds similar. Now dystopias are the thing. I digress.

If you'll pardon my digressing a slight further, I must directly reprimand myself for these tangents, as I have an ACT soon and plan on taking the optional Writing portion. I seem to recall something about focus and clear sequential order of thoughts, as described in my preparation book. What an active hypocrite I might be here, even acknowledging it as I type!

The movie! It was great, but I do not recommend it for anyone who spooks easily or has medical conditions sensitive to sudden noise. If you enjoy a good spook, go for it! It's really brilliant.

Final grade: A

Why Am I Awake?

Look at the hour! Goodness. I felt like writing another blog post, so here it is. I am listening to David Foster's version of "Carol of the Bells" (mentioned in the previous post). It is a beautiful piece of music, any time of year. I remember reading Harry Potter while listening to it. Don't ask why, 'cause I don't know. I need to reread those; they were unbelievably good. When Deathly Hallows - Part 2 comes out, I will be uber excited, but sad when it ends too. I grew up with Harry....

As mentioned a couple times, I have a guitar now and I am currently teaching myself basic chords. Hannah will help me with the other stuff. Ah, yes: Did I offend anyone? I hope not, but I, too, am allowed an opinion (objective opinions may make a good post). Just know that I love you (in a friendly sort of way), and that I hold you all in high esteem. So. Guitar. I figured out a few snippets of songs via individual strings, such as the Harry Potter theme, the climax of "Journey to the Cave" (HP6), "Smoke on the Water," "Brand New Day" (Dr. Horrible), etc., etc. I have at least one out of three basic chords down; need to check if I remember the other two. It's actually a lot of fun.

I had a piano lesson on Saturday (yesterday). It had been a while, and now I have playing homework (which I'm actually remembering this time). This is turning out interesting. I like to participate in more than one art; I am attempting to get into acting once more, but need to persevere yet. Visual arts I'm semi-decent at, but I do not often engage in them. Ezra says that a person usually has two arts (he has at least three...ha), and I agree on the jack-of-all-trades level, but I think it is possible to do more than two things, even if for fun.

Fun - that's what it's about, yes?

On another topic, I still do not know what I want to do as an adult career. I know I've got time, but STILL. I'm thinking between teacher and librarian now, but neither seem to pay well. (Not in it for money, but I would like to be able to make a living, too). I want a job that I can live off of, but also I have time to do stuff I love (read, write, etc.).

One more spontaneous item to this random post: I would like some tea. Oh, and yes: I stayed up all night somehow.

So, tea.

I will post later.

G'day!
Lewis

Pensieve: The Party of the Prince

So yeah, I'm a Potter nerd. Shocking? Hardly, say I, but I do know myself pretty well. So I wasn't sure what to post, so I decided to share a memory (hence the pensieve).

When I was ten, my good friend Pam took me and her daughter and granddaughter to the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the book). I was on summer break at the time, between fourth and fifth grade. I remember scrambling for a costume, and making an attempt at a Harry one (original!), and somehow won a prize for it: an Eldest CD with chapter one read by the author, followed by and interview with him (on the CD--I've never met Paolini, though I would love to, and my Aunt Kelly has). Now you see, this was around my "start a hundred books and finish none of them" phase, which I wish had never happened. But it did, and that's that. I saw a teacher from my elementary school there, although as she married that summer, I am not sure if she was Ms. Lee or Mrs. Hargett then.

I remember going to Barnes & Noble and having fun, then to the mall food court across the street, then to a store I had never known about: Quail Ridge Books & Music (for those of you who don't know, I go there pretty much every two weeks now for a writing group). Now sadly, I had not read the series yet, but when I did (when I was twelve), I loved them. I ought to reread them nowadays.

I also went to the Deathly Hallows one, but that was two years later, and I knew some more of you people then. For now, that's most of what I remember.

I solemnly swear I am up to no good,
Danny | Lewis | Harry

Things versus Reasons

I don't recall if I heard this somewhere or if it came to me of its own, but here' the quote: "He/she did the wrong thing for the right reason."

Or vice versa. Does it really matter what the thing is, if you do it for a different reason than many would? For example, since I'm super into Harry Potter right about now, [SPOILERS] when Snape killed Dumbledore, he appeared to have done wrong. Normally he would have had done so, but he did it to (as I recall) gain Voldemort's trust. It's been a while since I read the books, and I plan to reread them, but for now I'm left to my memory. Anyway, it can also work to the contrary: If you do the right thing for the wrong reason, I would not count that as the right thing.

What I guess I'm trying to say is, does it really matter what you do, so much as the reason for which you do it? If anyone reads this, please tell me what you think.

Farewell,

Lewis