calm now

I've calmed down a bit since the last post. A little update on that, though, is in order. I am going today to close my USBank account and open one at a more customer friendly bank in e-town. At the rehearsal the next day, things went a lot better and the SM apparently holds no hard feelings. Good for her.

I officially dropped one of my directing classes (the one I can pick up in the winter or spring) and added Psych 110 to my schedule. Big leap but I did it. It was hard for me to do since the directing class, which I probably would have dropped anyways since i'd have 5 classes even without Psych, had only 15 people in and I dropped that for a huge lecture class! I hate doing that but I've got to learn somehow and if it takes big lectures to get a background in Psych, I will do it. I'll probably also end up dropping Arabic because I looked forward through the next two years and if I keep my double major and plan to take 3 or 4 psych classes, there is not enough room to take a full two years of Arabic, which makes it kind of pointless. So I am accepting the changes in plans and moving on.

I saw a wonderful movie a couple nights ago, A Very Long Engagement with Audrey Tautou. I recommend it even though it is slightly confusing at points and is not the best movie ever seen. But what I really loved was Tautou's character. The hero of this movie was definately a female and it wasn't a female seen through a masculine visage either. She was the central focus instead of being an auxiliary character used to further the plot for the male, which, as I have discussed previously, is usually the role for the female character. I have been trying to figure out how this movie would go over with my male friends and frankly, I'm not sure. It is not as much of a love story as I expected and instead is more about war! It was very gruesome at points because it is basically about Tautou's quest to find the truth surrounding a certain chain of events in one of the trenches in WWI. There are of course many men as central characters because it is about the war but the difference between this and other war movies I have seen is that it is told and visualized through the eyes of a woman. It is a beautiful movie which is why i recommend it.

Also this week I started watching the series Firefly on DVD, on my sister's recommendation. It really is a fascinating show. The interesting thing was that the "pilot" of the series began with a huge war/battle scene which reminded me a lot of images in movies about WWI and WWII. It was a heart wrenching scene because it depicted the losing side losing their last battle (basically) and the despair those soldiers felt. Very emotional. Then a couple nights later I was flipping through channels and stopped at the History Channel which was playing a documentary on the bombing of Hiroshima.

After all that, I wanted to cry.

If there is one thing that tears at my heart more than anything else, it is war. I see images or read books, or hear veterans and victims speak and I get choked up. When I think of the things my grandfathers went through in WWII or what my friends in the Army and Navy have gone or might go through, I want to curl up in my bed and stay there forever. The documentary on Hiroshima was doubly upsetting because not only did it follow the experiences of those poor men charged with dropping the bomb that would kill millions and continues to affect our world, they spent time talking about innocent victims in Hiroshima who could not even suspect what was going to happen to them on that sunny day.

This is why I am against war - for all the victims of war, both our soldiers and the other side. I can see that sometimes war is inevitable and is a means to an end but I don't think I am required to also applaud those people who order it. In both A Very Long Engagement and in Firefly, the images of the battlefield were so absurd! There are a bunch of men (and women in Firefly) running across landscapes with big guns shooting at people they can't even see! And this is supposed to resolve conflict?? The people who are actually conflicting are miles away in their mansions giving the orders! Of course, I know it is countries that are in conflict but the reason for war, as well as the orders for war, seem so far removed from the actual act of war. This is why I also tell people that although I am against the war in Iraq, I support our troops! They are following orders and fighting for our country in a cause they are told is good and right. Some of the soldiers DON'T believe this war is right but they made a committment they won't back out of and I support them too! What I don't support about the war is the cost of human lives when there were other ways. I know people disagree about whether or not there were other ways but I will continue to believe that. The war was also started on false pretences of 9/11 connections and weapons of mass destruction. I'm against that too. What we have now is a wasting of human lives in an absurd battlefield, started for reasons which no longer exist. But we can't just leave now because we have caused too much of a mess at this point!

Obviously, the subject riles me up a little. I really didn't mean to write this much but ever since seeing those movies and shows, I've been wanting to write about how I feel about war. I think what I wrote above pretty much sums it up and as always, I understand my own views a little more after writing about them. Today I plan to go read some more Greek Tragedy and maybe write a letter to a good friend who is on his ship this week, serving in the US Navy. All I can do is thank my friends and family members who serve or have served in the military for their brave loyalty. I just wish there was not so much work for them at the moment.

Peace,
Em