My Perfect Peace and Everything Else

Quotes

2012-02-21T15:48:00.000-08:00

I like words. I think there's a physical beauty in them. They can create a picture, a sound, a taste, a feeling, an entire world. Words are the atoms of life.

And there is something incredibly... romantic about a well constructed phrase.

So here are some of the phrases, sentences, anything really, that I think are beautiful enough to try and share with the world, even more of the world than where they got to in their original form. I'll be adding new things as I find them. Enjoy.

"Peter, I remember William Bell. I remember crossing over to bring you back. I remember Jacksonville, and seeing you shimmer the first time we kissed. I remember you walking to the Machine and getting inside and being scared you were going to die. I remember it. I remember us. I remember everything." -Olivia
Fringe: Episode 4.13 A Better Human Being

On Dying:
(Screams)
"That's right, honey. Let it all out, 'cause there's no room for that where we're going."
"Oh, this fucking sucks."
-Grams
True Blood: Episode 4.12 And When I Die

Doctor "So that you know this is inevitable. And you are forgiven. Always and completely forgiven."
River "Please, my love. Please, please. Just run."
"Can't."
"Time can be rewritten."
"Don't you dare."
Doctor Who: Episode 6.13 The Wedding of River Song

I stare at Tobey. He looks back at me with such an intensity I expect the glass to shatter.
I press my hand against his window. He presses his hand on the other side of mine.
For a while, we stay like that. With our hands pressed together, separated by glass.
When It Happens - Susane Colassanti

"Names are forged in Heaven." -Allegra
The Van Alen Legacy - Melissa de la Cruz

"Of course this is happening inside your head, Harry. But why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" -Dumbledore
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling

But it's too late, I'm slipping, I'm gone, he's gone, and the moment curls away and back on itself like a flower folding up for the night.
My heart aches frantically for a second as I think of all the time I wasted, seconds and hours spun out of my fingertips forever like snow into the dark.
Before I Fall - Lauren Oliver

There was a lot of empty time in which to miss her.
Where She Went - Gayle Foreman

They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe of the terrible power of the things they carried.
The Things They Carried - Time O'Brien

And the princess, she just stops. I just stop. And it's like I've been here all my life. And I begin to see some piece of something, something big as the whole night sky, heavy and full. And inside the dark, inside the inside, I see all these lights, thousands and thousands of lights. And I'm thinking to myself, how beautiful they are. And I'm so close I can almost touch them, so close, I can't even tell where I stop, and where they begin.
Polaroid Stories - Naomi Iuzuki

You keep the air in my lungs, floating along as a melody comes.
How I Go - Yellowcard

Everything is always okay in the end.
If it's not okay, then it's not the end.
-Unknown

We ourselves will be remembered as a collective for what we did, and failed to do. Together. -John Green

I Will Rise Up

2012-02-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

I love True Blood. I'm the youngest in my family (and I'm 20 now) so, somehow, and I think it's because I've trained my family to have decent taste in television, our "family shows" are HBO shows. (Our new favorite is Game of Thrones) We have watched almost every episode (excluding some of season 2), and almost every one we watched together. It's weird, I know, but it's my family and I love them for it.

One of my favorite scenes is in episode 2x09, I Will Rise Up. It's the last scene of the episode, and sorry, spoiler alert, it's the scene where Godric dies (and Sookie stays with him). Godric is about two thousand years old. And even for a vampire, (True Blood vampires specifically) that's old. I mean, OLD. I think we only meet one other vampire that's older than him, and there's a lot of vampires. One thing he says, as he's dying, (he chooses to wait for the sun to rise and burn, depressing, but beautiful) he asks Sookie, "If there is a god, how will he punish me?" And in her infinite, although sometimes painfully frustrating, wisdom, she says, "God doesn't punish. He forgives." (There are more things I love about this scene, but I'll get to them in time.)
I don't know about you, but that's the God I believe in. I don't care what I call him, or what any one else calls him, or how strongly you believe, or don't. To be honest, I don't care if any one believes in any kind of God or not. I think, and I know from my own experiences, that we all find God in our own time, and no amount of Bible thumping, intolerant, preachy Christians can make that happen any faster than it should. (If you can't tell from that, I don't deal well with intolerance...) Back to the point: "God doesn't punish. He forgives." I thought that was the best way to talk about God, the best way to believe in God. And because I love this scene so much (maybe too much...) I watch it on YouTube... a lot. And one time, I scrolled down to look through the comments. Someone had posted saying that wasn't how God was, and that Sookie is being the wrong kind of Christian saying that. I got rather frustrated with this: Why go around watching a scene on YouTube that you don't agree with, then start picking fights with people in comments on your views on God and religion? I still don't know the answer to this, but it made me wonder about their faith. Was it their own, or was it someone else's views they were spouting? I thought about this for a while, but my main thought was: Why would you want to believe in a God that wouldn't always love you, wouldn't always forgive you, support you? I don't know the answer to that either, but just having the thought made me think about my own faith. I was raised Roman Catholic, both my parents are, and their parents, and pretty much every family member I've ever met... But I don't know if a single one of them had ever shared this thought with me. This faith I had, it was all my own. (How I got there though, that's a different story.)

The last beautiful aspect of this scene? Another quote. Sookie asks if Godric is afraid. He tells her he wants to burn. She tells him she's afraid for him, then starts to cry (she does a lot of that, rather emotional girl). Godric replies: "A human with me at the end? And human tears?" A pause. "Two thousand years, and I can still be surprised?" He smiles to himself. "In this I see God." Then Sookie cries some more, and Godric burns in the light of the rising sun. The idea that you can see God in surprises, in new experiences, in unexpected ways? It's the simplest one, I mean really, it's what they teach you in Bible School. But it's the most beautiful.

If you don't like God, don't hate on those who do.
If you do like God, don't hate on those who don't. And don't preach. Ever. You found your God, let everyone find their own, in their own time.

Until next time,
Alissa

Nobody Said it Would be Easy...

2012-01-31T18:28:00.000-08:00

They just promised it would be worth it.
I think the sometimes the hardest things in life are the most "worth it."

But what does it mean for something to be... "worth it?" What qualifies? How do we know when something we're doing will be "worth it?"

I think it's something you can only see in hindsight. The nights you never forget. The days you fall over laughing about with your closest friends, even months or years later.
But those are the easy times, the easy choices, even the things that happen by chance. The nights that spring out of nowhere, but surprise you with how unforgettable they can be. The afternoons spent playing board games with your closest friends because you feel like it, and all your jokes, the ones only you guys laugh at just come pouring out in the craziest fits of laughter.

But what about the hard choices?
For me, going to college in Ithaca, New York from living most of my life in Northern California wasn't a hard choice. Staying was. My first semester was probably the hardest consecutive four months of my life. And then I had to go back. I seriously looked into transferring schools, going somewhere closer to home that was just as good for what I wanted to do (screenwriting). Choosing to stay though, that was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. Because being there hadn't been easy, and there was no guarantee that staying would make anything any better.
But I did. I'm in my third year now, and it has been so worth it. I have a whole family of friends here, and an entire chapter of sisters, and I never would have gotten this close to any of them if I had left. It's one of the most "worth it" decisions of my life. Even if it was one of the hardest. Especially then.

Those hard choices, those ones we make because we can't imagine the alternative, when there is no way out but to choose, even if it kills us, it doesn't. We make a choice, we push forward, we keep calm and carry on. Because not choosing, that would really kill us. And no matter what we do choose, the process of choosing has made us think so deeply about what really lies in the depths of our heart, that even if you feel you had chosen wrong, there's no such thing. Your heart will always lead you home. I think believing that is one of the best ways to go through life.

Your Heart will always lead you Home...
It makes Life so worth it.

Until next time,
Alissa

And to be Grateful for It...

2012-01-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

Hey there

So, this is a blog. I'm writing it ("I" am Alissa), and that's kind of what I do. I write. And I read. But I'm at school to be a writer - a screenwriter actually. That's something else - I watch movies. Lots of movies. And lots television.

That's actually where this blog title comes from. One of my all time favorite TV shows (I say that a lot, but I really do mean it), is Everwood (WB series, 4 seasons, 2002-2006, Gregory Smith, Emily VanCamp). Ephram (main character) is a great piano student and he narrates some of the show, usually at the end of each episode. In "Shoot the Moon" episode 3x06, Ephram narrates the college entrance essay he's writing for Amy (girlfriend, long story) and he quotes a poem by Johann Franck, "Defy the old dragon, Defy fear. The world may rage and quake, But I shall remain singing, In Perfect Peace." He goes on to talk about how the world changes, how it is inevitable, and how you can want things suddenly that you never thought you would ever want. I know what that feels like. The episode ends with Ephram playing piano and the last lines of the essay. "A place to be surprised when life turns out to be nothing like I imagined. And to be grateful for it - in perfect peace."

As I eluded, my life has taken some of those turns, wanting things I never thought I'd want. New possibilities, new people, new opportunities. And I'm trying to be grateful for it, in perfect peace.
Like ending up studying in London when, 5 months ago, the thought had never even crossed my mind.

I also try to live with the belief that everything happens for a reason, even things we didn't plan for, things we don't like, that break our hearts. No matter what, life is what it is, and we should all be grateful for the chance to live it as best we can.

But what am I writing...
I don't really know, I guess. I don't even know who I'm writing for. Mostly myself, I think. I'm very intrigued by how people think and live, and writing about how I do it, how I think about things, life, media even, could be pretty interesting. But I guess I'll just see where it takes me...

Until next time,
Alissa