This restless pioneer soul within me...a heritage

I too with my soul and body,

We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,

Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitations pressing,

Pioneers, Oh Pioneers

It is easy to know what you are against, an honor to know what you stand for

Upon returning home a few weeks ago, my better half declared that he had just “upgraded our lives”. Being the complex individual he is, this statement could have meant anything; and in this particular case it meant that we were now Netflix customers.

I have to interject here for a moment to let you know that we are not the people who spend our evenings being anesthetized by “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” or “Sex in the City: The movie”. I have to admit that I did feel a slight reservation towards the Netflix purchase due to a minimal fear that we would find ourselves watching the very films we declared we never would.

Such has not been the case fortunately, and recently, our film tour has included ones I have never heard of; films that place their settings in a Turkish Prison, Native American burial grounds and most recently, the Irish countryside circa 1920.

In recent conversation with a friend, we were discussing the need for a creative individual to live amongst inspiration. Being the avid activist for literature that I am, I rarely admit to finding such inspiration in a film, but I have to make an exception for this one.

“The Wind that Shakes the Barley” portrays the difficulties faced by the Irish in the beginnings of the twentieth century. No I wouldn’t start handing out the awards for best cinematography or costume design, the film presents a robustly simple visual. Then again, maybe I would, because neither the filming technique nor the costumes distracted from the story the characters so excellently delivered.

I periodically found myself in a genuine debate with my conscious over the question “what would I do?” given I were presented with a comparable situation. A Debate that continued afterwards with my better half about “what might we have to do?” in a comparable situation.

Not to ruin the story, because I strongly suggest you all spend an evening with it sometime soon, but there is a letter towards the end of the film that enthralled me, written by a character that survived perhaps one of the greatest personal evolutions since Edmond Dantes.

That letter and this phrase stayed with me: “It is easy to know what you are against, an honor to know what you stand for".

Feeling that the statement is true to the core, I wonder why so many of my sainted brothers and sisters turn that honor into shame.