cedarlili

[cedarlili]

Hope has bloody knuckles and a maniac grin as she faces darkness yet again. #persistence

Pop culture reduces It's a Wonderful Life to that last half hour, and thinks the whole thing is about this guy traveling to an alternate universe where he doesn't exist and a little girl saying, "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings." A hokey, sugary fantasy. A light and fluffy story fit for Hallmark movies.

But this reading completely glosses over the fact that George Bailey is actively suicidal. He's not just standing there moping about, "My friends don't like me," like some characters do in shows that try to adapt this conceit to other settings. George's life has been destroyed. He's bankrupt and facing prison. The lifetime of struggle we've been watching for the last two hours has accomplished nothing but this crushing defeat, and he honestly believes that the best thing he can do is kill himself because he's worth more dead than alive. He would have thrown himself from a bridge had an actual angel from heaven not intervened at the last possible moment.

That's dark. The banker villain that pop culture reduces to a cartoon purposely drove a man to the brink of suicide, which only a miracle pulled him back from. And then George Bailey goes even deeper into despair. He not only believes that his future's not worth living, but that his past wasn't worth living. He thinks that every suffering he endured, every piece of good that he tried to do was not only pointless, but actively harmful, and he and the world would be better off if he had never existed at all.

This is the context that leads to the famed alternate universe of a million pastiches, and it's absolutely vital to understanding the world that George finds. It's there to specifically show him that his despondent views about his effect on the universe are wrong. His bum ear kept him from serving his country in the war--but the act that gave him that injury was what allowed his brother to grow up to become a war hero. His fight against Potter's domination of the town felt like useless tiny battles in a war that could never be won--but it turns out that even the act of fighting was enough to save the town from falling into hopeless slavery. He thought that if it weren't for him, his wife would have married Sam Wainwright and had a life of ease and luxury as a millionaire's wife, instead of suffering a painful life of penny-pinching with him. Finding out that she'd have been a spinster isn't, "Ha ha, she'd have been pathetic without you." It's showing him that she never loved Wainwright enough to marry him, and that George's existence didn't stop her from having a happier life, but saved her from having a sadder one. Everywhere he turns, he finds out that his existence wasn't a mistake, that his struggles and sufferings did accomplish something, that his painful existence wasn't a tragedy but a gift to the people around him.

Only when he realizes this does he get to come back home in wild joy over the gift of his existence. The scenes of hope and joy and love only exist because of the two hours of struggle and despair that came before. Even Zuzu's saccharine line about bells and angel wings exists, not as a sugary proverb, but as a climax to Clarence's story--showing that even George's despair had good effect, and that his newfound thankfulness for life causes not only earthly, but heavenly joy.

If this movie has light and hope, it's not because it exists in some fantasy world where everything is sunshine and rainbows, but because it fights tooth and nail to scrape every bit of hope it can from our all too dark and painful world. The light here exists, not because it ignores the dark, but because the dark makes light more precious and meaningful. The light exists in defiance of the dark, the hope in defiance of despair, and there is nothing saccharine about that. It's just about as realistic as it gets.

[cedarlili]

Today’s Toast: sleeping on the job. She’s right behind my laptop, on all the cables. In spite of the dedicated cat bed elsewhere on the desk! #dailytoast #toastthecat #catsofinstagram #kittenlove #catsondesks https://www.instagram.com/p/CqYaBRMOTO0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Today’s Toast: Yarrr! Is cat, is always choosing pirate. #dailytoast #toastthecat #catsofinstagram #kittensofinstagram #paperhat https://www.instagram.com/p/CqVw89eLirm/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Blackfoot Daisy and Lavendar blooming ing my garden today. Blackfoot Daisy is a petite Texas native that will bloom from spring to fall. #northtexasgardening #blackfootdaisy #texasnativeplants https://www.instagram.com/p/CqUEVLmtuKD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Have your daily Toast, served on the shoulder. #toastthecat #dailytoast #catsofinstagram #shouldercat #kittenlife https://www.instagram.com/p/CqTp-7bPkMI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

The grape I planted is slowly emerging. #garden #grapevine #himrodgrape https://www.instagram.com/p/CqRX84mtQVK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Today’s Toast: now, with beans! #dailytoast #toastthecat #catsofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CqQj3VQORDB/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Combining the styles of Klimt and Mucha works beautifully. #midjourneyartwork #midjourneyv5 #aiart #blackcat #artnouveaustyle https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp6eMVWteqM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Open submissions! This weekend only, ask for a prompt, write a complete story in 50 words, and then submit it! Accepted stories will appear in an anthology… https://www.instagram.com/p/Cplm9_VtKmi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Peach blossom season #peachblossom #springtime #potentialpeach https://www.instagram.com/p/CpeMTPdNZ8y/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Four pound of mushrooms, stuffed and ready to bake. #feasting #familymeal #cookingfor16 https://www.instagram.com/p/CpYSCpSPh2B/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Today’s inside blooms: a lovely green phalenopsis, and the Sunkissed Butter still gloriously floral. #orchids #orchidsblooming #phalenopsis #sunkissed #greenflowers https://www.instagram.com/p/CpYIiKbOJOI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Calculated Writing

and not the kind of writing you may be thinking of. I haven’t been writing non-fiction for… a while. I miss the deep dives into a research topic, and then pulling it together into a cohesive whole. On the other hand, the time to get stuck into a topic well enough to produce a cohesion, that’s the tricky bit.  Currently, I’m reading things like blogs on the topic of cellular protein expression,…

[cedarlili]

Who can guess what spice I was about to grind in this picture? #spicy #mortarandpestle #kitchengames #guessinggame #sillyquestions https://www.instagram.com/p/CpOxKa2t0w7/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cedarlili]

Odd Prompts: Preparations

This is a snippet of a WIP, and I’ve just finished up a long story for an anthology. I’ve written about 3700 words so far today! *** “First order of business is to reach the engine.”  The marines nodded. They were eager to get in the ship, and see if there were survivors, but it would do no one any good if they jumped the gun and got killed. Besides which…  Tressach turned to look at his gunnery…

[cedarlili]

The Squeaks Caper

Coming soon. Very soon, as in it should be live on Friday.  This is the fourth in the illustrated books I’ve been working on with Lawdog, the third in the Africa tales, which are now linked in a series called Lawdog in Color. They are sort-of coloring books, but mostly just fun illustrations, verging on comic books, for his wonderfully funny tales of growing up in Africa.  Included in this book…

[cedarlili]

Spice Coffee Cake

One of the many things I like to do is pamper my First Reader. When we had an unexpected morning, just the two of us, and time to do things, I asked him what he’d like for breakfast. Waffles, pancakes, biscuits? I offered. Coffee cake?  Oh, yes! His eyes lit up. What about the coffee cake recipe in my mother’s cookbook?  My mother-in-law gave us the nicest gift – the cookbook he grew up with. A…