I stand

at

the bank

of

the

river

but

your

love

cannot

swim

from

forever

I sit

at

the edge

of

the

canyon

but

your

love

has

no

bridge

which

to

pass

on

I lie

on

the shore

of

the

ocean

but

your

love

lies

beyond

the

horizon

I fly

’cross

the blue

sky

expanse

but

your

love

lives

farther;

ever-last

I sail

to

the end

of

the

seas

but

your

love’s

past

infinity

I stand

with

the earth

’neath

my

feet

but

your

love

soars

beyond;

heavenly

There’s an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender that deals with the topic of forgiveness In the third season of the hit animated series, Katara has a hard time trying to accept Zuko into their group, due to the fact that he used to try and hunt down Aang and his friends. Not to mention that Katara’s mother was also killed by the Fire Nation. Zuko reveals that he may know who was responsible for the murder of Katara’s mother, so together Katara and Zuko journey across the Fire Nation, interrogating Fire Nation soldiers into giving them information about the killer. Katara even bloodbends a soldier into talking, a technique she herself vowed to never do again a few episodes back. Eventually Katara confronts her mother’s killer and learns that he’s nothing more than a sad, cowardly old man that would sacrifice his own mother to spare his life. In the end, she figures killing him would be pointless, but in a surprising twist, especially in a family show on Nickelodeon, she doesn’t forgive him for what he did and states that she’ll never forgive him. Normally stating that aloud is a bit of a no-no in kids shows, especially since Katara is one of the most ethical characters of the show. Yet this does not stop her for finally forgiving Zuko, someone she was always spiteful of from the start.

In the end, forgiveness is ultimately a choice. Some things can be forgiven, others not. Who you can forgive and what you can forgive is up to you.

#forgiveness #avatar #nickelodeon

We were weren't we

worn with worry

worn without 

and within

We were weren't we

where the waste washed-in

watering wilted weeds

of whatever it was...

What was it we were

wearing-away

as waters wept

and wrung these

weathered wigs...

wore us out

wore us in

will we weigh-in?

will we? win?

waiting as

we were

we were

waiting

weren't 

we? still

Once upon a time there was a pebble. Just a pebble. A very normal pebble. It was round and smooth, greyish-whitish, with a few very pretty silver speckles that it would have been quite proud of, if it could have thought about such things. But it couldn’t. Because it was a pebble and pebbles don’t have brains. Everybody knows that. But for the purpose of this story let’s give the pebble a name. Let’s call it Pebble.

Pebble sat patiently on the bottom of a small stream for a long time. The stream was in a beautiful mountain valley, with a couple of lakes at the top, trees and bushes near the water, and a handful of overly luxurious, overly large, frequently uninhabited vacation homes at the bottom. Winding up the valley, from the houses to the lakes, was a small and very lovely trail. It was crafted just so. It wound up and it wound down and everyone who walked upon it remarked on its clever design and wonderful views.

Pebble was unaware of any of this. He (can I call him a he?) sat on the bottom of the stream and was rolled forward by the pressure of the water on him. During the winter he moved very little. The stream was frozen after all and the fish were all asleep and it was like he was asleep too. He would nestle in a little cranny, amongst the other pebbles, and they would all sleep together.

During the spring he would burst into activity, bouncing and dancing down the stream bed, moving along with all his friends, slowly becoming more round, more polished, and just a bit more like all the other round, polished pebbles that surrounded him. You could think of the stream like a giant rock tumbler. At the top, the rocks were sharp and large, having fallen freshly off of the surrounding cliffs. They had individuality and character. At the bottom the rocks had been turned into pebbles – round and smooth. They all looked alike, with only small differences in color and character. All of this change was accomplished by the power of the water in the stream. The rocks didn’t actually dance you see, they were pushed along by the water, bouncing and dancing because of the swirls and eddies and the unrelenting pressure of all that melting snow and ice. There is very little that water cannot do if it is given enough time to do it.

One day Pebble was pushed to the side of the stream during a very strong rush of melting snow and then he was left there to dry in the sun. He no longer moved. Well not much anyway. And if he had had any thoughts you might say that he was bored. His friends moved on without him but he had new friends. All around him were rocks that had also been pushed aside by the stream, exposed to the weather, no longer in the womb, expelled into the real world. But he had no thoughts, so he wasn’t bored and he didn't worry at all about his friends, either old or new. He just sat there and weathered.

***

Pablo the Fairy was tired. Very tired. He’d been up to no good for what seemed like hours now. A lot of hours. So many hours… His feet dragged on the ground and his little wings lay limp. He hated walking but his wings were done. Completely done. He’d been flying for … well hours. And they were just completely out of juice. The only way to get more juice was to let the sun charge them back up again. So he walked, his wings behind him, catching sunlight and sparkling faintly as they sucked up energy.

Pablo wished he could suck up some energy. He had none left. First he’d gone into a huge vacation home and tickled the feet of every person who lived there. While they were sleeping! He’d woken them up and then he’d giggled about it. There’d been only two people in that monstrous castle of a house and they’d both been monstrously old, but he’d take what he could get. Four whole feet tickled! Then he’d sprinkled a little pepper into the nose of a cat. That was pure fun. It had sneezed and yowled and run about the yard until someone had to let it in, where it had hid under the bed for the rest of the night.

He’d spent the entire night causing problems. That was a night well spent. But now he was so very tired. All he wanted to do was go home, curl up into a little fairy ball and go to sleep so he could do it all over again tomorrow. It was a good life, he had to admit it.

As he walked, his pouch of fairy dust bounced along at his hip. He hardly noticed it because it weighed almost nothing. The fairy dust, in fact, weighed less than nothing. That was the beauty of fairy dust, it didn’t obey any of the rules of physics that you are used to. Gravity means nothing to fairy dust. The Earth can’t pull on it, wind can’t move it, and water can’t make it wet. The only thing that fairy dust obeys is intention. When Pablo would pull fairy dust out of his pouch with his hand, he wasn’t actually touching the dust, because it ignores the electromagnetic force, and his hand would go right through it if he wasn’t concentrating on the right intention. So when Pablo picked up fairy dust, he concentrated on his intention to pick it up and the fairy dust obeyed his will and pretended like it was being picked up – nestling in his hand in a fair imitation of normal.

But it wasn’t normal. Not even close. Fairy dust is magic. Everyone knows that.

Sometimes fairy dust has its own intention. Did you know that? If so, good for you, because not many people do. You have to be pretty well steeped in fairy lore to know that fairy dust will sometimes, very rarely, but just often enough to be interesting, make a decision on its own.

This was one of those times.

While Pablo dragged his feet up the lovely trail in the beautiful valley, next to the lively stream, on his way home to his little nook in a tree, part-way up a large, grey cliff, the fairy dust decided on something. The fairy dust decided it wanted to make a little trouble of its own. It only seems fair, right? Pablo had been having so much fun, the fairy dust wanted to have a little fun too. So it drifted out of the pouch and a few small, sparkling, speckles floated behind Pablo for a moment before drifting lightly down onto Pebble.

***

Pebble woke up. Not all the way awake mind you. He’d been sleeping for a very long time. Millennia. Since the beginning of time, I suppose, if you count the fact that his atoms were built in the belly of a star. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been awake. Maybe this was the first time? He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that he was a pebble and he was alive and he was laying on something hard and he couldn’t see anything or hear anything or really move at all, but he knew who he was. He was Pebble!

Wait he could move. A little bit. So he wiggled. If anyone had been watching and they had been watching very, very closely, they would have seen a small, grey pebble wiggle just a little bit in way that couldn’t be entirely explained.

He liked to wiggle. This was fun! So he kept doing it. And the more he wiggled the more he realized that he was changing. Something was happening on the bottom of him. Well it was the bottom of him now, because he was growing legs. Little tiny pebble legs were sprouting from one side of him. When it seemed like they had stopped growing, and after he had started to get bored of wiggling, he decided to try to use them, and so he stood up.

That might be too graceful of a term to use for what he did because when Pebble stood up for the first time it was more like a crazy lurch that ended with him upside down, with his legs sticking straight up into the sky. Now that his top was facing down and his bottom was facing up, it was much harder to stand up, so he wiggled some more. It had been a few minutes and he was starting to miss it - wiggling really is pretty fun if you stop and think about it.

After wiggling for a while, his legs were underneath him once more and he decided to try standing up again. This attempt was much more successful and so he stood upon his little legs and he swayed back and forth while he learned how to balance. It was at this point that he realized he had a mouth.

“Oh”, he said. “Wow.” It wasn’t the most amazing thing anyone has said, but I’m pretty sure it is the most amazing thing a pebble has ever said and Pebble was quite proud of himself.

“Oh! Wow!” He said again. He felt he was getting the hang of this. He could stand and he could say two words. That was some serious progress. Then he discovered that he could walk. From walk he discovered he could run, and at this point Pebble realized the world was an amazing and wondrous place.

He ran forward at a breakneck speed (for a pebble) screaming at the top of his lungs (pebble lungs), “Oh! Wow! Oh! Wow! Oh! Wow! Oh! Wow!”

If someone had been walking on the trail on this lovely summer day, and they had been at the right place at exactly the right time, they would have seen a tiny little pebble running as fast as it possibly could, yelling as loud as it possibly could in a squeaky little pebble voice. They would have heard it coming from the direction of the stream, over some grassy knobs, across the trail (where he kicked up just a little bit of dust) and across to the other side into the trees.

I should pause here and explain something. Pebble had legs and a mouth, as you probably remember, but he was missing some other very important equipment. He didn’t have any eyes for instance so he couldn’t see where he was going. He also didn’t have any arms, so he couldn’t feel in front of him. As far as Pebble knew, the world was a huge, black, open space that was made for him to run around in. And occasionally wiggle.

So imagine his surprise when he ran into a tree. Pebble quickly went from full speed to no speed at all when he hit the tree, and then he bounced off the tree and he was going negative speed for a little while and then he was on the ground, sitting on what would have been his butt if pebbles had butts. They don’t by the way. Just legs and mouths, and those only sometimes.

“Oh. Wow.” Pebble said. If you were to say that fast, you might notice it also sounds like “Oh. Ow.” But that’s not what he said because it’s actually very hard to hurt a rock. Physically that is. It is easy to hurt their feelings. You will find they are really pretty sensitive if you take the time to get to know one.

Pebble had just learned something new. His world had obstacles.

“Oh! Wow!” He said excitedly. His world had obstacles! What else was there in this world for him to discover? The possibilities seemed endless. But unfortunately for Pebble the half life of fairy dust is quite short and at this point the effects began to wear off. First his mouth and then his legs and then his awareness, and like a gentle dream that you can’t quite remember, he left our world behind and rejoined all the other rocks and pebbles in their world, which is quite separate from ours, and impossible for us to visit.

***

If you happened to have walked on the lovely trail anytime during the rest of that summer, you may have noticed a small pebble, far away from the stream where it belonged, laying in the dirt at the base of a tree, all by itself. The pebble was greyish-whitish with silver speckles that were quite pretty if you took the time to look at them and truly appreciate this pebble for what it was.

That’s what caught the young boy’s eye as he walked up the trail with his father, his little hand clasped tightly in his father’s much larger hand, looking around at the world with his wide eyes because there was so very much for him to see. He saw a little glint of silver as the sun reflected off the pebble just so, angling the light directly into his eyes, but missing his father’s eyes completely. You may wonder why little boys (and girls) see so many things that their fathers don’t? Well that’s just the way the world works, that’s all.

The little boy saw the pebble and he knew right away that he wanted it to be his. He wanted to take it home and stick it on his special shelf with all of his other special things, because he could tell right away that this was a special thing and that’s where it belonged. He stopped walking, pulled free from his father’s hand, walked over to the pebble, and squatted down next to it. He picked up Pebble and he looked at it carefully, felt how smooth and round and perfect it was, and then he put it in his pocket.

And this was a wondrous thing because Pebble was not what he seemed. He was a part of the basement of the world, formed in the fiery furnaces of a young Earth, pummeled by meteorites, covered in lava, not yet touched by water, or life or even an atmosphere. Formed in a sheet of continuous bedrock that had laid bare for eons before being covered with air and then dirt and then lay there for eons more before being forced upward by a cataclysmic collision of continents that had raised the mountains up nearly two miles straight into the air and then he had hung in the air for eons more, before he had broken off of the side of a cliff and fallen a thousand feet to land with a thunderous roar and a cloud of dirt and water that had scared the animals so completely that the forest had been empty of sound and life for nearly a full day. And there he lay while the water and the wind broke him down until he was finally small enough to wash into the stream and down the slope and … well you know the rest of the story. My point is that this little pebble, small enough to pick up and put into your pocket and place onto your shelf was a mighty, wondrous, fearsome object, that has been stamped by time and formed just-so by the most powerful forces on Earth.

Pebble was special. Just like every other rock you see while you are hiking in the mountains. So next time you are walking on a lovely trail by a lively stream, surrounded by huge and majestic mountains, take a moment to admire the little pebbles under your feet and think about where they have come from and the amazing journey that has brought them to where they are today.

Hold on to your butts!

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the science fiction sequel to 2015′s surprise box office hit Jurassic World, as well as the fifth installment to the Jurassic Park film series. The story returns back to Isla Nublar (the dinosaur island from Jurassic Park and Jurassic World) where the dinosaurs are about to face extinction once again due to the island’s volcano about to violently erupt. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard reprise their roles as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing as members of a team sent to help rescue as many dinosaur species as they can, including the Velociraptor Blue who is the last of her kind. Eventually, they all learn that this was all a ruse to auction off all the dinosaurs and genetically create a new dinosaur that is deadlier than the Indominus Rex from the last film.

As you all know by now, I absolutely love dinosaurs and I’m a huge fan of the Jurassic Park series. The first one is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, and its because of those movies that I’m even a geologist to begin with. I actually did take a moment to give my complete thoughts each film in the franchise, that you can check out here: https://theprose.com/post/104809/harry-situation-reviews-the-jurassic-park-films

Jurassic World was a huge surprise to me. I intially thought I was going to hate the movie but walked out really enjoying it. To me, it was just the right balance between dumb and fun, but had everything I could ask from a Jurassic Park movie. I was very hyped for this movie based on the first trailer and every trailer that followed. What made it even more special, to me, was the fact that this movie was being released the same month when the first Jurassic Park movie was released 25 years ago.

So, after all the hype it built, did it spare no expense? Yes, and also no. Honestly, this one's actually a little hard to talk about. Let me try to explain the chaos theory behind this movie.

Hands down the best part of any Jurassic Park movie are the dinosaurs, and holy cow do we have dinosaurs. The special effects look much better in this film than it did in the last Jurassic World. The CGI looks improved and they used more animatronics to bring more life to the dinosaurs. And as a fan of dinosaurs, it was great just to see new species brought to life in this film such as the Sinoceratops and the Carnotaurus. Not only that, but this movie did get me to feel for the dinosaurs. The big discussion for this film was to determine whether or not these dinosaurs should go extinct. As someone who loves animals in general, it would break my heart to see the dinosaurs go extinct all over again and do nothing about it if we lived in Jurassic World.

Chris Pratt is still great as Owen Grady. He was honestly one of the best things about both of these movies. Mostly because its Chris Pratt being awesome (lol). Bryce Dallas Howard was great as Claire Dearing too. Her character in this film was a great improvement over the last film. Last time she only saw the dinosaurs as theme park attractions. Here she’s an activist trying to give the dinosaurs a voice for survival. And let’s not, uh, forget that we, uh, also have Jeff, uh, Goldblum, Goldblum, returning as Dr. Ian Malcolm, and, well, there it is. He has a small role — although I never really expected him to have anything larger — but it was still great just to have him in this movie.

However, the problems from the last film were not fixed in this film. For example, the writing is still bad. Almost all the other characters, except for Owen, Claire, and Dr. Malcolm, are still annoying and cartoonish. The human villains in particular were very cartoonish. They're all about greed and don't care about the dinosaurs. Not to mention that one character has probably the dumbest revelation in any film made. Seriously, I rolled my eyes on that part. The comedy was still the most cringiest thing in these new films. It didn't help make these side characters funny, it made them more annoying than the last film. If anyone out there on Prose was still bitching about The Last Jedi, keep in mind that Colin Trevorrow (the director of Jurassic World) wrote the screenplay to this movie and Jurassic World. He was hired to write and direct Star Wars Episode 9 until Disney smartly gave him the boot. If you disliked how Rian Johnson wrote and directed Last Jedi, you would have hated Trevorrow's version of the sequel. I'll admit it, Trevorrow really isn't a good writer. Not to mention that this film's story was kind of a clusterfuck with it being two different stories jammed into one two hour movie.

But what I really think is really going to bring the film down is its second act. This is where the movie really grinds to a halt. The second act pretty much is about those greedy humans and hammering in the message that "corporations are bad". The thing is, we already got that message from the first two Jurassic Park movies. Also, I don't fucking care. I'm here to see dinosaurs eat people, which there really wasn't enough of in this movie. Luckily, once the third act picks up it's back to dinosaurs chasing people like before.

Also, I’m not sure how I should feel about the ending. I’m not saying that the ending is necessarily bad, but I don’t think that would have been the route I would have gone with. They stated that they wanted the dinosaurs to have a land to themselves where they could be free, and then something happens in the film to change all that. My question is: why not take all the dinosaurs back to Isla Sorna? Isla Sorna still exists, right? There's no volcano there, right? The events of Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 haven't been discarded from canon, right?

There's a reason why I didn't the review about it sooner. I saw it on Thursday night and I have been puzzled as to what to really say about the movie. The more I thought about the problems, the more I started liking the film less and less. But ultimately, it's going to come down to this dilemma: is this film better or worse than Jurassic Park 3? To answer that: no, I think it's worse. While I do own Jurassic Park 3 on DVD, and I do watch and get some enjoyment out of it, there are some major problems in that movie. The biggest ones were that it is the sole Jurassic Park movie that doesn't have much of a plot or a theme, where Fallen Kingdom does. Not to mention that was the film that put the series on hold for 14 years. But Jurassic Park 3 holds a nostalgic place in my childhood. And at least Jurassic Park 3 knew what kind of a movie it wanted to be.

Overall, I thought the movie was bad. While there were moments that I liked and they got me smiling it doesn't excuse the poor story and writing. I'm sure they did this just to ensure that they have something for a third Jurassic World, but it should have been thought out better than this. We'll just have to wait and see until the next big discovery.

Positives:

-Better CGI

-Pratt & Howard

Negatives:

-The whole second act

-Writing & story

-Cartoon sidekicks & villains

-Questionable ending

Final Grade: D+

Alright, that's my final thoughts on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Have you seen this movie yet? What were your thoughts? What's your favorite movie in the Jurassic Park series? And what's your favorite dinosaur from the Jurassic Park series? Please be kind, leave a like and comment, and check out more reviews here on Prose!

Best Quote:

Claire Dearing: “Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur? First time you see them, it's like... a miracle. You read about them in books, you see the bones in museums but you don't really... believe it. They're like myths. And then you see... the first one alive."

#harrysituationreviews #dinosaurs #film #opinion #paleontology #sciencefiction #action #thriller #ThisMovieSucks

We all have something

to un-package...

Something we’d return

or exchange...

Something missing ’mid 

the peanut puffs

of styrofoam that 

stick to us... 

with their insistent 

static cling ’gainst

our bubble-wrapped skin...

(We are so fatally Sensitive!)

...on receipt of

our Selves we pour 

years over our

own contents...  

w/pen we cross-check

our water-logged

shipping list...

(*Sigh... we’ll have to send it back!)

Step again into 

those six sides...

reposition these

bumpers, spacers 

and divides...

just as soon as...

we expire our free trial

#Boxes #Challenge #SatisfactionGuarenteed #OrSendItBack

...

From understatement

......to

..........Hyperbole!

...

...there at the edge

of your patience...

...where you wait

in exasperation!

...

...for a book to thumb

a chapter to view...

...a double page spread

across the knee

to peruse...

...

...just a single sheet to pull!

if not, then but a paragraph!

or a sole sentence even,

a mere phrase to skim over

...and over... again

but really a word

would suffice

if it'd only

tell us:

when

.....

The storm comes...

All people unprepared~

Children back in homes...

Parents truly scared-

Waves move higher...

Crashing so rapidly-

Lightning strikes...

Causing a small fire~

A little boy cries...

He can’t get home~

So alone...

And down he lies-

A winged monst’r spots him-

She carries the child...

He is taken to the wild~

There creatures sing a hymn.

The little boy grows~

He loves his new place...

And he now knows-

What he will have to face.

#MonsterHunter.

#WhatNext?

In the late hour...

Seated high on a tower...

Is a creature of the night..

Ready to give a nasty fright..

One being moves in the dark,

Walks past the park~

The monster hears the heart beat, his favorite part.

Wings not too far sway-

They head towards the human’s way....

In one swing~

Of the gargoyle’s wing...

The human is taken,

It’s body shaken.

The Sun rises....

Gargoyle goes back to sleep....

In a pile of dead bones-

Not just a pack, but~a heap.