Ghxststories

Well you said to find some time, a time where i cold take a walk from my mind, you see the rain is falling, the sky is lit by lightening and my senses are filled with romantic thoughts. It seems the perfect time to sit and write a rhyme.
yet i struggle picture anything but the beauty in your eyes. I am sat watching the rain wash away the anger from my mind, sat dreaming of a better time, a place in which my words could be enough, a place where our pasts could flood away with the pouring rain. What beauty we find in such chaos, when the skies express such exasperation. I am filled with such excitement , to be that drop of rain, to escape and never look back. What if we could just disappear? would you run, open up your heart and find that place, where words could fix all our minds,where we could sit, sit and watch the skies empty, leaving us with nothing but the feeling of each other.
I wish you could feel my chest, the beating of my heart against your skin, in the dark of the night where our secrets come alive, where our words form records, repeating such beauty i could never relay to you. Now i just hope you can find the beauty in me, when the lightening strikes and the rain washes away our hearts fears, for I could never portray myself any better way, than the nights chaotic sky.
My hand shakes writing this to you, you see I struggle to comprehend how our words find themselves so romantically entwined , and how something so simply unobtainable can fel so beautiful in the longing of you. but when the rain stops, will you still be here, wil our hearts still beat with the same tune, will our skin still touch, or will our secrets soak up with the light of day? these are the words we’ll never repeat, in the fear of day.

Does censoring Fairytales ultimately harm our children?

The issue of censorship in children’s literature is one, which will always be present, parents and teachers will always be worried about exposing children to the harsh realities of the world before their time. Although a debate which will most likely never be solved, it is important for us to understand the consequences of both censoring our children’s lives, and over exposing our children. I want to explore why it is literature – specifically fantasy – that always draws such great conflicts between the masses, and why it is a question that will never be solved.

The printing boom of the 18^th century brought tales from central Europe into a permanent form. Writers such as Charles Perrault and Madame LePrince De Beaumont were recording printed copies of oral tales that will have the opportunity to live on forever. However when writing these tales they were directed at adults, Beauty and the Beast was written in the parlours of Paris for outlandish audiences of often drunk women. Perrault was hired to write his tales for King Louis XIV of France. These original French tales were written for the upper classes and featured murder, rape and incest. Although this may sound almost unheard of for fantasy tales in the 21^st century, Perrault was writing in a time riddling with superstition and genuine belief of magical creatures and worked as a warning towards those of an upper class audience of what could happen if you loose your wealth and security in life.

A famous theorist Bruno Bettelheim wrote a classic study ‘The uses of enchantment’ in 1976. This study talks of the importance of fairytales in popular culture and a child’s growth. This psychoanalysis of the child and fairy-tale teaches us about how children use literature for growth. ‘The uses of Enchantment’ talks us through a child’s growth. We learn through Bettelheim of a child’s need to restrain their primitive urges, learning to respect people, value social relationships, gain individually and self-esteem. Young children however are often unaware of what they are going through, they rarely understand the source of their confusion, and even if they did understand they would not have reached a level in emotional development to express and face up to it. Children therefore need a way of dealing with these developments, which they can understand, using fairytales and enlightenment they can confront the confusion in their unconscious by bringing them to the conscious without being overwhelmed. This is the point in which a fairy-tale becomes more than just a shiny Disney film with a ‘happily ever after’.

With this in mind, we realize that fairytales are a vehicle for unconscious material to become conscious stories offering symbolic representations of a child’s deepest wishes and fears. Through reading and watching fairytales children can empathise unconsciously with the characters and narrative, putting themselves into the plot of a story. These stories are of course, filled with so much magic and fantasy that they make beautiful stories to keep the child transfixed in an enchanted world, and letting themselves feel safe and opening up their unconscious to themselves.

Using Freud’s characters of the Psyche we can see how the unconscious messages in fairytales help the growth of a child’s ID, Ego and Super-ego. On the surface the Super-ego is fed the simple morals, told that it is bad to kill, good to love and respect. However on more unconscious levels the ego is given a physical representation and body to help the child understand the importance of moral compromise. The ID however is something, which the fairy-tale must try and contain, a child must learn to control their urges and animal instinct, to let go of their oedipal complex (if you so believe in it). A fairy-tale provides a child with a distance between their own emotions while giving them the reassurance to deal with them.

It is impossible to notice that the most popular and remembered fairy-tales of the 20^th and 21^st century is those produced by Walt Disney. The Disney fairy-tale is one that has taken over the printed fairy-tale and given children a physical enchantment to emerge themselves into. However it is often argued that Disney have abused their power, and expurgated the fairy-tale to a point of being unrecognisable. So why are they still so popular with both parents and children? Disney have produced a shiny fairy-tale, with a happily ever after, however by editing out the sexual relationships, the anger and murder and most importantly the empowerment of imagination Disney has taken away the unconscious of a child. There is no longer the unconscious messages teaching children how to deal with the Oedipal complex and any mention of incest or rape is not present. By removing these it also removes the growth of a child’s ego. The child is not given multiple scenarios of how to deal with their growth, but simply told that ‘this is right’ and ‘this is wrong’. When we look at the messages that are being sent by these films we see that although there is not physical violence or abuse towards women, there is mental abuse towards women. The Disney tales lead girls to believe that they will become princess, but what does that consist of? Getting married and living in a castle, and no doubt looking after that castle. These films are not giving children, especially women the belief that they can make something worthwhile with their lives, there is no mention of careers or doing something for themselves, they must live for their husbands. This lack of exposure may lead children to believe that their wishes can’t come true, unless their wish is to get married to a prince.

There is the argument that children who are raised in a bad environment grow up to be bad themselves, children of alcoholics often end up alcoholics themselves etc. If there are enough bad things already surrounding our children why should we introduce more to their lives through literature? Although expose to death, rape and murder are not something you would ever initially dream of showing your child at a young age, a lot of people believe that using arts and modern media would be the best way to expose your child to these things. Lateralization of brain function has been studied for the past 100 years and has proven how our brain functions in two separate hemispheres. Using scientific advances such as MRI scans we can see how the brain reacts to different situations. The right brain deals with the unconscious, symbolism, morals, religion, literature, arts etc. and the left-brain deals with the literal and logistics of life. We see that when exposed to a negative situation, our brain will try and use the arts to understand what has happened. Therefore if a child is exposed to the death of a loved one at a young age, seeing this represented through stories will help the unconscious to understand and mourn. Dr. Harry Eiss writes in Metaesthetics of children with sever mental disabilities, these children all manage to express themselves through right-brain functions, from ballet to drawings. If we censor these from our children then where will they turn when exposed to these difficulties in later life? Children need to use these right brain functions to express things that they have not yet learnt to deal with.

However an argument for censorship in fairy-tales is that rape and murder doesn’t need to be in stories the story can continue without the terrible doings. Disney has managed to recreate all fairytales without violence or rape, you can still have sleeping beauty without the rape, Cinderella’s sisters do not need to cut off their feet and Little Red certainly doesn’t need to be murdered. These things do not bring anything to the story, except unneeded fear to the child. We must also no where to draw the line, if we let children read fairy-tales filled with murder then are we any different to the parents that teach their children neo-Nazi beliefs? Every parent has their own ideas of what is right and wrong for their children, and it will never be possible to please every parent. Yet all parents can agree that they never wish for their child to witness murder or rape so surely we should censor these tales that include them.

No matter how far we come with science and phycology we will never truly understand the human condition or what is truly beneficial to how we live. Therefore where some people will believe that it is bad for their children to read anything controversial, it is there choice, we can not control how parents raise their children. However this also means that other parents should not control how others raise their own children, and requesting to ban books in libraries and schools does this to a child as it restricts other parent’s choices for their child.  Although I believe there is a level of which parents should censorship their children, it is a completely personal choice from a family to family basis and therefore do not think there will ever be a complete out ruling of certain books, films or video games. There are arguments both for and against the censorship of fairy-tales, yet using psychoanalysis and physical experiments on the brain we can see that often, it would be more harmful to our children to not be exposed to the negativity and violence in fairy-tales.

We are all weak, we are all fragile.

we are not all whom we wish to be, and we certainly can not all do what we wish to do, that does not make us any less of a person, and that does not mean that we are not still loved by those who want us, and not who we want to be.

we spend so much time trying to be who we want to be, that we forget who we are, and by forgetting who we are we forget to breath and we forget to live. We must bathe in our faults, and we must rise to our imperfections and vices and celebrate the glory of being alive.

and through all our flaws, we are still so very lovable.

Lying under unfamiliar skies I see the moon, it shines bright like the day we met, for day the moon stops shining is the day we die.

We have lost touch, and who can blame what has come to pass, but while it happened it was the most beautiful disaster I have encountered, and you should know, that every night I will look at the moon, and for a while at least, think of you.

I couldn’t give you the world, but you’ll always be my moon.

Sweet dreams my love, maybe in the future our paths will cross and destiny with take its place. Xo

This too shall pass, the days will end and we shall grow, The weeks will pass and the months will turn to years, the things we do wont be so acceptable anymore, and we’ll have to grow up someday.

The nights spend drinking ourselves to sleep, whispering our darkest secrets comforted by the security blanket of dulling alcohol, the empty promises and broken hearts, they wont mean a thing anymore,

but i’m sure we’ll still have each other.

goodnight/goodmorning.

These hours stretch on forever, just waiting for you to get home, and knowing that when I wake up you will be settling down to sleep, how can one ever get used to such startling strange realisations? to know that one will never be together, and this relationship will all be phone calls and plane rides, never just train rides and love notes.

but just so you know, i’m waiting.
waiting for the day where we know this is what we need, we’ll pack our bags and run away from what is meant, we’ll live our lives how we want, hand in hand, side by side.

and then it wont be phonecalls, train rides, plane rides, it’ll be me and you and bike rides in love.

I like to sleep in the cold, because the fierce chill of the night wind always reminds me that i’m still alive, i’m still breathing, and things wont always be this easy. It isn’t all dreaming and wishful thinking.

but the street lights will fade and the dawn will break, and I wont need that wind to remind me anymore, because with the rising of the sun our secrets disappear, the things we said are no longer acceptable. The darkness is our secret mask, disguising our true feelings and making them seem real.

Well please promise me this, when the sun comes up, you’ll still think of me and you’ll remember those words we said, but you wont utter a single one outloud, cause these are the secrets the night keeps.

and these are the secrets we’ll never tell.

we’re hiding out in abandoned buildings, hiding our fears in the walls and our hearts in the crumbling architecture. The ceilings are collapsing in on us, like the people we once knew, and the times we used to spend.

we can’t go outside, everything we once remembered has collapsed around us, the cityscape no longer resembles anything we know, the walls are covered in blood, the streets stench of rotting flesh, the sky is burning.

we have killed ourselves,

London is burning.

Bright Lights, Sexy girls, sun, huge hotels and winning money, a magical haven set in the Nevada desert.

well they arn’t lying about the desert part, scorching July heat beats down on you from 8am, causing you to break a sweat after walking a mere few feet.  The ‘Deuce’ bus at $7 for 24hours is a sure bargin, but is it worth standing at the side of the road having ‘one dollar water’ shouted in your ear over and over, for twenty minutes then standing on a packed bus for half an hour to get to the next hotel, The monerail, speady, cool, what could be wrong with that? $5 for a single trip, that is what.  I no longer have a complaint for TFL.

Walking down the strip (I decided to sweat over public transportation) you meet everything society supposedly hates about home, drunken louts, pushy touts and roadworks. The offer of ‘babes direct to your door’ is thrusted in your face, scantily clad girls and sunburnt boys with novelty oversized cups (compensating for something?) judge you everywhere you go.

Everything is a desperate bid for you to spend every dollar you have in their casino/hotel, $21 dollars for 24 hours of wifi in the hotels, a $50 a night fee to upgrade to a hotel room within walking distance, you need google maps just to find your way to the hotel room.

The food is what you would typically expect in America, Oversized and overfried. Yes, a lot of it was very tasty but there was enough to feed the homeless for years, but that is okay, you can over eat at the buffets as much as you like as you’ll work it all off trying to cross the road.

it takes about half an hour to walk from one hotel to the next, there is no straight crossing the road, you have to go up and down escalators, across bridges and over moving walkways.

the atmosphere never changes, whether you are in the Bellagio or a $10 a night motel, they still make you feel like you’re are in some sort of 1984 media funfare, you can feel the cctv watching your every move, and the security checking you out. There is no escaping the advertising, whether its a billboard for health insurance or a TV add for Viagra, it is everywhere, you will never feel relaxed, constantly being forced unnecessary information in a desperate bid to keep the tourism alive.

Vegas is to put it simply, Southend on sea, with little added pleasure, and a lot more heat. But why do people flock here month after month and feel it fun to loose all their money and come home piss poor?

because it is the only place in the world deemed socially acceptable to do all the things at home, you would be judged and looked down upon for doing at the age of 45, but please, I have seen enough middle aged midriff to last me a life time, there is nothing to say there is an age limit to being drunk and scantily clad, but Vegas reaks of lack of self respect.

I wish I had something to be proud of, something that could cause a reaction, musicians play to cheering crowds, artists draw to admirers, sportsmen play for love and team, and writers, we sit in silence and have a mutal respect, understanding for a string of words with such beauty people can not recreate, but I, I have myself, and that is nothing to be proud of.