Society, it seems to me, is very hung up on the idea of labels.  Our identities are made up of conglomerations of all of these words: woman, man, straight, gay, black, white, attractive, ugly, skinny, fat.  The fact is that a person is more than the sum of his or her adjectives.  There are wide swaths of personality, elements of spirit and of soul, that can't be neatly summed up into a word or two.  There are no glib descriptions that can pinpoint the "selfness" of another person.

Labels are often self-applied.  We call ourselves by the words that we hope to make fit, and if we can convince ourselves that our labels are correct, then perhaps we can convince someone else, too.  Isn't that the mindset behind affirmations?  "If you believe it, you can be it."  Pop psychology babble is condensed into a feel-good phrase that can be spouted with little effort and less thought.

Labels are dangerous and powerful things.  It's a pity when people use them to hurt one another.  Words can be beautiful, but they can also be hideous.  They can be comforting and soft, or they can be harmful.  Words can bring music into a silent room, or they can turn the sweetest song into a tortured scream.  Words contain all of the good and evil intentions that can be loaded into them, and they apply this intention with sweeping brushes, painting the landscape and everyone in it with the opinions of others.

At what point do we step outside of the labels that other people have given us and start living a life that transcends the boundaries of assigned words?  At what point do we stop caring about the words that other people paste onto us, and begin caring only for the unspeakable and unpronounceable profound truths that really  make up the core of who we are?

I don't know.  I only know that at some point in every person's life, there comes a time when you look into a mirror and say, "I am not a conglomeration of words.  I am a soul in a body and I am here for a very short time."  The time we have is too short to be consumed with concerns about what words other people want to use for us.  We don't have to listen, we don't have to believe, and we don't have to accept.  

I am a writer, but I am more than my words.  I am more than anyone's words could ever express.  And so are you.  That's the beautiful thing about humanity.  No matter how many stories are written, no matter how many movies are filmed, the basic truth about the human soul is that it is indescribable.  As Yoda says in The Empire Strikes Back, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."  

Words, again, and from a source most people given to opinions and labeling will dismiss as trivial, but these words come closer to the truth than almost any others. We are luminous beings.  Our souls are made to shine.

Shine your lights, Crickets.  Don't let anyone else's words put you in the dark.

The wheel of the year is turning.

Once again into the summer 

creeps a hint of autumn's chill,

the promise of red and gold

I was taking a quick stroll of the interwebs during a break from writing and found this picture.  I wanted to post it here, because it's a perfect image of what I described in Nightchild and Sacrifice, when the Kris vampires' eyes turn silver when they're "vamping out".  This is a screen cap that someone took of Rufus Sewell in the movie Dark City.  When I saw this, I was very happy, because I could finally point to an image  and say, "There! That's what they look like!"

Also worth posting because Mr. Sewell is a beautiful man.    Just sayin'.  ;)