Rise!

Rise!

Melissa J. Dallago

Batman has been an American icon for well over fifty years.  He has spawned countless comic books, movies, cartoons and television shows.  Everyone knows Batman, and while they may not have watched the shows or read the comic books, they know that he is the rich playboy Bruce Wayne, who likes to dress up as a bat at night while he fights crime in his hometown of Gotham City.  

Batman has always been my favorite comic book hero.  I grew up watching the live show of Batman starring Adam West.  I enjoyed watching Batman chasing the Joker, lusting after Catwoman, and sharing boyish banter with his sidekick Robin.  I cheered for Batman when he bagged the bad guys, and I loved the goofy special effects that happened during the fight scenes.  The show had a campiness about it, but, in my opinion, it only added to its charm.  As I grew up, I remained connected with Batman.  I devoured any comic book that I could lay hands on.  I sat raptly for hours on end watching Tim Burton’s Batman movies, and childishly cheering at the screen when I saw Batman save Vicki Vale and put an end to the Joker.  We had a dry spell for a few years, but thanks to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, the bat is once again large and in charge.

I enjoy the Batman character because he is a superhero who isn’t really super.  He doesn’t have powers that he was born with, a la Superman, or bestowed by a spider bite, a la Spiderman, and he isn’t the victim of some genetic mutation, a la the X-Men.  Batman is an average guy who can suffer horrible injuries and even die in heated battle.  Yet, to me, something about his averageness makes him stronger than the man of steel, more adept at fighting crime, and more willing to sacrifice for what he believes in.  Batman is just a man, but he is a bad ass just the same.

Batman is the way he is because his parents died in a horrific tragedy that left him an orphan under the care of the family’s butler Alfred.  He was forced into a realm of anger and darkness with the loss of his parents and as he grew into a man, he was horrified with the wrongs and injustices that were being perpetrated by the criminals on the innocent.  He channeled his anger that was raging inside him, and harnessed it into a higher ideal to fight crime, bring down the bad guys, and instill a sense of hope in those suffering in Gotham City.  Batman is a masked vigilante; a presence in the night offering a safe harbor to those who are lost, suffering and in danger, and most importantly, Batman is a symbol that strikes fear in the hearts of the criminals.  Batman accomplishes all of this, and so much more, by sacrificing himself to a higher ideal.  He is a symbol of greatness, a bright beacon shining in the dark night; a symbol that offers hope to all.  Batman is the Dark Knight, who ironically, shines a bright light into the darkness of which he is a part of. 

Batman is relentless in his quest to stop injustice; he fights his nemeses with every shred of his being, and even when it was clear that he is outmaneuvered or not going to win the contest, he somehow always does because he never stops hoping.  Hope is what makes Batman the best superhero there is.  With his sacrifices, Batman gives the people of Gotham City hope; to me this is what Batman truly represents, hope persevering and rising from the darkness that surrounds us.

I recently watched the last installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.  I have watched each movie and been emotionally moved.  Nolan portrays the dark side of Batman.  He reveals the true darkness that lurks in the world, and demonstrates the inherent goodness that exists within all of us.  He portrays Batman as a true symbol of goodness.  With these movies, Nolan was successful in returning America’s icon to his rightful place, and most importantly Nolan depicts Batman as a mere man struggling under the weight of tremendous forces, but never giving up hope. 

I wish that Batman wasn’t just a comic book character; I wish he was real, made of flesh and bone.  I think we need a real Batman to be that symbol of hope in a chaotic dark world.  Batman is known for swooping in in the nick of time to save the day, and I wish that he had been there on that terrible day in Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut to save the 27 souls who needlessly lost their lives, but then again, maybe Batman was.

After all, what about the school principal who lunged at the gunman to try to stop him and lost her life, what about the survivors who remained calm in the face of a madman, what about the teachers that barricaded themselves and their charges into closets and corners and kept them focused on coloring to provide a buffer from the living nightmare surrounding them, and what about the small boy who was brave enough to tell his teacher that he knew karate and it would be okay.  Yes, I have to say that the essence of Batman was there that tragic day because somehow they never gave up hope that the good guys were on their way. 

Batman is an American ideal, a symbol.  To me, Batman represents truth, vigilance, relentlessness, justice, honor, empathy, compassion and loyalty.  Batman may not be a real man dressing up as a bat to fight crime, but the spirit of Batman, the ideals he represents most certainly do exist.  As said by Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, “I’m going to show the people of Gotham that the city doesn't belong to the criminals and the corrupt.  People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy.  I can't do this as Bruce Wayne.  A man is just flesh and blood and can be ignored or destroyed.  But as a symbol... as a symbol, I can be incorruptible, everlasting.” 

The ideals that the Batman symbolizes reside in all of us, we just need to be reminded of them, and believe in ourselves.  We stand up for what we love the most, fight for ourselves, our families and our friends, we trust in those who deserve it, we honor our ideals and morals, and we respect each other even if we may not agree.  Evil and the darkness will always be around us as unfortunately that is part of life, yet what is most important about what Batman symbolizes is hope and goodness, and that hope is something that we must never, ever lose.  We must have hope in the goodness of ourselves and each other. 

As long as we have that, then just maybe this world could become a little more secure, a little more calm, and most of all, it could shelter and encourage the highest and best that is within us.  Like the survivors from that horrible day, they never gave up hope in the face of the gates of hell that had opened around them.  Batman was there that horrible day, as he is each day when darkness encroaches in our lives.  And much like the tag line from the Dark Knight Rises, hope has been temporarily lost, our faith may be broken, but a fire has risen in us.  Like Batman we must rise above the darkness, surround ourselves with goodness and love, and most importantly we must never give up hope in believing in something bigger than ourselves, a symbol like Batman, one that stands for inherent goodness and a belief that light will always overcome darkness.  Rise! 

The Art of Silence

The Art of Silence

Melissa Dallago

I always struggled to silence my cluttered, voice filled mind, until I learned the art of silence from the unlikeliest of sources, a lioness named Kia who was kept at my local zoo.  I visited the zoo often and would always see her, but I only stayed for a moment before moving on to the next enclosure until the day Kia did something amazing.

That day when I arrived at her enclosure Kia was napping, yet she must have sensed my presence because she woke up and looked directly into my eyes with a concentration I had never seen before.  I was paralyzed as I stared into her deep amber eyes.  She held eye contact with me constantly and was not distracted by any activity.  The voices in my, that had been noisily chattering away before, paused.  As we continued with locked gazes, my inner dialogue was quieted due to my sheer awe at the majesty of the stunning golden lioness staring directly into my eyes and into my very soul.  Kia was the epitome of stillness, silence and grace personified in a living, elemental being, which were traits that I had been struggling to learn.  Before I knew it the minutes had become hours and the next thing I knew the zoo was closing.  As if realizing our time was over, Kia rose and walked to the door of her night enclosure.  During that afternoon with Kia all of my worries, stresses and fears had receded and I had unknowingly entered a calm and meditative state communing with her.

I began to visit Kia on a weekly basis.  I looked forward to my time with her because I learned how to calm my inner voices, and achieve a state of silence in her presence.  Time passed and Kia has moved on to the Great Savannah in the sky, but I continue to find silence in my mind when I need it by picturing Kia’s golden coat and deep amber eyes staring into mine; and that is how I learned the art of silence from a lioness.

Christmas “Pet”astrophes

                                                               Christmas “Pet”astrophes

                                                                     Melissa Dallago

Christmas is the time of year for the gathering of family, the sharing of gifts, and watching as five pounds is added to your waistline due to all of the delectable treats of cookies and sumptuous food.  I have many wonderful memories of sharing Christmas with my loved ones, and watching their faces light up in delight from that special gift I picked out just for them.  Yet, the memories that I treasure the most involve my childhood experiences with my pets during Christmas time.  When I was growing up we had eight cats and a large German Shepard named Luke, and I speak from experience when I say that having pets during the Christmas season presents its own unique challenges.  To pets, especially to cats, Christmas time is a wonderland of new experiences that provides shiny tinsel to be chewed, trees to hide and climb in, wrapping paper and bows to be played in, and dangling ornaments that invitingly beckon to the wandering paw and wet nose; however, it is the Christmas tree that offers the most fascination and is often the source of all the trouble caused by pets.

My earliest memories are from when I was six years old and we had gotten Luke as a puppy; it was his first Christmas.  Luke was moderately interested in the tree as Mom decorated it, but he pretty much stayed out of the way, and after hours of meticulous work the tree was a vision of pure Christmas beauty.  After we had all gone to bed, we were suddenly awoken by a tremendous crash from the living room.  Mom flew out of bed expecting to find someone breaking into the house, but instead found the Christmas tree lying in a heap on the floor; ornaments were scattered and broken everywhere and the lights were a tangled mess, and poor Luke was huddled in the corner with tremors of fear shaking his body.  He was clearly the cause of the tree falling over.  It appeared that Luke had gotten overzealous in his sniffing explorations and had nosed the tree past its tipping point causing it to fall over.  He looked sorrowfully at Mom as she stood over him shaking her head.  Fortunately, the tree had had a soft landing so the branches were in good shape and we still had enough ornaments left after the crash.  Mom knew that tree was at risk for another fall because Luke was a puppy after all, so in stroke of genius she put the Christmas tree in my little Red Flyer wagon and redecorated it to its former glory.  For the rest of the season, Mom wheeled the wagon and tree into my room and closed the door whenever there was a chance that Luke would be left alone with the tree for an extended period of time.  It was quite a spectacle to witness the Christmas tree procession each day with Luke chasing after it trying to bite off the ornaments as Mom wheeled it up and down the hallway.  The wagon worked because the tree remained vertical for the rest of the season. 

The next Christmas Luke was a full grown dog and Mom, not wanting to tempt another tipped over tree, opted to place it on a table where it would be well out of his reach; however what Mom wasn’t counting on was our new cat Colby.  Colby was a gorgeous gray cat who was bursting with energy and, like any normal cat, had to explore every nook and cranny in the house.  Much like the year before Mom spent hours decorating the tree and it was perhaps the prettiest tree that we ever had.  I have an image in my mind of Mom standing there smiling, basking in the glow of the beautiful tree, while behind her sat Colby with the glowing Christmas lights reflecting back from his saucer shaped eyes as he stared at the biggest cat toy he had ever seen.  Once again, after retiring for the night, we were woken by a thunderous crash that rattled the windows.  Mom leaped out of the bed in a flash and with Luke running at her side as if to say, “See Mom, it wasn’t me!” found the Christmas tree lying on the floor in utter ruin after it had fallen four feet from the table.  Branches were strewn everywhere, and glass twinkled from the many broken ornaments, and there was Colby reclining on the couch, the picture of pure innocence, but Mom knew he was the culprit because he was covered in tinsel and pine needles from his climbing excursion.  In a repeat of the year before, Mom once again resurrected the tree, and redecorated it with what little ornaments we had left to a bit of its former pre-Colby glory.  Mom then, in another stroke of genius, blocked off the tree on the table with a green plastic fence in the hopes that it would deter him from trying to climb to great heights once again, and that is how our family tradition of placing the tree on a table and fencing it off our pets was born.  As I child I learned to appreciate the Christmas tree from a distance and the fence certainly didn’t prohibit Santa from leaving me an ample supply of gifts to open on Christmas morning.

For the rest of my childhood we did not have any major “pet”castrophes involving fallen Christmas trees, but we continued to deal with other pet caused calamities.  Over the years we continued to extract a yowling, sap covered cat from the higher branches of the tree because they had gotten stuck and couldn’t figure out how to get back down.  We always had to redecorate the tree after they removed the ornaments that weren’t to their taste, and we continued to have to pick out the occasional cat and dog toys they added to the lower branches.  We would constantly have to chase Luke out from under the tree as he tried to drink the tree water, and the cats loved to wrap themselves up in the tree skirt.  Each year we routinely played hide and seek with the ornaments that they stole from the tree, and the cats showed no mercy when it came to our nativity set.  There were always wise men and sheep missing, but never the baby Jesus fittingly enough, which we wouldn’t find until June of the following year.  And of course when it came to wrapping Christmas presents we always had to contend with claws and teeth.  It took hours to wrap and it wasn’t because of the sheer number of presents, but because we spent so much time chasing the dog as he stole a roll of paper, unraveling cats from the ribbons they had gotten tangled in, and rescuing the errant cat who happened to get a piece scotch tape stuck on their paws as they walked through the whole mess.  I can’t count how many times my hand were attacked by a stalking feline playing hide and seek amongst the paper rolls and gifts.  We think of it has work, but to pets the wrapping of Christmas presents is their next favorite thing after destroying the tree.  It has been my experience that you can always tell the gifts that are from people who have pets; the cat or dog fur in the tape is a telltale sign, and the wrapping paper usually has a couple of claw and teeth marks added for good measure because of course the little darlings want to add their own touch to the season of gift giving.

These childhood memories always make me smile, and I have learned that having pets during Christmas definitely makes it more challenging, but also more memorable and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  As an adult I now have my own two felines Padauan and L.B., who thankfully do not cause near as much Christmas trouble as the pets I had growing up did.  They both like to lie under the tree pretending to be Christmas presents and only occasionally bat down an ornament.  Even though I have not had any recent Christmas “cat”astrophes, I still have not let my guard down.  I can see the gleam in L.B. and Paduan’s eyes as they stare into the Christmas lights, and I know a part of them may be plotting the greatest Christmas debacle yet.