Haiku Me Friday! Podracing

The wind in my hair
I fly by the flat, still sands
Here, I am at home

Prior to this year, I had a daily Star Wars calendar where I flipped each day off and saw something new. It was so fun and some years were better than others, but it was always a highlight of my day. I didn’t get one this year for the simple fact that I didn’t get one for Christmas. It makes my Christmas request list every year and I meant to go buy it myself when I didn’t receive it and I forgot.

The point of this is that these pictures were always what inspired my haiku’s on Fridays. Whatever picture landed on a Friday, that’s what I would end up writing about.

Since I don’t have it this year, instead I make sure to listen to every single Star Wars soundtrack on shuffle on Spotify on Friday’s. When I pull open my blog post, whatever track I’m listening to is what I write about.

Right now, it’s the marching music as they lead the flags out in front of the podracers.

It’s a little coincidental that I am writing about podracing when I had written about my younger diary entries yesterday with the specific podracing dream. OR MAYBE IT’S THE FORCE GUIDING ME. Yes, I like that explanation better.

 

The memories of that dream, which some parts are still so vivid almost 20 years later, made me think about if I have a happy place in my life right now.

Anakin was at home when he was flying. He had never flown a ship before so he had to settle on flying podracers. He had Jedi reflexes which helped him, as no other human had the knack for them.

I realized while thinking about this that Anakin is the only character that we see in the Prequel Trilogy that drives and flies ships consistently. He is close matched to Obi-Wan, but usually it’s Anakin that takes the wheel if they’re together. We rarely see Padmé fly on her own, though we know she can.

In some ways, Anakin reminds me of my husband. He loves his car, it’s everything to him and he is constantly detailing it out in our driveway. He notices the slightest scratch or paint transfer, and God forbid if it has swirl marks! My husband loves doing nothing better than getting in the car and “just go for a drive”. (Whereas I’m sitting there silently freaking out because … I mean … there’s no destination? What? This is SO not organized)

Anakin, too, took meticulous care of his podracer that he built from scratch. He handled other ships with care and you could tell that he did not damage them unless his life depended on it.

One of my favorite moments in The Phantom Menace is when he’s flying the N-1 Starfighter and shouts, “Now this is podracing!” While others saw it as a corny line, I saw it as a line of pure happiness and a boy confident and at home in what he was doing.

Where is the podracing moment in my life? Where is yours? Do we have one? Or is it something some of us lose as we get older?

 

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Diary Posts From A Long, Long Time Ago

I was inspired a few months ago by Megan’s blog posts that included diary entries from 1999 and when The Phantom Menace premiered. It reminded me of when my own obsession began with Star Wars – also in 1999 and due to TPM.

I was 12 years old and though I had seen Star Wars previously, it had never spoken to me in quite the way it did with TPM. I’ve been through this before, so I won’t bore anyone with even more details.

When reading Megan’s posts, I couldn’t go back and dig out my diary because they were packed away for the move. I kind of forgot about doing a post on my past diary entries.

Then I was chatting with Imperial Talker two days ago and mentioned I had once written a Star Wars Anthem to the tune of our (US) national anthem. He encouraged me to dig it out and find it.

Since my diaries have been unpacked, I have finally received the motivation needed to sift through all the entries (I used to write A LOT when I was young!) and find some interesting Star Wars related ones to share.

I discovered that:

1. I was seriously in love with Luke Skywalker,
2. I loved to record dreams – and apparently I had a lot related to Star Wars,
3. I could not spell Darth Vader correctly (I wrote it Vadar…novice mistake!),
4. I did, indeed, make a song to our national anthem but it’s nowhere near as good as I remember it being in my head.

 

I know I was in love with Luke Skywalker but I don’t think I remember it the way I felt it in 1999. I always say that Luke Skywalker was one of

Yup, sums me up at age 12.

my “first crushes” but I’m trying to figure out what attracted me to him at a young age. I honestly don’t think it was inappropriate, but more like – I thought he was handsome, he could use magic (the Force), and he was down-to-the-soul good. He resisted evil and did what he thought was right. At that point in my life, I needed that a lot more than the bad boy Solo, whom I would end up understanding the appeal of when I got older. I didn’t include any photos of those diary entries because a) they’re weird, and b) they mostly consist of me saying “I love Luke Skywalker!!!!!!!!”

As for the dreams – funnily, I was talking about this with my sister the other day. So many people can’t remember their dreams. But I had gone on an interpretive dream kick when I was younger (now I know exactly how young! 12 and in 1999!) and made an effort to record all my dreams and try to decipher the meanings of them. Due to this obsessive habit that I had for months, I still remember almost all my dreams to this day. I could tell you exactly what I dreamed last night. It’s such a weird experiment I did that shows that when you do something persistently when you’re younger – it stays with you as you get older.

 

So without much further ado, here are a few good ones from 1999.

 

Dream Diary Entry #1 (I cut this one off in the middle because it had irrelevant stuff about school friends):

July 10, 1999

 

What I loved about reading this specific entry was that it brought back the feeling of the podracer to me. I don’t remember any other part of the dream – but I remember the feeling of driving in a podracer at age 30. And I remember waking up and wanting to dream it all over again. It was so real. Even 21 years later, I remember that podracing dream.

Oh and I love how I had to take a little dig at Jake Lloyd. Like “not even Jake Lloyd felt how I felt”…haha.

 

Dream Diary Entry #2:

September 6, 1999

 

Apparently I had to explain my actions on why Luke was holding my hand (we were married). Haha, I must have thought that was inappropriate to do otherwise!

In case anyone was wondering, Coober Pedy is an opal mining town in Australia. I had visited it the summer before (1998) and had fallen in love with the underground houses they had in the area. I thought it was so cool…and apparently my subconscious was still obsessed with it a year later.

 

Dream Diary Entry #3:

September 7, 1999

 

Not as interesting, but hey, Leia made an appearance! Sounds like she got shafted quite often.

 

Diary Entry #4, The Important Things in Life:

September 11, 1999

 

Is it all true? I still wonder. Did this all happen? Is Star Wars real? BURNING QUESTIONS I STILL ASK MYSELF TODAY.

But otherwise, this is clearly a momentous event. It sounds like I had been looking for his address for a while. For all the new people following my blog, I did end up writing to George Lucas and questioned some direction of his on TPM and hoping he would resolve the flow between the OT and the PT because thus far, there was not a lot of similarity. (Also, I used to name my diaries. This one was named Ariana Skywalker and I liked to write to the diary like it was a friend)

I never received a response from him, BUT his staff wrote back with a copy of Star Wars Insider and I’ve subscribed to the magazine for almost 20 years (other than the brief break in college when I had no money).

 

Diary Entry #5, the Star Wars Anthem:

September 8, 1999

I’ve held this song in my head as, like, the pinnacle of greatness. It’s kind of disappointing to look back and see, oh wait, it’s really not that good. Ah well. Looks like I had a lot of notes attached to one syllable. Guess I’ll never be a songwriter any time soon.

There you have it – a glimpse into my life when I became obsessed with Star Wars. I love that I was blogging about Star Wars before I knew what blogging was. What’s somewhat amusing about all this is that I thought I would have more entries related to TPM. But it seems like most focus is on the OT, with the exception of the podracer dream.

 

Are there any distinct childhood memories about Star Wars that you remember?

 

It’s Time for the Jedi to End

I’m back. At least, I think I am. The move is done, we are (slowly) settling in and I’m beginning to enjoy life once more without feeling completely overwhelmed. We love our new neighborhood and new house…but goodness, we do not want to move ever again.

I watched the TLJ trailer another time and I began thinking about when Luke says, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.”

I’ve mentioned before here that I do not actually believe that line will have much context within the movie. I think that it’s more along the lines of what happened when Luke went to train with Yoda: Yoda did not want to train him and gave many excuses before accepting him. I think Rey will show up and ask to be trained, he will give the history of why he went into seclusion and tell her he believes the line of Jedi should end with himself as he no longer wants to train future Jedi. (But he’ll be convinced to train Rey because she is awesome)

It got me thinking, however.

What if there were no Jedi? Kind of like how we were made to believe in ANH, but even more so.

What if we started with a blank slate with the Force? What would the galaxy look like?

Current canon is stuck in a bit of a rut as they try to figure out how to create an explanation of the Force that fits with the Original Trilogy and the Prequels. In the OT, Obi-Wan explains the Force as,

..an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.

We then jump to the Prequel Trilogy and have Qui-Gon explaining to us a scientific reason for the Force: there are a bunch of cells-within-cells (midi-chlorians) that are intelligent and work with the Force, which then allows some beings to access the Force’s powers if they are more sensitive to the Force.

Here’s where the explanation gets a bit murky. When trying to combine both of these understandings, you are left with questions of:

1. Can anyone access the Force and does everyone have some form of midi-chlorians within themselves, or
2. Do some beings not have any midi-chlorians at all, or
3. If everyone has midi-chlorians, is it possible to have a high count and not be Force-sensitive?

Because looking at the OT explanation, we see that the Force was in all living things – this included nature. And the PT explanation is not specific enough to tell us if every single being has midi-chlorians residing within themselves.

The way I interpret it is (and I believe this is correct from what I’ve read online) that everyone has midi-cholorians within them but not everyone can access them to use the Force. Some people have more midi-chlorians and some have less. Those that have a lot, or more, tend to be Force sensitive and channel it’s powers even if they don’t know what they are doing.

The perfect example of this would be Anakin when we met him in TPM. As we know, he had the highest midi-chlorian count known at that point, yet he was still able to harness it and see things before they happen, though he never had formal training. It made him a good podracer.

If this is what we are working off of, the example of someone like Anakin at age 9, what would happen if there were no Jedi and no Sith in the galaxy?

It’s an interesting thought that I’ve been mulling over in my head the past few weeks.

Would the galaxy instead be controlled by beings who have the Force and not know it (but have an inkling)? Would they use their power to manipulate and control those around them and make their way to the top of the government through coercion? Would the entire government be held by Force users who would either use their power for good or evil?

If only certain people were Force sensitive, where would it take them? Not everyone would want to be in the government.

Would it turn into anarchy, with those using the Force for good or evil but not knowing how or why they had those special abilities?

Or, would there be those few who figure it out and create something like an Order anyway – and perhaps inevitably it would turn into light and dark side factions?

 

Knowing what we do about the galaxy, what do you think would happen if there were actually no Jedi or Sith but the Force existed?