"Oz reappears towards the end of the series' canonical comic book continuation, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight. The character was also shown briefly in Buffy's dream sequence during "The Long Way Home" arc in a collage of friends and family. "Retreat" is a five-issue story be written by Jane Espenson featuring Oz in a principal role.^[7] In Part One, Buffy and the army of Slayers are under intense fire from the public (in response to Harmony Kendall's vampire rights spokesmanship) and from the villain Twilight, able to track them down due to their use of magic. To evade Twilight, Buffy has Willow cast one last spell to take the submarine full of Slayers, witches and their Watchers to the Tibetan mountains so Oz may show them how to suppress their magical natures and lie low. As the submarine appears in the mountains Oz simply shrugs, displaying little surprise in his typical manner. Later he reveals to the Scoobies that he has a Tibetan (lycanthrope) partner named Bayarmaa and a son named Kelden now, and has learned to deal with his werewolf problem through Eastern medicine and philosophy. He agrees to help Buffy and her Slayers but also realizes the considerable danger she has brought to his home and family."

EX-FUCKING-CUSE ME JOSS WHEDON. REALLY.

Oz: It was stupid to think that you'd just be... waiting.
Willow: I was waiting. I feel like some part of me will always be waiting for you.

I'm convinced that nothing on television has ever broken my heart more than Willow and Oz not ending up together in the end. I cannot watch their final episodes together without tears. Seriously.

Alyson Hannigan tears = instant death.

"Oz... don't you love me?"
"My whole life... I've never loved anything else."

“Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted... unbidden... it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us... passion rules us all, and we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we'd know some kind of peace... but we would be hollow... Empty rooms shuttered and dank. Without passion we'd be truly dead.”

Thrifting and whatnot.

What have I done with my long weekend you may ask? Not much of anything. I spent a great deal of it thrifting, as you can see from the photos above. I acquired all of those books for less than $15 total. It's the cheapest way to go. Even books on Half.Com cost at least $4 a piece with shipping. What to read next? The only one of them I've already read is Eat, Pray, Love. I've been reading Pride & Prejudice but haven't picked up Plath's journals in awhile. They're very heavy and as I already tend to over think myself there are only certain times I can stomach her writing. Tumblr has kept me from doing as much reading this weekend as I would have liked. I don't know why, sometimes I just get so sucked in and inspired by that site. Other times I can't stand it. There was "Jack" who was here one night and sadly gone the next. This left me a funk all of yesterday, which I spent eating ice cream and watching old episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Yes, this is real life. Matt has spent the whole weekend gone and working, although tonight he wants to take me to dinner. I am not ready to let this weekend go. If this were my life, all reading and inspiration, i'd be most pleased to wake up every day. Instead I slave away at a meaningless 9-5 that really makes me want to kill myself. I'm supposed to visit Ringling on Friday but I'm wondering if it's almost pointless to waste a sick day on that when I'm not considering attending until next year and a lot can change between now and then. Financially, Ringling worries me a great deal. I just need to feel like I'm doing something during this economic crisis, working towards something with meaning, and is college the only way to do that? Taking on all that debt? I don't know. I really don't know which way to turn anymore. Am I wasted if I spend each day making money, in love, and reading books and taking photos and playing with my dog and looking for inspirational things? Traveling when I can. Is this wasting life? What else is there to do? Is Ringling really the right place or do I just need it to feel like my time is worth something?

Faith is a lying tramp.

I regret not having a Rupert Giles in my life or an Oz. Any of them really. I'm also still really lusting after a nice claddagh ring but when at the mall I saw some pretty crappy looking ones at very high prices. This Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Making me long for things.
Speaking of longing I am waiting on buying my Lens until I have more funds. I could buy it, but I should wait. So long as I have it before 4th of July i'll be happy. I scored a copy of Pride & Prejudice at Target today for $2.50. They have others too: Wuthering Heights is one. Tomorrow: Thrifting. Library. Sunday: Pool side. Welcome to the long weekend. This entry has been rather pointless.

My coffee has grown cold.

This morning I drove to work in a zoned out dream like state. I had strange dreams all night of familiar faces. Telling a friend exactly how I feel about her pushy behavior and how uncomfortable she makes the people around her. I remember the irritation, the raise of my voice, the feeling of satisfaction. I remember others sitting in the garage, chatting, drinking, until the wee morning hours. Six in the morning as I recall. I remember ex girlfriends (not mine) entering and serving no purpose to progress the dream other than just being present. Maybe that's enough. I'm such a jealous person, and I suppose I've always been, though perhaps not to this degree. I've never been that jealous of the past. At least not more than the present. Maybe since I never have a reason to be jealous in the present I look for something to obsess over. Shrug.

I was thinking, during the drive, about forgiveness. A quote from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Yes.) struck me the other day. To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy, it's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it. I can say, I am not a very forgiving person. Once you arrive on my shit list it's quite hard to ever find yourself off of it, unless my original reasons for placing you there end up being misguided, a convoluted situation will no clear beginning, middle or end. Gray matter. That being said, if I believe in you so wholeheartedly, maybe I never truly give up. I can think of one particular situation that is evidence of this, and I was right, this person was worth it, at least for me. I suppose on one hand I am a very forgiving person, and that's why when you do get on my shit list, I am a very unforgiving person. I put you there for a reason. You got so many shots, and you missed them all. He shoots, but he does not score. White (wo)men can't jump. I either really stopped caring, or I never did. Power is off.

Personally, I don't think I believe in that quote, the one from the wise old man on Buffy. I can see how it would apply to certain situations but I believe we only have a short amount of time here, why spend it exerting energy on people who don't make you happy? On people who have continuously treated you terribly and show no signs of changing, that's just who they are, that's just how it's going to be, that's just what you're gonna have to accept. Yes, only if this is someone you truly want in your life. Whose absence makes your bottom lip quiver and your pupils glance down and away. Is who they are ok with you? Do you really care? If not then walk away. It's their choice, or perhaps their curse, to always be who they are, but if it's not ok with you then just walk in the opposite direction and let them live their life. It's not your job to change anyone, or even your right. Why waste the little time (even living until you're ninety still seems so short) you have on people who you have no desire to associate with? Are they who you'd be thinking of in the end?

The way I see it, in this world I have a very small list of people I want to miss me in the end, and fuck the rest. I'm sorry, but do what you love and fuck the rest has never applied more. Society is so quick to place people in neatly wrapped boxes, adorned with bows, and say you have to accept them because we say it is so. You have to forgive because we say it is so, we say it is the right thing to do. Is it?

Humans are not perfect and will never be. I am certainly not perfect but people have loved me. Some people have not. That is ok. I have forgiven people. People have forgiven me. Some have not. That is ok too. No blood can tie me to anyone, no circumstance, nothing, not if I don't feel anything towards this person more than I feel for strangers on the street. But (s)he's your blood! This is my favorite, and has never meant a thing to me. I don't care about the blood in your veins or the hair on your head or your finger prints. I care about who people are. Call me selfish, but I'm not willing to waste this life on anyone I don't love. Who you are to me isn't a right you are born with, it is who you make yourself.

I tried very hard to use my superb imagination and think of whether or not I'd be sad if my father died. I wouldn't. I say that not in anger, but acceptance. I would feel strange, certainly, death of people I have met has always felt unsettling to me. To not love, to not bawl over the death of this figure, to some, this makes me cruel. Especially to those who have found it in them to love this person. I've tried to see it from the family angle, he is the only father you'll ever have! This isn't true, I've got so much more because I didn't have that. I had people who acted as a father to me more than he did. Perhaps I will shed a tear for what I never had, for the direction my life could have taken if events throughout my life hadn't shaped me to be so, but it would be brief. I am happy with who I am. I am thankful for who I have. I do not need more. I am not without because of this. I would shed a tear for the people who would be upset as a result of it. I would shed a tear for the world, such a cruel and fucked up place. I would shed a tear for myself, feeling the guilt of feeling nothing at all for another human. Yet when I do feel, I feel to the depths. But to say I love him? Would be a lie. Maybe that makes my wiring screwy somewhere along the way, because you're just supposed to love your parents no matter what! It's written somewhere super important! Like... the bible. Ahem.

I see other people, who have been treated poorly, so poorly, and they still find it in them to love this person, who hurts them time and again just because. That isn't me. Does this make them stronger? I don't know. If you raise a knife, a hand, to an old lady in my life. If you raise a hand to me, if you leave bruises, if you are cruel... Is that supposed to be love? I doubt I'd give anyone the satisfaction of saying that other people are stronger for loving in this instance, as I consider myself, in a lot of circumstances, to be emotionally sturdy. Neurotic, but able to pull out of some very heavy situations, still caring deeply for people, with only one near death experience under my belt.

It is assumed that you love your parents, no matter the case. Maybe it's not true for me because I never saw him as a parent. He was there, then he wasn't. He was mostly drunk when he was. I was convenient, but I don't ever remember a time in my life, a moment, where I thought, I am with my father and I am happy. Maybe this is what sets me apart. I can relate to still loving and forgiving a parent even if they've seemingly disappeared, as I still love my mother quite a lot, but I can remember ever loving her, as a child and beyond, and so it is hard to break from that. I don't think she knows how to love people, or to show it, so I try not to blame her, and I leave her be. I am no expert either. Yet that's a story for another day. But what about your future children, they won't meet their grandfather? I met my grandfather on my mother's side once as a baby and never saw him again. He treated her poorly, and she does not have a relationship with him. This hasn't bothered me in the least or affected my life at all. Daniel and I found a listing for him in Miami, using google, just out of pure curiosity. She said if we ever wanted to contact him, we could, but why would we? We didn't have a desire to phone a stranger, unless of course he'd won the lottery and cared to donate to our funds. And that was the extent of our feeling for the situation. Certainly if I have children one day they can contact whoever they wish. But I will not raise this person around any possible child of mine, as it is not his given right.

May 30 Day Challenge - Day 3

Day 3:

Favorite Television Program -

LOST

Without a doubt, hands down, no question: LOST. It makes me think. It portrays the human condition more accurately than any show ever written; and it does this while a smoke monster floats around. It makes me feel uncomfortable, transfixed, angry, fearful, loved, understood. It is more. Now if we could just replace Kate with Buffy the vampire slayer we'd have my perfect show. Don't worry Buffy, being pushed to second place is hard, but I still like you more than Kate.

I Robot You Jane.

Nothing better than a rainy day spent inside hosting your own Buffy The Vampire Slayer marathon. Oh the flashbacks. Sad that Sarah Michelle Gellar's career didn't go much further than this. At least I've got Bones and How I Met Your Mother.