In the film The War, conflict almost leads to the death of a young boy named Billy Lipnicki who just wanted to grab a key. The film is written as a memoir from the perspective of Lidia Simmons. She tells the story of a conflict between her family, including her brother Stu and her father Stephen, as they fight with the Lipnicki family. The story begins with the children getting into fights with each other over building a tree house, goes on to create a conflict between Stephen and the Lipnicki's father, finally ending in a huge conflict with Stu and Lidia fighting the Lipnicki children, almost ending in the death of Billy Lipnicki. The War is a film that demonstrates how destructive conflict is and that creating it will not solve anything.

After seeing his friend Dodge die in the war, Stephen wants to teach his son that conflicts only create destruction. Stu went to show his dad the tree house that he and Lidia were building, and, while there, Stephen realized that his children had been fighting with the Lipnickis for a long time and weren't going to stop. He tells Stu, "And in the absence of love, Stuart, there is nothing, nothing in this world worth fighting for" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). By this, Stephen is trying to tell his son that fighting the Lipnickis isn't going to solve anything for him or his sister. He says nothing is worth fighting for, trying to get his son to not fight because there is no point to fighting them, they won't stop being mean if he keeps doing it. As he tells Stu about what happened in the war, he tells Stu the story of when he was fighting and had to leave his best friend, Dodge, to die while they left the battlefield. "Boy, sometimes all it takes is a split second for you to do something you'll regret the whole rest of your life," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). He lost Dodge because he had to make a quick decision to let him die, or stay with him and they both die, and he decided to leave and save his own life. He wants to teach Stu that making a quick decision between fighting others and loving them could solve all of their problems. In these examples. Stephen attempts to teach Stu that fighting can only cause harm to others and won't solve anything, therefore Stu and Lidia should stop trying to fight with the Lipnickis.

Violence causes destruction and can kill people, as can be seen with Billy Lipnicki's near death experience. The Lipnickis make a bet with Stu that he can't swim across the water in the quarry while it is draining, and he completes the challenge, so they agree that they will stay out of the tree house. The way the images are constantly changing angles and the sound of the loud water flowing around helps to add drama to the scene. The Lipnickis come to the tree house later, going against the bet, and Stu decides to fight them back. Lidia explains that "War is like a big machine that no one really knows how to run and when it gets out of control it ends up destroying the tings you thought you were fighting for, and a lot of other things you kinda forgot you had," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). The Lipnickis light the tree house on fire while they are fighting Stu and Lidia, so Lidia explains that war just ends up destroying things because in the end, nobody ever wanted to rebuild the tree house and it stayed destroyed from the fire the rest of the film. While everyone is fighting each other, Billy Lipnicki decides to go get the key that was thrown on the top of the quarry when Stu made the bet with one of the other Lipnicki's. Stu is the first one behind him, following up to the tower, and as they are at the top, Billy falls in to the water inside of the quarry and Stu jumps in to save him. He pulls Billy out, but Billy won't breath until, finally, he coughs up water from Lidia and Stu saving him. When he finally starts breathing again, Billy tells Stu, "You know, I saw an angel... a real one... and he was holding on to my hand... and I was going to go live in his kingdom... but he said I must come back and take care of my daddy," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). The fact that Billy almost died, due to the conflict between Stu and Lidia fighting with the Lipnickis, shows that conflict does not solve anything. Billy almost died, which showed everyone that they needed to stop creating conflicts, and it worked because after this incident, they never had a conflict with each other again, they finally learned a lesson about how conflict does not solve problems.

The War is a film that demonstrates how destructive conflict is and that creating it will not solve anything. In the beginning of the film, Stephen tells his son that no conflict is worth fighting for and that he should be careful because anything can change your life in an instant. Stephen tells his son this because he lost in his best friend, Dodge, in a huge conflict, the Vietnam War. Stu does not act on what his dad says, instead he continues to fight with the Lipnickis, in fact it gets worse once his father dies. Near the end of the film, the Lipnickis make a bet with Stu and they lose, but decide to fight back anyways. The tree house gets set on fire and, ultimately, destroyed, and never rebuilt. Also, Billy almost drowns, however Stu and Lidia save him. This is when everything changes and Stu realizes what his father had taught him, that conflict does not solve anything. All of the other children realize that the conflict is only causing damage and almost took Billy's life, so they decide to stop fighting as well. Conflict will never solve any problems, the world must learn to create love, rather than conflict because it only causes destruction and will never allow people to solve problems.

I have never met any of my family members that have gone to war because they either live very far away or have passed on. My grandpa Ray Wilson was in World War 2 and my uncle Vinny Dimsel was in the Vietnam War, however I never met either of them. I have heard stories of P.T.S. on the television and in books, but never personally. All that I know about P.T.S. is that it stands for Post Traumatic Stress. Anyone that has had a very traumatic situation can get P.T.S. It is flashbacks that bring the person back to the traumatic situation that they may have experienced. The person feels as if they are having the same experience all over again. It can be really scary and brings back bad memories. The person is not able to control what they are imagining and other people can only try to help them out.

The memoir that I chose is a book by Haruki Murakami called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The memoir follows Murakami's life as he trains to run the New York City Marathon, while writing a memoir about it at the same time. I selected the memoir because I came across it on a famous photographers blog. I found one of his posts saying some of his favorite books to read and there were two memoirs on that list. What he wrote about this book is that, although it is about running, the book can apply to any athlete in the way that they train and live life. I thought that it might be interesting and may relate to how I train parkour. At the same time, the book is about Murakami writing a memoir while he is training. I enjoy the fact that he can write about his training and make it sound interesting, rather than just creating a log of what he did everyday. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running seemed like an interesting title because I had to read it twice. The first time I saw the title I read it fast and it didn't make sense, so the second time I read it slower and really thought about what it said. It really intrigued me and, like I said, the description of the book seemed to relate to my life as well, so I figure that I will enjoy the book.

The cover of the book is very simplistic, with a blank tan page and the title in red writing. At the bottom there is a very small picture of the author while he is running. The simple cover definitely made the book more interesting to me as well. It shows me that the book is not going to have a ton of detail about random things, but it is going to be very focused on his training, as well as him writing a memoir while training. Overall, the book seems very simple, while at the same time intriguing as it follows Murakami writing a novel, while he is training for the New York City Marathon.

I love to train my body and mind through a sport called parkour. Parkour is a way of movement, overcoming obstacles by jumping from one to another, swinging on rails, and doing flips as well because they are fun. Parkour is still a growing sport so not everybody knows about it, but more people find out about it every day. I train hard to make my body stronger so that I am able to jump further, swing further, and just be able to do difficult movements. I train my mind through parkour by practicing big movement that scare me. The fear is enough where I know I am able to make a jump, for example, but my mind is still slightly scared that I may hurt myself while doing it, although I know in the back of my mind that I will not hurt myself. The more that I trained with my friends, the closer I got to them and we decided to come together and make a time called Gremlins Parkour because one our friends called us that one day. We are growing bigger every day and want to keep it going forever. I enjoy every part of parkour and will continue to do it for the rest of my life.

 Another important part of my life is film making and photography. I love cameras in general and making films with them, as well as photographing moments in life, is one of my favorite things to do. I incorporate it into parkour by filming my friends and I training whenever we do movements that impress us. Editing the video together is really fun because sometimes it gets difficult to make the footage look very good with the song. It is a great feeling when others are really impressed by something that you have filmed and edited together into a video. Finally, photography is another passion of mine. I enjoy taking photos of parkour movements that make people wonder what is going on. Flips are really interesting to photograph because if you capture it at the right moment, it makes people confused and they look at the photo longer wondering how the person got upside down like they are in the photo. I have fun taking photos, creating films, and love to show people what I have created.

The best experience in my life was when I became a part of Move to Inspire. Move to Inspire is a team of parkour athletes that make videos, travel, teach, and help build the parkour community. It is run by my good friend Vinnie Coryell and he sponsors either athletes. When he asked if I wanted to be sponsored I gladly accepted the offer because he is a really close friend of mine and I really wanted to meet the other sponsored athletes. Being sponsored allows me to get free clothes and other things. As the team grows I will get opportunities to travel to different states for large gatherings and I will be able to teach workshops at various camps. I am really excited to see what comes and the future and I am happy to be a part of Move to Inspire. Getting sponsored was one of the best experiences I have had in my life.