As Sets the Sun

As warmth and daylight fade and slip away,
The vacuum dusk engulfing fast the light,
The sun, constrained, meand'ring out of sight,
We grasp then an ephem'ral, dying ray,
And shadows cast in begging it to stay;
For dusk seems darker than the coming night,
As dark unknowns do fill our souls with fright
And make us ask if e'er will dawn the day. 
Yet as the pressing night is coming on,
We see the greatest light that we have yet:
We realize then how much will soon be gone,
And never more appreciate the sun
Then as 't in blazing, glorious clouds does set--
And still despite the night will come the dawn. 

Sidestep in Sashays

As we walk each alone upon this Earth,
We pass by others, yet avoid their gaze;
We take wide steps, we give these strangers girth;
With eyes looked down, we sidestep in sashays. 
Within this shifting mass of strangers' breaths,
We find it hard to share a kindly smile;
It seems we can't our reticence arrest,
For fear we won't receive reciprocal.
Despite our headlong steps amidst the crowd,
We see a smiling eye that calls to us,
That cuts across this callous, heavy cloud,
And fills us with a warming, flutt'ring rush. 
We fly to those who, mid this human gloom,
In smiling, laughing beauty shine and bloom. 

Thoughtless Recursion

The seasoned, foot-worn trav'ler often knows
The forest's branching paths: its tangled web;
He knows to where each path—each journey—goes,
For they with erstwhile steps he once did tread. 
In springs gone by with his own feet he learned
Which paths were bright with hope and which brought pain,
And where they branched and twisted—where they turned—
All this to know which paths to walk again. 
Yet even on the present winter's eve,
His thoughts do wander from his journey's end,
And he from light thence takes his thoughtless leave:
On pain-filled paths he once again doth wend. 
He knows inside which paths will bring him joy,
Yet why can't he his feet on these employ?

The Blind Artist

At times I am an artist,
Painting with broad strokes
And quick dabs and jabs,
Carving the world to my vision,
And slicing the image of my will
Across the canvas. 

I paint blindly, at times—
often, really—
blinded by how I would see the world
Were it colored as I wished,
Without regard for what lies
Already painted before me. 

In the fever of my frenzy
To establish forth my dreams
Sometimes I paint against the grain,
Against the contour of the canvas,
Against the current of the river and the wind,
Against the flow of what should be. 

When my vision finally clears,
Then at last I see
My brush, my words, my hands—
All I use to forge forth my reality—
Were merely just a sword,
Thrown 'bout haphazardly.

I open 'gain my eyes
And see the world I marred for what it is,
And tears of fiery regret
Well up form deep within.

I see the world torn and burning,
Sliced asunder by the dream
Of a self-blinded man:
Seeing, but wouldn't see,
revising with his brush-turned-sword—
revising selfishly—
And as my eyes are truly opened,
I see that that man's me. 

The Jealous Hypocrite

Consider thus the Jealous Hypocrite
Who wishes to monopolize my time,
Yet when she finds it so convenient,
Discardeth me as trash or dirt or slime.
She calls me forth on many routine night,
To watch with her—to heed her every call—
And though the show and time is slightly trite,
To answer her I always drop it all. 
And though it's she who's always asking me,
She says that she does sacrifice for sure
And though I oft do make a meal for her,
They fall as naught to all from her I see. 
And when she's gone I sit alone and cry;
Yet when I'm gone, I'm heartless and should die. 

Psalm of a Tortured Soul

Each moment is but an intangible gadfly:
It’s born, it lives, it dies,
As the next rises from the ashes of its carapace,
Blazes with the heat of life,
And then falls.
One after another
In quick succession,
The assembly line of time rolls on. 

By some involuntary instinct,
We pick up the ashy shell of each moment,
Dust it off,
And place it neatly next to the last
On a shelf in our mind.
Sometimes this is a crematorium, or morgue,
That smells like lost opportunities
And times gone by;
At times it is a museum,
Where we pin each moment by the wings
In proud display;
At the same time, it is an asylum or a prison,
To which we, as judge and jury,
Sentence these,
The lifeless husks of moments, to life
In prison,
In part, as punishment,
And, in part, so we can watch them
From behind barred windows
And locked doors.
But in no way is it a dusty warehouse,
A labyrinth of long-forgotten ways and shelves
Housing long-forgotten items.

For we are compelled,
By some force within ourselves,
To review and revisit and relive
These moments that have come and gone.
When we lie awake at night,
And try to close our eyes,
They haunt us like the burning ghosts of fireworks
Branded on our eyelids.

And, as these moments flash repeatedly before our eyes,
Blinding us,
We reach out, and with the pain of grasping embers,
We mold them
From nagging, buzzing, regretful gadflies
Into dragonflies, regal and majestic,
And into butterflies with wings of fire,
On which are painted proud eyes
Unmarred by shadows of regret within their depths.
But, even as the shadows of these imagined moments glow,
The husks of husks begin to crumble,
Falling through our grasping hands,
And leaving behind nothing
But the unchanging shell of that hated gadfly.
 
And again we reach out with insatiable anguish
To mold and shape reality with possibility,
Even though there is a nagging knowledge
That it is too late,
And with the effort of pushing up a hill
A boulder dragging with the weight
Of unwanted memories,
And delicately balancing it at the top,
We, for just a fraction of a second,
Repaint ourselves perfection,
Only to have it come crashing down,
Reminding us of the futility of the exercise
Just as we begin to push again.
 
Yet, despite the hopelessness
Of our inability to change
The past,
We can draw hope
From our torturous revisions,
For they can become reality,
As, in each instance, a new moment
Is born, and lives, and dies,
Followed by another,
And another.

Chapter 1: Before it was Drained Away—Part 3

Yet, just when they had nearly given up hope, they came to expect a son, and nothing could have made them happier.  The whole kingdom, in fact, was overjoyed, for the people desired a prince from their beloved king and queen almost as much as the two did themselves.  Celebrations were planned and festivities were arranged in anticipation of that much-awaited day. 

When that day came, however, all did not go as anticipated: Queen Florryn died in childbirth, and their new son, Arttur, did not survive either. 

The people were crushed.  Their beloved queen was dead.  They had no prince.  But the king, he was beyond devastated. 

The king's closest friends tried to comfort him, and, in doing so, they showed him that they cared for him, but, at the same time, they failed to make things better.  Any thought of the queen brought him great anguish, and any attempts to console him brought only thoughts of the queen. 

But, he would not forget her—he would not forget her.  As time passed, many of his closest friends and advisors counselled him to seek love once again and to remarry.  This however was a hollow and obligatory sort of advisement, for his friends knew it would not be heeded, and wondered if it even would help at all if were, for King Decoltur always vowed he would never love another as he had loved Queen Florryn. 

As the years passed, and the king's friends and advisors began to age and die, the aging king himself realized that his own end was nigh, and yet the kingdom had not an heir, nor any ready means of providing one.  King Decoltur knew that, were he to die without an heir, the kingdom would descend into chaos.  The people wouldn't know who to look to for leadership or guidance, and those enemy forces the king had worked so hard to keep at bay would seize the opportunity to overrun the kingdom. 

The king, already saddened by loss and wearied by living, in an overwhelming spirit of duty decided therefore that he would not die—that he could not die. So he didn't. 

The king continued on because he knew his kingdom needed him.  He had spent his life working to protect and defend and build up his kingdom and his people.  Queen Florryn had done the same.  He could not afford, no matter how much he wished to lie down to a peaceful final rest, to allow the fruits of that work to crumble.  So he didn't. 

One by one all those he knew fell and died.  Before long, he was completely alone and friendless.  It was not long thereafter that the faces and the voices of those he had once known faded from his memory, and, when he could no longer remember the soothing songs of his queen, the nightmares began to return.

Living and waking the king was pained and wracked with the torture of an aging body, a broken mind, a lonely soul and a lovesick heart.  From his pain he dreamed and wished to die himself, and such dreams of the respite of death only accentuated his pain.  Yet he could not die, for his kingdom—all he had ever worked for, and all he owed his people—could not be allowed to fall.

As decades passed the king eventually forgot who he was, or who he had once been.  His weariness and nightmares had blinded and corrupted his soul: he began to grow bitter—to resent the kingdom and the duties that kept him tethered to this world when he would rather leave it behind. 

The passion of the love he had once felt for his people having been replaced with vengeful bitterness, King Decoltur ultimately proceeded to tear down all he had built up.  Of course, he was hardly the man who had built them up in the first place anymore.  He prohibited music.  He banned dancing.  It was forbidden to speak the name of the queen.  The peasants were worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week to provide for the kingdom, and to pay for their inconvenient protection and their unwilling king.  Taxes were high and burdens were heavy.  The king's guard was many and harsh.  The peasants began to wonder if this king was truly the same their grandparents had spoken of with such awe and respect so long ago.

In fact, many began to wonder if it would have been better to have been taken over and conquered by ruthless invaders than to be crushed under the weight of a bitter king who refused to die. 

The king, however, continued to rule, and continued to hate his kingdom for needing the protection of his cold, iron first and his cold, iron will. 

So, no, the kingdom of Penmar is not a happy place at all these days.

And that violin now only plays either an occasional haunting, lilting melody of loneliness or the harsh screech of anger mixed with despair. 

Once this was a happy place, but certainly no longer. 

Elusive Butterflies

It seems that we for catching butterflies
Do lie as still and quiet as we can and wait--
To wait for those small gentle creatures
To land upon our lengthened hand.

In fact, it seems the more their wings
Do catch the fancy of our eye--
The brighter their color as they fly--
The more we think we still must be. 

So, when upon the one come we
that be most beautiful of all,
We find that we, instinctively,
Do lie as still as possible:

We freeze; don't breathe;
And slightly then avert the eye;
And with outstretchéd arm
Await in hope the butterfly.

Yet if in stillness we do stand,
But be not thus a flower more,
What chance the more do then we have
At last to so achieve our goal?

Conversely though, how could we
Ever expect the grace
Of our lovely butterfly
Were we to sudden give it chase?

Mask of Volition

Walk around like it's Halloween
With a mask 'tween you and me:
You could never tell
How I ever felt—
It's not that you would never look,
It's just I'd never let you see
The person who was really me. 

Chapter 1: Before it was Drained Away—Part 2

Not many years after King Decoltur assumed the throne, his peaceful and hardworking kingdom was attacked by the hordes of a powerful enemy.  The king devoted his every waking hour, as well as most of those he spent sleeping, to ensuring the ultimate safety of his kingdom.  He gathered his knights and rallied his people, and led his armies against their ravenous foe. 

Before the war, the people loved the king, but upon seeing his bravery and courage in his fight to defend the kingdom, they loved him more than ever.  King Decoltur did not hesitate to stand at the front of his army and wade into the middle of the battle, for he could not bear to command his soldiers to do that which he himself would not do.  He saw his people cheer in victory, and he saw them fall around him.  He shouted words of encouragement and hope to them, and he cradled their heads in his hands as they died.  But every soldier—and every citizen—was willing to lay down his life to defend the king and the kingdom, for each knew that the king would do the same for him. 

Queen Florryn continued  to accompany King Decoltur to whatever place he went, riding and camping with the war caravan until the very end of the war.  She cared for the wounded and comforted the disheartened.  Most appreciated of all, she sang to the soldiers at night and raised their spirits. 

Most unnoticed and unrealized by all but one, yet most importantly of all, when the war-wearied king returned each night to his tent to rest, sighing the heavy sigh one only may sigh when he has led men into battle and to their deaths—when the king, upon closing his eyes, saw visions of his men falling by the sword, then did she sing to him.  Each night they together fought a private battle against the nightmares in his head, and were it not for her soothing lullabies, he long before would have shattered and become a broken man. 

King Decoltur's love for his soldiers, and the anguish he felt when they fell, led him to become not only a fearless leader but a brilliant tactician, for he valued the life of each man in his army even above his own.  Where other commanders of armies before him would have been willing to sacrifice their men—their mere conscripts and foot soldiers-—King Decoltur carefully maneuvered his troops to avoid casualty with extraordinary caution. 

This proved to be an advantage in the long run, as his soldiers not only were willing to die for their cause, but came to trust his every command with the power of the hope that they might both live and be victorious.  And, after years of battle, those mere conscripts, rather than dying on the front lines in a tactical exchange of lives, grew into a formidable and well-trained fighting force. 

After a number of years, the enemy was conquered and peace restored to the land.  A monument to the fallen soldiers was erected, and, as time passed, the kingdom began again to prosper, and the scars of the war began to fade from the realm.  So, too, with the remedies of both time and soothing songs of his queen, did the nightmares of King Decoltur begin to fade. 

But even after the war had come an end, and after his kingdom and his mind were mostly healed, the king and the queen still could not bear a child. 

Chapter 1: Before it was Drained Away—Part 1

Once upon a time there was a dreary kingdom ruled by a weary and bitter king.  Now, a kingdom thus ruled isn't a very happy place—in fact, it is rarely a happy place at all.  King Decoltur, however, hadn't always been the cold and saddened man he had come to be. 

At the beginning of his reign and in the prime of his life, the young king might have been numbered among the happiest men alive.  He was kind and just, and with confidence lead the kingdom in prosperity.  He prided himself in the care he took to come to know and understand the individuals over whom he ruled, and his people loved him for it. 

Just as beloved, if not more so, was the beautiful and kindly Queen Florryn.  While her husband's great care for the people stemmed at least partially from a sense of duty, Queen Florryn's welled up from the simple goodness of her heart.  She seemed able to summon forth a love of nearly infinite extent for all those she knew, and even for those she had only heard of but never met.  Besides being graced with so gentle and boundless a sense of compassion, she had great gift in music, and possessed the loveliest of singing voices.  When she sang, she always brought the happiest of smiles to the face of the king and immeasurable joy to his heart. 

King Decoltur loved Queen Florryn, and she him.  A stronger love than theirs has not ever been recorded in all the histories of men, and probably never will be.  Each accompanied the other in most everything, and the twain never spent a night apart.  They intuitively seemed to understand each other, which, though in other cases may have only made such conversation obsolete, made their conversation that much richer.  Each was more than truthful and faithful with the other—they hid nothing, and always sought to improve themselves and their love.  Indeed, each made the other a better person, calling forth all that was good in the other and inspiring it to flourish (though it was generally recognized that the queen greater influenced the king for good that he was could ever so influence her). 

They two would often, after long and tiring days, spend the evening immersed in music.  He would play his violin while she sang the lines of the love poems that one or the other had penned.  Anyone who happened to hear them could not help but smile and have his spirits lifted. 

Yes, they were in love. 

Although it was always understood that the king would sacrifice anything to protect his people and his kingdom, it can only be wondered if he would have chosen his wife over his kingdom, had it ever come to such a choice. 

White Light/Black Rain

I went and saw White Light/Black Rain at the International Cinema, and it was certainly worth seeing, but it even more certainly was not the ideal movie for a date. I hate watching movies by myself, so I asked a nice girl from my linguistics class if she wanted to see it with me. Essentially, it was like taking a date to see Schindler’s List—you just don’t do that. You don’t want your date to have to cover her eyes with her hands out of some mixture of horror and disgust. In fact, you don’t want to have to likewise cover your own eyes, either. Fortunately, she had been to the International Cinema before and enjoyed going, so, while the movie wasn’t fun or enjoyable per se, she, as well as I, did in fact enjoy it, for lack of a better term. We determined that the planned consumption of ice cream was far more essential than we had before realized after watching a movie such as that one, but we also determined that, although it was a hard movie to watch, it was something that needed to be watched.

That is why the movie was so good. It did not make us smile or laugh, nor did it keep us on the edge of our seats or fill us with suspense. It instead opened our eyes and allowed us to better understand a piece of the past that has resulted in ongoing problems and is relevant to the events of our future.

I used to think it would be cool to write a story based in a post-apocalyptic world torn apart by nuclear war and the resulting civilizations and empires that would rise out of the ashes thereof. The world would have been devastated, and life would have been hard, in this book, but, after watching that movie, to consider so lightly such a topic—to utilize and warp it thus—now almost makes me sick. I saw how those two bombs absolutely and completely levelled those cities filled with people. I saw the scars and the burns and the disfigurements of its victims—the ones who lived. I saw the hurt in their eyes as the survivors explained how they had lost parents and siblings, friends and classmates. My imagined world did not contain a fraction of that, nor could it.

What I claim to have seen is an exaggeration, though. I saw only a sliver of the full pain and destruction in the eyes and stories of a handful of individuals. Yet it was still enough to make me realize more fully, in a jarring sort of way, how terrible the consequences of that event was. I had always know that many of the wounds were awful, but I did not and could not understand how awful until I saw them myself.

Beyond the severity and gravity of the injuries that I had thought I understood, the movie made clear several things I had never before realized.

The first is that the survivors of the atomic bombs are shunned and discriminated against. I had thought that they would be honored and revered as heroes. That is not the case. Though certainly not all view them as such, many view them simply as dead weight. They are ostracized and seen only for their cost on society; it is hard for them to get jobs, as the insurance cost of caring for them is immense. To learn this was almost as shocking, if not more so, than seeing those recent and raw wounds of the survivors. I would hope that, in a similar situation, should one ever arise, we would be  caring and respectful towards those who have suffered so much.

The second gives me a fascinating insight into Japan culture and thinking.  Many of the Japanese contemporaries of the bombings, including many who suffered as a result of it, were and are not necessarily angry at the U.S. for having dropped the bombs in the first place.  Many of them felt that since Japan had initiated the war with the U.S., it was their fault that they were bombed. As the first aggressors, many believed they should shoulder the responsibility and blame of the result of the aggression. In a way this is logical, but, at the same time, I find it hard to think that Americans would be able, in the face of such violent and traumatic destruction, to take responsibility for any of their own actions that lead to such a result. We might point fingers and blame other portions of our society and country, if not simply resorting to outsiders and enemies, but I don’t think we could ever, as a society, blame ourselves or even assume adequate responsibility. 

Though it was a hard movie to watch, White Light/Black Rain as one of the best—i.e., most eye-opening, informative, moving—movies I have ever seen, and I would wholly recommend it to others, provided they know to brace themselves before sitting down to watch it.

Unaccountable Distancing

As we in such frank openness don't share,
Declaredly all lonely wand'rers be,
And, being so, we are unfettered, free;
But is that price of freedom less than fair?
We feel this love, but claim that it's not there;
We dare not show, but how we long to see;
We yearn the trust, the confidence, yet flee
And fear--deny--that longed for, buried care. 
If we then each wish not to walk alone,
And for a sure, true confidant do pine,
Then why wait we for trust to first be shown?
For though to guarded caution we are prone,
We must this icy wall and veil resign:
Receive we trust when first our trust is known.

For Fear of Falling

 

Yesterday, I began to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.  I tell people the reason I am doing so is in case I ever need to write about characters involved in hand to hand combat.  As someone who aspires to be an author, this is a very real possibility, and no amount of reading on the internet or elsewhere could allow me to understand the ebb and flow of two circling, interlocked fighters or the pressure and tension of the individual holds and joint locks, or feel of the whole-body struggle of a grounded grapple.  I could try, but I probably couldn't get any more detailed than the relatively superfluous description given above.  

 

 For some people, doing Jiu-Jitsu in order to describe Jiu-Jitsu may not matter, but I know that I if I want convey the essence and the aura and the feeling of what goes on in a fight, it sure would be helpful for me to have experienced it myself.  Though I may not be receiving an education in becoming a writer, I will not hesitate to educate myself with any and all knowledge and experiences that will enhance my ability to write.  At some point, I will also have to make a point of learning a bit of karate so that I understand the strikes and blows of fighting in addition to the holds, takedowns, and grapples. 

  

I wrote that I tell people that I am learning Jiu-Jitsu so that I can be a better writer.  While this is certainly true, the decision was just as much influenced by the fact that I have wanted to do martial arts since I was a child, but my parents would never let me take lessons.  To this day, I don't fully understand why they wouldn't, except that lessons might have been expensive, and they probably didn't want me running around hitting things (though I doubt that I would have, even if I had been taught how). 

  

I found it interesting, though, that the very first thing that we began to learn was how to fall.  It makes sense, really, that we would learn how to fall before we learned how and began to perform grapples and take downs: learning how to fall properly prevents us from getting hurt.  That we learned how to fall, however, is not a particularly interesting fact, even though I said it was.  What is noteworthy is that we did not begin by learning how to avoid falling.  A veteran practitioner of Jiu-Jitsu is not expected never to fall.   In fact, one cannot be good at Jiu-Jitsu without being quite good at falling--falling is not only a skill developed even as one practices to reach to a high degree of proficiency, it is a skill necessary to compete and perform safely at high levels of difficulty.  

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Confucius

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall. - Vince Lombardi 

 Maybe life is a bit like Jiu-Jitsu.  Within the context of a comparison between falling literally and falling metaphorically, I would suggest it is very much so.  In life, it would be great if we never fell down.  As nice as it would be, that is not how life works.  By its very nature, we will fall, and we will probably fall often.  Our goal, then should not be learning how never to fall, for we will almost certainly fail in the endeavor; our goal instead should be learning how to fall, so that when we do, for we will, the fall will not break us, so that when we fall, we will be able to get back up, and so when we fall, we will be able to enter again into the struggle to win and to survive.  

 

If we focus only and solely on never falling, when we do fall, we will not be prepared to deal with the force of the collision, both when we hit the ground and when our opponents land on us.   We will break, we will be pinned, and we won't know how to get up or how to recover.  Knowing how to fall is thus the key, and learning to fall ought to take greater priority in our lives.  We cannot be proficient at life without knowing how to fall, and we cannot know how to fall without falling--probably repeatedly.  

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes.  Only when I fall do I get up again. - Vincent Van Gogh

Though I previously said it would be nice if we never fell down in life, in Jiu-Jitsu, if you're still at the point where you are not yet falling, or are falling so lightly and softly that you don't need to know how to fall effectively, then you really haven't come very far, and you're hardly practicing Jiu-Jitsu.  In a way, if life were so smooth and streamlined that there were no problems or challenges that caused us to fall, then we'd hardly be living at all.  Some of the best feelings and greatest moments in life are when you stand up and step forward and take down an obstacle that has repeatedly thrown you to the ground.  We succeed when we stand back up, for a man who never falls is one who has never been adequately challenged; in short, he cannot be conquer that which was not obstacle, and he cannot be victorious in the face of no adversity. 

And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. - Alfred Pennyworth, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins

In Jiu-Jitsu, falling correctly involves rolling the length of your back on the ground as you fall backwards and slapping the ground with your extended arms and palms just as your shoulders hit the ground.  There are other ways to fall in different directions, but this is the most basic method.  The rolling along the back and the use the underside of the entire arm will both spread out the force of the impact and prevent localized force from seriously damaging any one part of the body.  If you land on your back or your wrist, you risk injury; properly falling, however, both minimizes injury and prepares you to get back up: you are not as dazed and are ready to push against the ground to regain your position. 

Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. - 2 Nephi 2:25

In life, we have to learn how to fall.  When we inevitably do, the last thing we want is a broken wrist from flailing our arms backward ineptly to catch our metaphorical fall.  When we hit the hard ground of our trials, we must push off of it to break our fall and to begin to propel ourselves forward; we must not concentrate the pain and force of the fall in one aspect of our lives, but must spread it out, taking the blow as a whole and rounded person with other strengths and successes to fall back upon.  We must immediately consider how to get back off the ground, for we have not lost when we have only fallen, nor are we defeated when we are merely pinned--we need not tap out nor surrender our will.  (Although there are times in Jiu-Jitsu where it is wise to tap out, the same does not hold true for life.) It is worth learning to avoid falling unnecessarily, and it is worth learning how to get out of pins and holds, but most importantly, it is important to learn how to fall--so the act of falling becomes just as important, for by doing is the knowledge of the action acquired. 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. -Theodore Roosevelt

 

Echo of a Hollow Goodbye Come Fulfilled

I'm no fan of goodbyes,
But I can't say I'm fazed by them.

I don't cry for movies,
And I don't cry for books. 
Not for family reunions. 
Not for seeing an old friend from long ago. 
Not for the news, however tragic or sad.
Not even for funerals. 
And certainly not for goodbyes.

When I say goodbye,
I'm just acknowledging that I won't see someone
For a while.
Maybe never.
And sometimes, we don’t know how long. 
But even as I bid farewell,
I feel no loss. 
No longing. 
No heartache.
And no pining. 
Because the thing about goodbyes
Is that the person is still there. 
In the moment of the goodbye,
The person is right in front of me. 
Not gone.
Not missing.
Not away. 
And I cannot comprehend
Right then and there
What it will be like when that person really is gone. 
We can imagine,
But we always unconsciously
Seem to soften it.
And the goodbye becomes just words. 

That's just how it works.
I live in the moment.
I take what life gives me,
And I go where life takes me. 
Sometimes it takes people away from me
And sometimes me from them.
But that's just life,
And there's nothing I can do
But move forward and onward. 
So when they go,
Or when I leave,
I say goodbye.
But it's always sort of hollow. 
Because when I say it,
We haven't yet parted. 
There is no feeling to add meaning
To the word.

And when they do go,
I don't start missing them right away. 
Because it's just like any other time they left. 
Long absences are often preceded by heartfelt goodbyes.
But why?
It's not like I can feel in that moment
How much more I will miss someone
In the added days and months and years
By simply quantifying
The hopeful calling aloud of names
That fade into an embarrassed remembrance of an absence,
And the dreams in which they're still here with us
That crumble into ashes when we wake,
And the pain that comes
Every time I think of something
That they would have liked--
By simply quantifying
That unquantifiable and unknowable
Future feeling of longing,
How can that give us any hope
To brace ourselves against it?

Only after those days and weeks and months and years have passed,
Only then can we adequately say goodbye. 
Only when we no longer remember a face,
Only when the sound of a voice fades beyond the horizon of memory.
Only then, does a goodbye have meaning.
But of course
By then it is too late.  

Then will I reminisce
And think fondly on old memories
And morn the distance that has come between us
And wondered what it might have been like
Had we been permitted to remain together. 
Then will I say goodbye.  

With you however
Everything is different. 
Even before I say goodbye,
I miss you.
I don't know why it is,
But I long to be with you
When we're together.
Even more so when we're apart. 
So when I say goodbye,
I am happy
Because there I am
Basking in your presence and your smile,
Listening to your laugh.
And at the very same time,
I feel sad
Because I can remember longing to be with you--
Even as I am with you
I long to be with you--
And I know
That I don't want to feel that emptiness
The next day.
Or the next.
Or the one after that.
Or forever after.

So my goodbye with you is something both sweet and bitter:
It is sweet because for the first time it is bitter;
For the first time there is meaning
Behind that word goodbye.
But it is bitter because it is the first goodbye which is sweet;
The first time I miss someone enough to miss you before you leave;
But the root of such bitterness is that I miss you and you must leave.

So goodbye. 

More Than Just Sadness

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”   - Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss

I have recently come to know that someone whom I care about deeply has been diagnosed with depression, which is to say that this person had previously been diagnosed with depression, and I recently became aware of this diagnosis due to complications arising therefrom.  Out of respect for this person's privacy, however, I will refrain from revealing any more about the instant particulars. 

What saddens me most, though, is that this person is very reticent--afraid--to tell even those close to him or her about this condition because this person is afraid that others might think differently of him or her.  The first part is understandable, and does not bother me at all: it is perfectly normal for we as humans to experience some degree of reluctance--often a rather significant degree--when it comes to exposing our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, shortcomings and imperfections. I know that I would be reluctant to share nearly anything of such nature.  There is a problem somewhere, though, if our society has taught us to treat others differently, in an adverse manner, when we are granted access to and trusted with a tender and sensitive portion of their soul, or if our society has taught us to be fearful that others will treat us thus differently if we open ourselves to them. 

The problem, I assure you, is not depression.  That is not to say that depression is not serious and not an illness, for it is both.  As a society, however, we ought to teach ourselves and our children and our future generations that a deeper understanding of another person is not a license to either strike them where it would hurt the most or to treat them as anything but an ordinary human being.  It is possible that we have for the most part conquered the former already, but we certainly have quite a ways to go regarding the latter.  We also must come to understand that our weaknesses and shortcomings and flaws are not something we should be afraid of, for each of us has his or her custom amalgam thereof, and, while our problems are generally unique, having trials and difficulties is certainly a shared human experience. 

This is not to say that we should be revel in our flaws and parade them around as if we had achieved our most perfect state from our inception, sitting back doing nothing to change what might be changed or to better that which might be bettered--we must all strive to make the most of ourselves and do our best to overcome the obstacles placed in our path.  But we must not judge others for having different problems than ourselves. 

To all those with depression, in particular the person who inspired this series of thoughts, imagine that there is a food that you love.  Your favorite food.  You buy it in bulk whenever you can get it at the store, and sometimes that isn't very often.  If you had an infinite supply, you would eat it constantly and never feel sick because you would exercise to eat more without feeling sick.  Imagine then that, one day, you look on the nutrition label and you see that it contains an ingredient that may not be the greatest.  People may have told before and often that the ingredient might not be healthy.  You suddenly understand your favorite food a little more.  You might understand now why it tastes as it does.  Maybe you can't see how the ingredient affects the taste at all.  But the thing is, you don't stop eating your favorite food.  You look at the label, and tell yourself that what you learned was interesting and that you may not have expected it, but doesn't deter you from enjoying a food you have enjoyed so much and for so long. 

To me, this is what it like to learn that someone has depression.  I might understand the person a bit better, but I hope that I would never treat him or her worse for revealing a part of him or herself to  me.  And, as long as I am in charge of what I do, I don't intend to. 

That being said, it is important to remember that depression is far more than sadness:

“There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold-- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.”   - Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees

And, as it is related, I highly recommend this.  It is one of my favorites. 

 

Jeffrey R. Holland, "Like a Broken Vessel"

  “The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”   - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

A Rather Big Letdown; or, Nowhere to Go from Here but Up

So I have decided to start a blog.  Many readers may wonder why.  The author may then, in return, wonder why they are reading his blog (but will appreciate their reading of this blog regardless).  I have decided to begin a blog for a number of reasons:

1.  I am ridiculously bad at keeping in touch with people.  It just doesn't happen sometimes (by which I mean to say most of the time), and then, all of a sudden, there is an unending series of petitioners who wish to know how I am and what I'm doing and the all intricacies of my life.  This, I hope, will give them some sense of contentment, satisfaction, relief, or a combination of the three.  They ought to be warned, though, that they might just receive a double portion of my thoughts and hardly any happenings in my life. 

2.  I enjoy writing.  I like to think about and play with and experiment with the way in which words and sentences fit together and thoughts may be expressed.  In fact, I have been told that I should never stop writing, and I honestly have no intent to stop: I need only begin.  Maybe one day I will become a famous writer.  Maybe even win the Nobel Prize in literature.  But I'm not that good yet, and this project will either be the initial means of propelling myself towards that lofty dream, or it will be my consolation should I never make it quite that far.  Frankly, though, I wouldn't mind if it ended up somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.  For now, I will just pursue writing with the sentiment expressed by the beloved Teddy Roosevelt:

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell em, Certainly I can! - and get busy and find out how to do it.

Hopefully, as time rolls onward and these posts grow in number, they will become better and better.  Or maybe my idea of a good will incrementally sink and crumble as I discover the true difficulty of writing.  I would certainly prefer the latter. 

3.  I would like to be remembered.  I don't want that to sound arrogant or self centered, so maybe it would be better to rephrase it: I want to be able to remember myself; I want to create a record of my thoughts and musing that I and my posterity and all who wish to may see (I don't know why anyone else might want to, but maybe that will change in the unknowable future).  I think about things all the time, and I have discovered that I think about things differently from many--not that I think better, just differently.  When I confide my thoughts in others or share them aloud, decently often people appreciate them, and that is a pretty great feeling.  Maybe there are a few (maybe even more than a few) people out there who will appreciate my thinking, but, unless I voice my thoughts somehow, I will never know, and, if I don't thus voice them, all my thoughts will become lost and forgotten in the eventualities. 

Death comes to all But great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold. - George Fabricius

Maybe this will be the beginning of a vast, enduring monument.  Maybe it will be a single forgotten vase among ruins upon ruins, but I hope that whoever discovers it will treasure it dearly, however insignificant it may be. 

4.  Lastly, I have a couple of friends who have blogs, and, upon reading them, I decided that I ought to make one too.  It is a marvelous form of self expression where I need not be beholden to the opinions of any person--everything I write is piece of me, and those who do not want to read what I have to write simply won't.  The beautiful part is that nearly anyone in the world who does in fact wish to read these words of mine may do so. 

So this was my first post.  It was kind of like a mission statement, except that it had no clear goal.  It approached a sort of self-justification, except that nothing needed to be proved in the first place.  I simply explained to whoever it is that reads this thing a portion of how I think and why it is that I believe I want to write what I have written and am going to write.  I shared my thoughts and expressed my ideas.  One must wonder what a blog is for, if not for that. 

There is a chance that this will amount to hardly anything.  There is also a chance that it will amount to something, but then I will be forgotten.  This sonnet, which I love, by Percy Bysshe Shelley expresses an interesting sentiment along those lines. 

"Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away 

All ought to consider, though, whether it may be considered a success to have risen and fallen and left a shattered monument in a desert wilderness, or to have never attempted to get that far at all due to a fear of failure.  

It is not rejection itself that people fear, it is the possible consequences of rejection.  Preparing to accept those consequences and viewing rejection as a learning experience that will bring you closer to success, will not only help you to conquer the fear of rejection, but help you to appreciate rejection itself. - Bo Bennett

I have nothing to fear from beginning or starting or attempting.  The floodgates of my individual experience and the expression thereof will be opened and the inky deluges of my thoughts will flow forth.  I may have said absolutely nothing, and the current reader might never return.  But all this does not matter, for there is nowhere to go from here but up.