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.