3 posts tagged “death”

I've been watching too many episodes of 'Six Feet Under'. I'm more that than a 'Sex and The City' girl (boy, do I need to get off my high horse). Death has always had a large effect on me. I was one of those four year-olds who burst into tears one day after happening upon a spontaneous actualisation of the meaning of death. Whilst reading a Beano comic book, of all things. I went into hysterics, bawling and pleading with my mother not to die or not to let anyone die. I don't think she took my toddler philosophising seriously but it still makes a funny story. 17 years later and I'm still having hysterics over pointless deliberations.

I first experienced death at 10 and till now, death still makes me feel the same way. Contrarily, I've liked boys since I was 5 and I'm about ready to throw in the towel. *laughs* Death does something to me. I'm not afraid of dying in the least, I don't care what happens but I do think it odd that the phenomenon of death moves me more than love. I'm an 'at-the-end-of-the-day' person and death is the seal, the ultimatum; the celebration and devastation that is never just about one person dying, but about an entire crippling universe. When someone goes, a piece of your world gets torn down. Heartbreak is when all the love you ever had, that you didn't know you even had for that one person gets turned inside out, bared raw and extrapolated till you can't extrapolate any more (which gets so messy). Death can make love generous. Love can be selfish because with monogamy - two people can make such a crowd. When someone dies, it's like an emergency or an ambulance. Everyone makes way for each other's differences, especially in grieving. You can scream and cry; get angry, get support, avoid support, be quiet, be loud, be out of line. Everyone's allowed to be their rawest selves and if love wasn't so different, I wouldn't think romance to be so artificial. One slip up in love and you're liable to be a psycho-bitch. What the hell is that? So fake one. -_-  Why are we excused to express ourselves with death but with love, it has to be some finite, specific way? No one's crazy when they're confronted with death, they have to deal with how the universe works; the world doesn't have as much of a support system for when you've broken your heart, or at least not one that extends past your best friends. Why? Because a break up is not the end of the world and life goes on? Love is far more fragile than life. Have you ever tried killing yourself? It's hard. Yet you can screw up a relationship completely just by saying the wrong thing. Fragile.

At least with death, you know it's done. Flogging a dead horse makes more than just an analogy of pointlessness. When someone dies, you'll wish and give anything to see that person one last time, even if it's just once. At the end of a relationship, of love, you can still get to the point where the idea of having to see that person again or wanting to see them just shreds you up inside. The possibilities of meeting become so grievous, it's almost wasteful. In death, you can't do much but be grateful. Am I wrong in relating love to death yet? How intricate, the design of love and artful, the product of a bored God. In the end, both entities demand change and sacrifice yet carry different consequences. With love, the 'end' is still mutable. You could still get back together: have tea together, go for a platonic hike up a mountain then never again speak to one another. So many ridiculous possibilities that you don't get with death, what a mess. Love can throw you into furious tangents or "lift (you) up where (you) belong". Yet the two complement each other well, sometimes. Love is not always known until it is lost. Death is the receipt of your existence. Love, however, sometimes has to be weighed and measured for authenticity or else you start wondering if it ever happened at all... because sometimes, those cheques bounce.

Sometime earlier this year, I chanced to meet Gene, a 62 year old man, on the New Jersey Transit. I told him that I looked forward to dying someday as a rite of passage. As though death could hardly be different than the day I first got my period. I hope so. I think it would be like a jab. It won't hurt much. You might even forget you ever got it and accidentally get a second dosage because you forgot about your first. Gene scolded me for being young and talking about death. Said the 62 year old man who also said that by the time I get to his age, I'd have to punch myself in the head just to get out of bed. Yeah I'd like to die some day while I still have the strength to feed and wash myself, thank you.

I'll never guarantee I'll understand love but by comparison, death does seem a lot simpler. At least it's a commitment. Or maybe love's just what you do until you die, then hopefully everyone you know will pick up where you left off. It could may well be as simple as that. Damnit, I hate when these contemplations get complicated. No one's going to read this. It's like a call sheet (inside joke).

I was in utter despair yesterday. While scribbling my fury into my journal on the train back to New Jersey, this older man came and sat next to me.

"What's that you're writing? A journal?"
"Yes."

Sometimes people disturb me when I'm writing in my diary, sometimes they don't out of courtesy. Sometimes it's invasive, sometimes it isn't. The man smelt of whiskey and cigarettes but he was dressed nicely enough so I took his gesture as being a friendly one. What can I say, I like my whiskey.

He was from Arizona. He spoke to me about his 29 year old son he was trying to bring home; a failed recovering drug addict. His daughter who he enjoys drinking wine with and her three month old son. We talked about life, cheesy as it sounds. I can have these conversations with 60 year old men and feel more myself than when I'm talking with anyone else because that's how I write in my journals. I write because I have ideas sometimes too complex to speak out loud but older men understand completely. I guess with older women there's a physiological aspect of it where we start to relate to one another. A maternal aspect that I'm not prepared enough for nor do I sense them as being universal enough for me to comfortably follow.

"Why do you write?" he asked.
"Because I there are some things that I can't say out loud."
"Like secrets?"
"Some of it. Sometimes it's just that the language or the level that they're on, I don't think my friends would understand or it would be an effort for me to make them to understand."
"But why do you write? I mean, you're happy with yourself, aren't you?"
"Most days, I am. Just like everyone else, I have my days... I write because I have a terrible memory."

I'm not as good at getting things out of other people but it was a great conversation. He missed his stop so I called him a cab.

"Do you ever read back to what you wrote?"
"Sometimes. I can't always because I'm not good with humiliation."
"Humiliation? What's there to be embarrassed about?"

He offers me a cigarette, which I accept.

"It's just that, you spend your whole life trying to get better. You go through things in the past, mistakes that were necessary but once that phase is over, it's hard for me to look back at it because I know now how I could have handled it better and it's a little embarrassing that I made these mistakes but I don't blame myself for it. I wouldn't be who I am now if it wasn't for them."
"That's right but it's nothing to be humiliated about."
"Besides, writing is important because even if I push that phase of my life away and it's almost impossible for me to look back sometimes, it's like I've paid my respects to who I was at that point in my life. Everything passes but that version of me existed and I have proof that it did."
"If I was fourty years younger, sweetie, I would love you."
"Do me a favour and tell the boys that they should know better."

While waiting outside my dorm, he found an old vinyl record in the trashcan which he recognised and I didn't.

"Once you hit 61, you're 21 (points at me). Once you hit sixty-one, you have to punch yourself in the head to get out of bed. You lose that youthful enthusiasm and you wake up wondering if you're gonna die yet. You anticipate it."
"I think I look forward to it."
"Dying? Sweetie, you don't wanna die."
"No. I definitely want to live but... in a nice way, I look forward to the idea of dying one day. I see death as kind of a rite of passage, like puberty or menopause."
"That's twisted."
"See, that's why I have to keep a journal."
"I like you."
"I like you too."
"You know life doesn't get any better than this, right?"
"I know. I really do. But you just have to keep making each day look a little more different."
"And you try."
"... and you try."

So he rubbed my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. When the cab came and left with his souvenir. I call it a coincidence that he found that vinyl. That conversation was supposed to happen. I wondered where he was the first time he heard the record. He used to play the guitar and thought about those days while he softly hummed songs he  forgot he knew.

The past week has been tricky but last night, although I haven't quite figured out why, made me feel better. It just showed me that I knew myself really well. That and I have the maturity of a 60 year old man. Coincidences come when a phase of my life is sealed or when change is imminent. I've moved out of my dorms, semester is over. Time to turn a new leaf, new continent over. You'd think that I'd still have plenty of time to start getting older but I rush things. I don't want to put my life on hold for anything anymore.

I've been having a miserable day so to distract myself from losing my mind this is the product of two hours of random thinking:

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Are all anecdotes fictional?

Even if an anecdote is based on a true occurrence, because all anecdotes are condensations of incidents. One can never wholly comprehend the entire event out of details that may have been left out or not, because of considerations which have yet or will never be considered. Also because of the infinite expanse of alternative perceptions, language, details and context will always be be left out when true events become condensed into the spoken word.

Ergo, if anyone would ask me if I prefer to documentary over narrative, I can easily say that there is no difference. After all, equal amounts of effort are put into the making of either. It's just that documentary or anything related to 'truth', education and information weighs heavier significance on our morals. I say morals because there is nothing that we do consciously or subconsciously that has been instigated without a certain measure of our beliefs and what we know. The closest thing we might have to re-representation however, I suppose, is unedited cinema verite.

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Marxism

I am opposed to the purest concept of communism. Indeed, capitalism is a monopolisation by greedy men wearing self-appointed hats, deeming themselves superior to the working and unemployed class. However anyone that can think that the exact opposite of capitalism, that is communism, must be an idiot as extremes benefit no one. Extremes are the either ends of opposites and when we are attempting perfection, note that perfection is a concept, not a single cold hard law. Everything in nature must have equilibrium. Living life under extreme circumstances of either capitalism or communism is benign. It is merely a swap of control and power when it is always that mother and child will learn from one another.

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Love, Death and of course, Religion

I watched "Waking The Dead" today and cried like a bitch. Maybe it's that I'm so affected by mortality that stories about lovers, where one of them dies, almost always get to me. I've always been easily affected by death. Maybe my soul mate is already dead. Or that I haven't met anyone new to love which means he has not come into existence in my life yet. No one can be alive if they have not been born yet.

Is it really that simple? That all you have to do is wait around for the right person, for the next milestone to happen? That sounds like such an uneducated assumption. It is a concept that emphasises the existence of fate and I find that really disturbing. I hate leaving my life to something else. I would hardly call it a higher power. I don't believe in a so-called higher power. I believe in a god in a why-not way. I don't think god is greater than me. If I had the same powers as god and you could tell between him/her and I, who does a better job, then there would be a higher power. I mean, if you think about it when you have athletic competitions they are divided into male, female, age and weight et al why? Because you can't compare and compete everyone in one go when we all have different assets. I don't feel like I need to regard god as a higher power when even if he really did create the world, I obviously cannot compare his power and mine. Am I supposed to be humbled? Instead of just being grateful, need I revere a doctor or lawyer for being able to do what I cannot? Supposedly I will not be given more than I can handle, so what purpose is there to asking for help through prayer? Furthermore I'm an existentialist. What use is there of considering all things but the fact that life is life and it does not need to be mystical to work? I don't require any more purpose to live than my direction in life. I don't need a religious god to steer my life.

The concept of a religious god is inane anyway. Variety in religion is like variety among football teams. It's cultural. It's based on what you were born into, who introduced you to the team/religion, where you were when you first discovered your love for that team/religion. It has little to do with truth or evidence especially since religion is about faith.

When someone tries to sell you any of the three main religions: Christianity, Islam or Judaism they always follow the same cyclical presentation: source. Source, where did the universe come from? Bla bla, facts of life discovered before refined science. They always use hard evidence with such conviction and when you ask them for hard evidence of anything else, you have to fill in the blanks with faith. If you could fill in the blanks with faith, why bother talking about fact in the first place? Why can't the origins of all existence, all our questions about anything and everything be answered with 'faith'? How does the balance between fact and faith bring you closer to the meaning of life? How different is that to the contrast between fact and fiction? Faith is imagination and therefore, consolation.

Even if they get the scientific things right like how fetuses are formed then how does that make the stories of the prophets true? It's like scientific fact is the hook and the rest is a short biography of the past couple of hundred centuries. But then again the church opposed Galileo Galilei's findings on the Earth's rotation, accusing him of heresy, when Albert Einistein considered Galilei the father of modern science. Now what? I can understand the need to feel a connection to a particular religion but how can one do so without considering that every one's choice of religion is pure circumstance, not entirely a decision made out of pure, calculated deliberation. I would at least submit to the idolatry of a placebo before which. I would much rather prepare myself throughout my life for err before aiming as high as attaining divine altruism.

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I hate the end of semester. I can't get myself together or much of a film crew for that matter. I can understand how everyone's so busy and everything here but do the rest have to be so fucking closed off? Bastards. Morons. Furthermore the course here basically requires you to be a one-man studio which is STUPID for film under any circumstance. All I want to do is graduate on time. Jesus fucking Christ is that so much to ask?

Fuck structural education. As if I didn't already have enough to worry about.