June 12, 2010

• The December 2007 Me

  I was responding to an email in which someone wrote about something that I vaguely remembered writing about on my blog. Thanks to Xanga’s new search your own blog feature I was able to quickly find the entry in which I mentioned the thing mentioned in the email.

  So I read it. And…. geez.  The entry kinda shocked me. It was an entry from way back on December 13, 2007. It was a long time ago.

  In reality probably nobody but me has ever read this entry. The original post only had one comment on it and since this was back before the “reply” feature was added to Xanga it was actually a reply to something I had commented on his or her blog and not at all a reply to what I had written. It’s before you had view counts too so I can’t even tell if anyone has even viewed it.  It’s a a really really long entry and it takes me a while to get to the most interesting points  so it would not surprise me at all if I’m the only one who has ever taken the time to read this entry in its entirety thus far.

  But I hope that changes. In re-reading this entry even though I barely remember writing about it and barely remember the events that triggered the writing of it, I still find the entry to be really really good. It’s meaningful. I think it has a good message and interesting ideas and was definitely worth writing. And it even has significance to me today that I could not have foreseen years ago when I first wrote it.

  Or maybe lots of people read it back in the day and just hated what I had to say so much that they had no desire to pick a fight with me by posting a reply. That’s possible too. If so. Well… meh. *shrugs*

  So I’m re-posting it in the hopes that maybe some of you will read it today and NOT hate it. Hopefully you’ll find some meaning or significance to it. Or if not then at least perhaps a little entertainment in it. Perhaps if nothing else you can marvel at how different my style of writing is today than it was 3 years ago. Or perhaps marvel at how similar it is.

  To me it feels really different. The kind of blogger I was back in December of 2007 was really different than the kind of blogger I am today. The things I wrote about were different. The way I FELT about the things I wrote about were different. And what they meant to me was even more different.

  And I really kinda miss that old blogger. I wonder what really happened to the December 13, 2007 version of Nephyo?  Why did he change? And I wonder if I haven’t lost something from back then. I feel as if maybe I’ve changed for the worse.

  It’s an important thing to contemplate because I’m kinda starting with a new and deliberately forced change in my blogging style right now. The new audio blogs and the more video embeds are part of that. I’m kinda pushing myself to be a little different and go a bit outside of my comfort zone and I have no idea how it will turn out.

  But reading my old blog reminded me quite forcefully of why I felt the need for a change. I haven’t really liked blogging like I used to like blogging lately. I’ve felt some of my blogs mattered, but they mattered only in a superficial way and only to other people.They didn’t really matter to me. Not in the same way my old blogs did. There was something sort of inauthentic about my blog over the last few months. It didn’t seem to reflect my inner mind as much as my old blog did. It was more about the surface thoughts that were of interest to me here and now and sharing the random tidbits of knowledge I’ve picked up in my daily wanderings. And while there’s certainly a place for that in blogging. It isn’t what I want my blog to entirely be. It’s just not as much fun to write that stuff. It’s too ephemeral. It doesn’t last.

  I don’t think if I were to look up any of my blogs from the last two or three months 3 years ago they would have the same impact that re-reading this blog from 2007 had.  And that’s what I want to change.

  I can’t go back the December 13, 2007 Nephyo. He’s gone. He passed away peacefully and the June 12, 2010 Nephyo was born out his ashes. But maybe the current me can learn a bit from his old incarnation

  And every once in a while I think it makes sense to honor those old incarnations of Nephyo by re-posting some of their better works from the age old days of yore.  So I’m starting with that blog I found today. It was called “Tragic Figures”.  Probably a bad title in retrospect. It should be called something like “Our Inner Tragedies”. In any case if you have an interest read on below the cut tag. Enjoy!

  [CUT-TAG="Read "Tragic Figures" December, 2007"]

  Tragic Figures
  Originally posted December 13th 2007 at 9:51 AM.

  I used to hate the show Smallville. I mean there were things that I thought were ok about it I guess or else I would have never watched it at all. You get the excessive eye candy and fan service, so I guess you could watch it just for that. In addition the season premier’s and finale’s are decent or at least a cut above the regular season episodes. If you even have the slightest passing interest in the mythology of Superman it can be a little interesting to see how Clark’s story unfolds and how they manifest his powers using modern day special effects. The season premiers and finale’s are good for that aspect since you get the cool powers stuff with a minimal of the soap opera fluff that takes up 99% of every other episode.

  But what I really hated about the show was the very premise of it. The idea behind Smallville is to make Superman more human and believable by showing how he grows up and all the hardships and sorrows he faces. And so throughout the series they play all this sappy music and over dramatize stuff and try to make you feel so sorry for poor poor Superman.

  And I just can’t get on board with that. I can’t suspend my disbelief.  He’s SUPERMAN for christ sake. What does he have to complain about? I mean really. What the heck is so bad about his life? Give me even ONE of his powers and I guarantee you I’d be dancing in the streets I’d be so happy. Super hearing, Super strength, X-ray Vision, Heat vision, Cold Breath, Invulnerability, Super Speed, Flight, the ability to heal by standing outside in the sunlight. Sheesh. What I’ve got to fight some super villains in exchange for those powers? Big frickin deal. Sign me up. I’ll take it in a second.

  It’s even worse because you the viewer *already* know how the story is going to unfold. When he’s done dealing with all these silly little childhood dramas, he’s going to be Superman, loved and revered by all the worlds people, savior of humanity many times over. He’s going to fall in love with the woman of his dreams and basically things will work out between them, more or less. We know this. We also know he’s going to get to live on a space station and hang out with super heroes  every day. How awesome is that? And he’ll even have a pretty nice day job as a reporter in the mean time.

  So boohoo Clark. Cry me a river. How are we supposed to believe his life is so tough because he has to deal with green cryptonite and red cryptonite and phantoms and a friend who betrays him and unrequited love and lost love and all the other nonsense they try to squeeze into the story to fill season after season of bullshit.

  What’s with this rant?  I have a point. I even think it’s a rather interesting point this time. Bear with me if you dare. I’m getting to it.

  Another show that created similar feelings in me was the show Heroes. In this show the character Claire is  the biggest example. She seems to whine and whine to me and I just don’t get what she’s so upset about. Her power is incredibly awesome! She’s like wolverine. Eternal youth, immortality, and her blood can be used to heal people. And she has an awesome dad who would do anything for her and on top of all that she  just happens to be incredibly beautiful.

  So when she spends half the first season complaining about how terrible it is to be different, I just rolled my eyes. And when she spent half the second season complaining about how terrible it is to not be able to be different I just wanted to gag. Her character is just a big stupid teenager cliche. It is a manifestation of the stereotype of all people in a certain age group being all “woe is me” all the time. And I just call bullshit on that.

  There are other annoyingly tragic figures in Heroes too. There’s Niki and Peter for example. But they at least have more reason to complain. I mean Peter is worried about a little thing like *exploding* because he can’t control his powers and Nikki has an evil psychopath living inside her for a while. Still, I think, even if I were them I’d be a little more positive about my lot in life. I mean they’ve got to take the time out every once in a while and look at themselves and think “Wow. I’m incredibly awesome!”  Why don’t they do that? If I had their powers I sure would.

  That’s why I like Hiro in that series. When he discovers his powers he gets happy. He gets excited. He’s mastered time and space! How awesome is that? That’s how you’re supposed to feel when you find out you have a super power. That’s how I’d feel. So what if I have to face super villains? And as for people potentially experimenting on me… well let them try! I’m the master of time and space after all! Bring it on!

  A friend of mine introduced me to the preaching of Joel Osteen. It isn’t usually my kind of a thing and neither of us are very religious but I occasionally find it interesting. He’s a very talented speaker and much of what he says is quite true. He reminds us of things that are obvious but that we nevertheless far too frequently forget.

  In the last episode of it I saw he was preaching about this topic sort of. He talked about how negative we are all in this society. And how important it is for is for us to sometimes take a moment and look back at ourselves and see the good in us. To stop and say “I did good” rather than keep saying “this sucks” or “I suck” or “Man I screwed up so bad”, etc. etc. That’s what I find missing in Smallville and Heroes. The characters rarely take a moment to pat themselves on the back or to look at all of the good aspects of their lives. Claire never stops and says “you know, even though all kinds of screwed up things are happening in my life, at least I can regenerate and whatever else may be true, that’s just frickin awesome.”

  But I said I used to hate these programs because of these aspects and that’s true. I don’t feel that way any more, or at least not as much. Why not? What changed? 

  Well I thought about this from a different perspective. Everyone I’ve ever encountered has had hardships and dark times and moments of sadness and vulnerability. Everyone I know has sometimes spoken about it or blogged about it or mopped about thinking about it. Everyone has a tragic aspect. A part of their life that they look at and wonder “oh why oh why did it turn out this way” and “if only it could be different”. 

  But you know for any given person there’s probably somebody out there who if they were to hear the story of your tragedy would think about it in much the same way as I think about Clark and Claire’s stories. “Oh big deal!” they’d say, and “What the heck do you have to complain about?”

  Likewise there’s probably somebody (and maybe a lot of somebodies) out there who reads my blogs and thinks “oh what a whiner!” and “geez, if I could write like him, I wouldn’t be complaining.”  And when I describe experiences and events that happen in my life they think “oh stop complaining! My life is SO much worse than that!”

   Just like I read many other blogs and think “well damn, I wish I could write half as well as that!” And I read about the extraordinary experiences others seem to be having, the incredible lives they seem to be leading even as they sprout their angst filled description of their hardships and sorrows and I think sometimes in my heart of hearts, sure I’d take that life. In a second. It isn’t half so bad as the writers make it out to be.

  Maybe there’s a theoretical worst life in the world that somebody has that nobody would trade for but for most of us I think we see our lot in life as bad because it’s the only one we’ve ever had. It’s our personal tragedy and as much as we lament over it, there’s somebody out there who would take it in a nano second.

  Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could do a sort of random life exchange. It’d be an opt in system of course.  IF you love your life as it stands you wouldn’t be forced to change it. But all the rest of us who at some point or another even if it is only for a single instant feel overwhelmed by the tragic nature of our experiences could just choose to be added to the life exchange pool. Then they’d just get a new life randomly assigned from amongst all the others who’ve opted in the pool.

  The interesting thing about such a system is that every potential life you could get is going to be tragedy in some sense or another. Somebody thought it was a tragedy and indeed tragic enough that they felt at some point like giving up and taking a different life.

  And yet… I wonder if it wouldn’t end up with people being generally happier? Everyone gets a new life and when they look at that new life they see it much more positively than the original occupant just because it’s different, just because it’s unique, just becuase it’s NOT their old life. The one they felt was so intolerable that they had to run away from it?

  Or am I wrong?  Would the people who engage in the exchange suddenly experience through comparison a greater appreciation for their OLD lives. So much so that they want it back? They might say “Man I didn’t realize how GOOD I had it before! What the heck was I thinking going into this life exchange?”  So maybe we have to add in a sort of 30 day life-back guarantee. Your life is reserved  for you for 30 days so you can jump back  to it if you want but after those thirty days are up your life might be given away at random to another life seeker. So you’d best decide well. Old life or new? Which do you want? It’s likely to be a tough choice but then again even if you miss your thirty day window, if your new life gets intolerable you can always re-enter the roulette and get another random life. Maybe you even get lucky and get your old life back or something even better.

  Anyway thinking about all of this lead me to start to doubt my earlier disgust at the depiction of tragic heroes. Maybe it’s ok, I thought, for Superman to be a tragic figure? And maybe it’s ok too for Nephyo to be a tragic figure? Sure other people have got it worse, maybe much much much much worse, but so what? Is it so bad a thing to see and recognize the tragedy in our lives and to feel bad about it every once in a while? Maybe that’s just a part of being human too?

  I’ll probably never like Smallville. It’s just too cheesy. And Heroes I only watch for the cool powers since the plot is never ever going to make a lick of sense. And maybe I’ll never be the hugest fan of Clark Kent or Claire Bennett, but I don’t think I’m as likely not to be disgusted by them anymore. They’re over dramatized, over idealized versions of characters, but even so they’re just like everybody else. Drama and tragedy. It’s not so bad. Is it?

  A friend of mine once suggested the idea that someone could be attracted or repulsed by the tragedy in another’s life. That the sorrow and sadness could appeal to you or it could push you away. And that a more tragic figure might be more preferable to some than a not tragic figure. Or a more tragic figure might be impossible for others to deal with than a less tragic figure. So it’s that idea of preferences I blogged about before (12/10). I’d never thought before he mentioned that that tragedy was a feature of people that could attract or repel. It makes sense though, but I just never thought about it in that way.

  And so I thought about this and wondered where do my preferences lie along the continuum of tragedy? Am I attracted to or repulsed by the tragic? My prior opinions of Clark and Claire seems to suggest a repulsion but at the same time many of my other interactions in life suggest the opposite.

  I’m not entirely sure the answer to that question, but I do think that at least understanding tragedy is really important to me. How the tragic aspects of someone’s story shapes who they are. How it makes them who they are and what they are and why they think the way they do and act the way they do. I really care a great deal about understanding people, especially people I come to care about. And I think understanding the tragic aspects of their lives is essential to understanding a person.

  More than that though, I do thing I have a lot of a low level attraction to tragic figures too. And yet I don’t think that’s weird or bad either. Think of it this way, would you enjoy a story that had no sadness in it? Would you care about the characters in a book if they experienced no sorrow, no angst, no fear, no dread, no uncertainty whatsoever? Would you keep reading if nothing bad ever happened to anybody and everything just worked out with a minimal level of effort?  I certainly wouldn’t. I would despise such a story. It would repulse me to no end.

  And it’s like that with people too. If I meet someone who just seems so dang insufferably happy all the time, it drives me nuts. I want to strangle them! I just don’t believe it! There’s gotta be something there that they are hiding I think. Life is never all sunshine and lolly pops.  Everybody’s got a tragic aspect. Everybody’s life has drama in it. I can’t confirm those statements with 100% accuracy since I haven’t examined every person’s life, but I believe it whole heartedly nonetheless.

  At the same time, I also think I have a low level repulsion for certain kinds of tragic figures too.

  Consider the short story “The Second Kind of Loneliness” (see yesterday’s post).  I’m sure most people end up reading this and end up thinking about how bad loneliness sucks. They will feel bad for the main character. Maybe they think that they can relate to his feelings. But overall they just think at how terrible it is for society to let someone become that lonely and how important it is for human beings to interact with people and become a part of groups. That old adage that human beings cannot survive alone. That’s the line of thought most people will have. Sure they may be a little disgusted by the choices the main character makes, but that feeling will be dwarfed in most people by how sorry they will feel for him. In short they will pity him.

  Which is exactly what he would have hated the most.

  Me, I too think that I can relate to this character. I think I can relate a lot more than most people. I felt exactly like he’s felt. I’ve been alone in the woods starring at the night sky isolated from the world and feeling that brooding loneliness. And I’ve been at a party or a gathering shy and unable to relate to anyone feeling that other kind of loneliness too. I’ve felt it far too frequently. And yet I don’t feel sorry for the main character in this story. Not at all. I don’t think what a sad life or how terrible that things turned out that way for him. Nor do I even particularly feel angry at him or disgusted by him.

  The main character’s problem is, in my opinion, not that he was lonely. That isn’t it at all. So many people are lonely and lonely in so many different ways but they deal with it. They live their lives. They find happiness or at least a level of low level joy to get them by. Somehow they cope. Why couldn’t this character?

  No, his problem is in my opinion that he lets his tragedy, the tragedy of feeling alone, become his entire life.  It became the focus of his existence. Nothing else mattered to him. He felt no other joys and no other pleasures and thought of nothing except in relation to how it related to his tragic loneliness. Every interaction he ever had made him berate himself for being too lonely, for lacking courage, for being too self-pitying.  Even out in the extraordinary expanse of space alone amongst the stars he can’t find simple appreciation of the beauty he sees. Rather the vast emptiness of space is but a metaphor for the emptiness of his own life. It’s all part of the tragedy.  The lonely soul who is so much more on the inside than anyone knows. As beautiful as the vastness of space, but just as empty too.

  He made another mistake too. When faced with this tragedy and letting it build up and become more and more a significant part of his life to the point that he couldn’t stand it anymore, instead of facing it, he did the worst thing he could possibly have chosen to do.

  He ran away.

  He thought he was running away from the loneliness. He thought that it was being around people having to interact with them, being awkward and shy and afraid were what was making him lonely. He thought he could run away from interactions and escape that second kind of loneliness. He thought he could escape his tragedy.

  But what he ended up escaping was everything else that was good in his life. He ran away from Earth and all its joys and pleasures, hardships and sufferings. He ran away from the chance to grow or change or become something else. Yeah he escaped those awkward moments when he might say or do the wrong thing, but at the same time he lost everything else too. Nobody could hate him or  be disgusted by him when he was alone on that star ring, but nobody could praise him or commiserate with him either. He abandoned his entire life. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And all that he was left with, ALL that he had left, was the thing he couldn’t escape no matter how far he went, no matter how far he ran. His loneliness. His tragedy. Because in the end when all is said and done, our tragedies are inside of us. You can’t escape them by running away. And in the end doing so only makes you feel worse. Much worse.

  Reading about this made me feel, not dislike, but a sort of low level aversion to this character. The opposite of the attraction I feel toward some aspects of tragic figures. The way in which he coped with his tragedy disturbed and repulsed me.  It just feels so wrong. There’s so much that is extraordinary in life to take pleasure in and to find joy in that you don’t need to become so overwhelmed by one aspect of your existence, even if it is such a big aspect as one’s feelings of loneliness.

  And you know you can do that with any tragedy not just the tragedy of loneliness. A person can become overwhelmed by a tragedy of loss or a tragedy of impending disaster or a tragedy of conflict or a tragedy of exclusion. Everyone has at least a little bit of tragedy in their lives, in their pasts, and in their imagined future. But not everyone lets this tragedy become their soul defining characteristic. Not everyone feels as if those feelings that arise from the tragedy in their lives are their only feelings or the only feelings that matter to them. Not everyone makes the mistake of running away from their tragedy only to find it an ever looming un-escapable presence dwelling in every tiny corner and recess of their minds.

  It’s doing that that creates the problem in a character like the main character of “The Second Kind of Loneliness”. It’s when you are consummed by your tragedy that mere sadness and doubt and fear gets transformed into shame and sorrow and bitter guilt. It’s then that you might contemplate killing yourself. Or it’s then that you can become as the main character in this short story did, a monster.  But if you let yourself be the totality of yourself. To see the good and the bad, the sad and the joyful, then I don’t think a little thing like feeling lonely or any other tragic character aspect can destroy you. It will only make you stronger.

  On the other hand now that I think about it, if it is a mistake to be consumed by your tragic aspect, I think it is just as much if not more of a mistake to overly ignore your tragedy. I don’t have any good short stories that illustrate that, but I have observed it in the real world.

  There are those who don’t want to live as part of a tragedy, don’t want to think about the bad things that have happened or are happening or might yet happen to them. They just shut it all out and pretend like nothing’s wrong. They want a world that is without that sense of darkness or fear within them. So they pretend it doesn’t exist or that it didn’t influence them to make them who they are. They want a world that really is all sunshine and lolly pops and they live a life in which they strive to bring that about in their daily livings.

  And I feel as much an aversion to that attitude as I do for the overly tragic figure. Because I know it just doesn’t last. Tragedy can’t be suppressed and repressed and made to just vanish and disappear. They don’t go away that easily. Instead they build up when ignored behind the scenes hurting you more and more until one day you won’t be able to take it anymore. The stress of trying to be something that nobody ever really is, the sorrow-free existence will drive you insane just like the excessive obsession with one’s sorrow drove the main character of “Loneliness” insane.

  It’s ok I think to every once in a while stop and say “Man this sucks!” It’s a good thing I think to every once in a while admit to yourself that you wish that things could be different and that you hate the way things turned out.  It can be an entirely good thing I think to one day go off somewhere and scream and scream and scream and shout and rage at all the things that aren’t the way you want them to be and that didn’t turn out quite like you wished and dreamed. Or to write long rambling blogs or journals about it. Or to find someone receptive and rail at them and tell them all about all the stuff that hurts.

  It’s ok to be pissed off about life. It really is. Doing so doesn’t mean your a bad person or that you are wasting your life. It isn’t really so bad a thing to pity yourself sometimes either. Doing so doesn’t mean that you aren’t making the most out of your existence. Doing so doesn’t always hurt you. Sometimes it helps. It’s a lot better than shutting it all in and pretending like everything is all always alright.

  I think it’s all just two sides of the same coin. Whether you are running away from your life in hopes of escaping your tragedy or you are running away from your tragedy in hopes of escaping your life it just won’t work. Running doesn’t help. At best it can give you a temporary reprieve. But at worst it can end up exacerbating the problems. Since your life won’t disappear and your tragedy won’t go away not as long as you live and breathe. But the running can make you feel terrible. I’ve done both of course in my short life time. That’s probably why I have an aversion to both attitudes. In my experience running away always feels worse by far than facing the thing from which I was running.

  I don’t know if I really said all the things I meant to say on this topic but I think I covered the important stuff. So I guess I’ll just end it right here. I’ll close with an amusing only slightly related youtube video just because.

  • 4:09 pm
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