7.18

(introspection. may be an uninteresting read.)

"Driving home I see those flooded fields / How can people not know what beauty this is?"
-- Neko Case

For some reason I enjoy seeing the beauty in tragedy. It's a perverse consolation--that if there is some wonder and awe in suffering and loss, an ordinary and uneventful day must be full of such calm and gracious peace that I ought to truly enjoy life.

But I'm drawn to the horrific far too much to take pleasure in the mundane. Pain, at intense, distressing, dissociative heights, pares down the human soul to its barest and most beautiful elements. There is a truth in pain one is hard-pressed to find in a society full of insecurity and half-facts. People are usually humble when they are in pain, and may discover gratitude and openness. And when they do not, can not, or will not discover these beauties--well, it is easier to sympathize with some sad and shivering egoistic self than some cheating and wife-beating drunk who buries his muffled agonies in drugs and rage. I think sobbing is closer to pain than anger is, and I think it is much more interesting.

And that may be it. I sympathize better with the crying ones.

That is not to say that all of the shivering selves all reach profound epiphanies in the depths of their misery. And it is not the only reason why I am so perversely drawn to tragedy.

It is also that the self-denial that comes with terrific, blinding pain is less ordinary and far more interesting and revealing about humans in general. The convolutions people go through to survive. I mean--tentacle sex, Stockholm syndrome, autoerotic asphyxiation, the Stanford prison experiment--the list of the bizarre goes on and on. Akin to how medical anomalies can reveal so much more about how the body works.

But it is too easy for me to become wrapped up in tragedy. It grabs hold of my heart. It intrigues me. I justify long stretches of crying--slipping into depression, only unaware--by declaring I am only thinking about tragedy, inching closer to the truth that it contains. I am really only feeling tragedy. And then it overtakes me.

Silly for two reasons.

1. There is, obvious or not, just as much beauty (if not more) in events and environments less painful.
2. If there is beauty in truth and truth in tragedy, I cannot allow myself to become depressed by the tragedy. I may not be able to appreciate the beauty in tragedy without depression, but then I would not be able to appreciate the beauty in the rest of life, either. Nothing makes real sense and reveals real truths when you are depressed--life is distorted and blown out of shape to comfort the self, protect the psyche. So, dear silly self, become intrigued by the beauty and truth in something less sad.

Empathize with something that does not rack your soul so. I've a particularly virulent strain of empath-desire, though I've trained it to exist without guilt and unnecessary burden. Unless, that is, I am empathizing with a loved one--then it eats me, and I cannot continue living until I have found a solution or comforted or changed a perspective or temporarily mitigated the displeasure in daily living.

A pessimist said to me: I know it becomes such a weight. An optimist said to me: it is also such a blessing.

It simply is. And I deal with whatever pains and pleasures it deals to me.