Kraggh's Works ♫♪

The following is a worldview illustration, for worldviews are like tree trunks. The trunk begets the limbs which beget the twigs which beget the leaves, representing individual opinions and applications. In all its complexity, everything is derivative of the core idea, the trunk. Illustration enters into metaphor in the form of roots, which are the many arguments that support and form a basis for the worldview trunk. The argument here is made by comparing the end results of two classic literary figures, Der Übermensch and Superman. These two ideals make their cases for big ideas, including the place of humanity and its ultimate goal, but when tested one case should stand above the other. However, discussing humanity's placement and goals is a broad subject, so it is necessary to narrow matters down to a specific question that directly relates to the comparison at hand. Who is the real ideal for humanity? Thanks to the art of story, which highlights the logical outcome of such a question, the answer should be obvious. Superman is the true ideal for humanity and Der Übermensch is not.

When Friedrich Nietzsche composed the idea of Der Übermensch, what he proposed was a future where man grew beyond morality, as in theory man could do this if he was sufficiently evolved and morality was originally only a man-made tool invented for practical purposes. There are some who, in their own subtle ways, accept some of these notions, where there are certain extreme conditions that justify different standards for given individuals.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster played with this idea, except they did so with a clear mindset that Der Übermensch was a villain when they translated it to "Superman" and toyed with a comic where an evil psychic genius took over the world. For whatever reason, they turned this idea on its heel, transformed the character's mental abilities into purely physical powers, made the character a hero, and over time made him the complete opposite of Nietzsche's Übermensch, yet significantly keeping the name. In Siegel's mind, he was still tackling the idea of a supreme human, but he came to a radically different interpretation than Nietzsche.

The secret to Superman's greatness is that no matter how powerful he is, no matter how much society changes and no matter how advanced his Kryptonian technology is, he is still bound by eternal and unchanging laws of morality. He is always subject to the law and to ethical obligations ultimately greater than him. The Superman code of conduct has gone strong for seventy-four years as of this writing and has proven its worthiness. The moral to take from him is that if he isn't above morality when he is theoretically evolved to a state of perfection mere mortals can only dream about, then nobody can. He doesn't need them; morals don't serve him, yet ultimately his life holds more meaning when he serves the values he's subjected to.

Meanwhile, Superman's archenemy is fittingly an Übermensch archetype. Lionel and Lex Luthor are, after all, far too sophisticated for the simplistic morals that bind ordinary men. Through the force of their will and determination to find ways to get ahead, they surely demonstrate old conventions obsolete. Standards that bind men like Jonathan Kent are nice, but they're not for Luthors. A Luthor is above the normal concerns of humanity because they are, after all, not normal humans but men who reign supreme in their self-built empire. They deserve that break, and as a sign of their strength they deserve to create their own model for ideal behavior that suites their own vision.

Good for them, except no matter how well they tame their own minds like good Neoplatonists and conquer irrational Freudian psychology based around reproductive instinct, these men and their morality are still subject to reasoning based on basic animal instinct known as the drive for survival. Der Übermensch thinks that he has become like Plato and moved on to that higher realm where the mind departs from matter and the Cave is a thing of the past, and yet no matter what the Luthor's philosophies embrace what is inherently an attribute of survival instinct when they seek self-advancement. Supposedly the prudent man knows to confirm his security, yet he struggles for naught. Just one look as William Cullen Bryant's poem "Thanatopsis" and this point drives itself into certainty. These men struggle against Death, but Death always claims them in the end. How, then, are they being winners by playing a losing gambit?

The common man will never be anything but the common man. He will die somehow or other, and as the ages pass memory of him will fade away as the people who laid him into the ground join him in turn, leaving him no sense of worldly survival whatsoever. Any morality he invents will die with him. There is no empowerment, only false promises. Meanwhile, Superman and his family on the farm held communion with something that never dies, a morality above man. Who wouldn't consider it a privilege to serve such a fine cause? To have that to their names when they pass into that mysterious realm, they can more truthfully say that they lived before they died.

24601

• One thing I thought was cool about the opening to Superman Returns is that there is a hint of Also Sprach Zarathustra from 2001: A Space Odyssey in the Kryptonian Fanfare segment as the archived voice of Jor-El says that "You will travel far, my little Kal-El".
  
• Now, rewind a bit, to the point where you're now at a point of time before this movie. In fact, we're going back in time before Superman comics. "Superman" is a rough translation of Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch (it can also be translated as "superior man", "over man", and "above man"), which initially inspired the comic character when Jerry Siegel imagined him as a villain, but then he completely changed him and turned him into a hero on the polar opposite end of the spectrum. Nevertheless, Superman owes his inspiration to Der Übermensch.
  
• Nietzsche wrote about Der Übermensch in a book called Also Sprach Zarathustra.
  
• Fridge brilliance!

On another note of fridge brilliance, "Lois" is a Greek name that roughly means "desirable/agreeable", but another interpretation is "Superior", i.e. "Super"! I just find that awesome.

Looking at superhero movies these days, among other franchises with ongoing characters, life has been a bit uninspiring. Famous personas are getting rebooted left and right, yet even though many of these movies are good, very few of these movies dare to create the definitive versions of their characters. I'm disappointed to see what Zack Snyder seems to be aiming at with the upcoming Man of Steel movie, which seems content to make it good but not great. I keep on imagining what the definitive version of him would look like and how I would direct the films, and I fear that his definitive incarnation will never come in my lifetime, or worse that his bright light will be snuffed out of society decides to take the route of Der Übermensch and consider timeless morals obsolete. This is a great concern of mine. Yet, I speak to the public today not about comics and movies, but of life. I look at my own, at the way that I live, and wonder what the definitive version of my life will be. Unlike movies, I only have one shot at this.

There is a prevailing philosophy today in society, one that is inherently selfish and yet unquestioned. The conventional wisdom follows that when they graduate from high school, people should go to college and follow their dream job, because nothing is more important than following your dreams. The truly important things in life are doing the things that you love with the people you love. This is not only happiness, but the meaning of life.

From the standpoint of older morals, this is a frightening development in society's development. It means that the self is the most important aspect of life, that our happiness is our primary concern. This idea is a sacred cow, and found no one else speak contrary to the attitude so my perception of life wasn't balanced, and unfortunately it took me until the age of nineteen to gain independence from this contemporary worldview.

I know what I want to be with my life. I want to be an altruist, someone who lives for others, regardless of whether or not gain any satisfaction during my lifetime. My model and inspiration is George Bailey, who dreamed of becoming a great builder and had his own vision of how he could make the world better, but resigned reluctantly to banking when his father died because it was the right thing to do. Had it not been for the famous "never been born" act, the route George's life took would seem preposterous to modern viewers, who would have considered it a tragedy that he never got his dream job. Yet by showing how he made the world a better place by living for others, by showing his true impact, Frank Capra showed that George Bailey's life was a bright light, and that he was blessed to know that he found his own definitive story. His life was indeed a wonderful life.

In my life there are many desires. My passion is for writing. I want to create many definitive stories and beautiful bodies of work. I wouldn't mind becoming a director and inventing amazing moving pictures that reinvent cinema. I would also like to have a healthy family and start it early on in life so that I can live to see my grand-children have children. Yet, those are selfish and unlikely desires, and they can wait. Maybe I'm meant to dedicate my life to my ideals. If I live for my family, then I live for my sister, and my sister's birth represents to me the hopes of the entire nation, so therefore my duties lie solely to God and country. There are things bigger than me to live for. This land needs heroes, and I'm willing to sacrifice myself through my work to be like those heroes from the greatest generation. My life is about service, and for me I think the best place for this might very well be in the organization called "the service". There are other things I could be, but maybe this is my calling.

Life isn't about personal happiness. True happiness is what Aristotle called the good life, eudaimonia. Happiness isn't pleasure, a worldly sensation subject to time. It's an ultimate end. A person can't be happy at any one point; it's really a matter of whether their life was fulfilling or not. Life isn't about getting old doing a job you enjoy; it's about growing up and sacrificing everything in faith of what you believe in.

It would be nice if everyone else could have wonderful lives, but people's concept of wonderful has changed. Yet there is and always will be potential for a more wonderful world, in the sense that George Bailey would be proud. Children and young adults just need that one mentor, that one voice somewhere telling them that they can answer to a higher calling, something higher than what they can make up for themselves. So long as that voice is somewhere, there's hope. Even if it's only a whisper, even if it fails to produce another Greatest Generation, if someone somewhere is inspired to discover the meaning to his life, then the whispers were worth it.

One of my favorite books is Fahrenheit 451. There are plenty of books out there, bundles of paper with words on them, that have good stories, but this is one of the few that really tackles what the art of story is all about, especially within its respective genre of science fiction. Being a philosopher by nature, works like these are the ones that appeal to me. It really gets me thinking about why I read and why I look to the art of story, why it's one of the few things that we as a society still believe in, because it's not enough for me to be entertained but to know why I'm being entertained.

One of my favorite parts is when Professor Faber describes books and what's so special about them. It's not just the paper, but what's in them. They have quality information. They have ideas. They provoke thought. All these qualities dry out in the form of ink on paper, and since paper is more patient than man it gives us the gift of leisure. Leisure to digest our knowledge, leisure to analyze new ideas, leisure argue with the book, to beat down the book, or to stop the book halfway through and reread a favorite passage. Where's the humanity in just taking in data and storing it? We're not meant to be that passive. The author dedicated his or her time to making something that will provoke the reader, not just so that the story could exist as a meaningless jumble of words that describe a meaningless jumble of events. Therefore, the reader shouldn't get lost in the book but use the book to bolster their own sense of individuality. No good work can exist purely for entertainment value, because then we must ask "what is entertainment?" Is it merely passive observation, because when you get down to it a story is just a bundle of events, or is it something more? I'm inclined to believe in the latter, that there's a reason why we find stories entertaining, why we love it when the knight slays the dragon and the princess outsmarts the villain, because those ideas mean something to us. Somewhere in the back of our minds we apply that reading to ourselves, and even the simplest entertainment, such as the victories of the knight and the princess, trigger some sort of thought such as "I believe I could do that."

In a more recent edition of the book, there's also an interesting critique from the author Ray Bradbury in an interview, one that I have often thought back to when critiquing art:

Interviewer: There seems to have been a decline in standards of journalistic objectivity, to put it mildly.

Bradbury: It's not just substance; it's style. The whole problem of TV and movies today is summed up for me by the film Moulin Rouge. It came out a few years ago and won a lot of awards. It has 4,560 half second clips in it. The camera never stops and holds still. So it clicks off your thinking; you can't think when you have things bombarding you like that. The average TV commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred and twenty half second clips in it, or one third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for our thinking.

I remembered this answer while pondering how to describe the style Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". Listening through it several times, I noticed the complexity of the background music. I couldn't pick out any instruments; it was a blanket of white noise, an overwhelming digital atmosphere. Of course, I think that makes the song popular, and I don't think it devalues the song. The more I listen to it, the more I actually like it. Atmospheric music, after all, doesn't necessarily negate thinking and it has its purposes. Some would say that the point of music is to satisfy the senses.

Yet Bradbury's ideas came back to me, and I remember the importance of this philosophy. It hit me again when I discovered Fun's acoustic version to "We Are Young". I loved the original and considered it a masterpiece of exciting quality music that bucks the trend of contemporary chart songs, but I fell in love again when I discovered their far humbler rendition. I like how the emotional quality is so different than the main version. The meaning comes out in a new way, especially when I can hear the imperfections in their voice. It's a paradox, but in this case an imperfect voice is the perfect voice, for it's truer, more human. It means that the song doesn't exist just to sound pretty, but has a purpose. Then I hear the slower tempo, the personality behind the voices, their understanding of their own art, and even though I was happy with the original with all its jubilation and positive energy, even though this version wasn't really needed, the world of chart hits is better off for it.

These thoughts I take with me as I pursue my various arts. It's a big world out there and I don't want to waste any moment of my life dedicating myself to smaller arts. From my drawings to my stories to my poetry, hopefully I build works that carry some small fire of relevance. Maybe I will never light a cauldron like great writers such as C.S. Lewis did, but maybe I can relay the torch to the runner who will.

Special thanks to my cousin for being a friend and fellow traveler.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!
Gonna make the Batman dance
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!
Gonna make the Batman dance

Ha ha hahaha!
Haha hahaha!
Go-tham muhaha!
Gonna make Batman dance

Ha ha hahaha!
Haha hahaha!
Go-tham muhaha!
Gonna make Batman dance

I'm laughing smugly, I'm laughing a wheeze
I'm laughing as I bring Gotham to its knees
I'm laughing of
(of-of-of a little shove)

Your childhood trauma burned you like a brand
You're not like them, your rage is just canned
A little shove
Just. A. Shove. A little shove.
(Of-of-of a little shove)

You know that I want juice?
And you know that I need juice...
A juicy bat, so Batman dance!

You have your code, but I'll throw you a wrench
I, like you, don't leave a thing to chance
(Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)
I'll pull you down to meet me in the trench
A freak like me in this circumstance

(I'll pull at his strings and make him do things)
He would never do in good conscience
(I'll cut off his wings and see if he sings)
I'll make the Batman dance

Ha ha hahaha!
Haha hahaha!
Go-tham muhaha!
I'll make the Batman dance

I'll be your horror, I'll be your decline
'Cause we're both criminals, I've just embraced mine
You need a shove
(You? Made? Of? A little shove!)

They think we're crazy, the frightened public
Think you're a freak like me, and they'll all panic
They need a shove
Here. We. Go!
A little shove!
(What are they-made-of? A little shove!)

You know who you are
(Cause you're a freak like me!)
And you know I can make you
I'll make you dance, Batman, dance!

I want your hatred and I want your attention
Look at me, I'm gonna break your stance
(Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)

I want you to hit me so you can break your pledge

I'm gonna make Batman dance

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Gonna make the Batman dance
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Gonna make the Batman dance
Ha ha hahaha!
Haha hahaha!
Go-tham muhaha!
Make the Batman dance

Walk, walk, unstoppa-babely
Work it
Move that bat crazy
Walk, walk, unstoppa-babely
Work it
Move that bat crazy
Stand, stand, immova-babely
Lurkin'
You're a freak, Bat, like me!

A maddening shove sends you of the ledge
Are you made of a type of steel that bends?
À contrecoeur
Vouz tombez avec moi
À contrecoeur
Let's see if he bends

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

I'm your consequence

(Gonna make the Batman dance)

Let's see if he bends

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Wanna make the Batman dance

(Gonna make the Batman dance)

I'll make the Batman dance!

I'm gonna shove you right off of a ledge

To do things against your conscience

(Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)

I take white knights and break their pretentions
You and me complete each other in this dance

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

I'll make Batman dance!

(Gonna make Batman dance)

I'll make Batman dance!

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

I'll make Batman dance!

(Gonna make Batman dance)

Ha ha hahaha!
Haha hahaha!
Go-tham muhaha!
Gonna make Batman dance

When I revisited my old hometown college there was a poster up on the walls for a choir group called the Canons. It was a very simple poster with some information and a picture of a very pretty girl on the front (she had short hair, which is an uncommon fashion among girls that I personally find very attractive), except for some reason her wonderful features were covered by a big circle-slash NO sign. That kind of annoyed me and I wondered why it was there, so I read the headline that went with it.

"Want to sing but don't want to go solo? Join the CANONS."

Okay, I guess it made sense. They took a picture of an individual, as opposed to a picture of a group, and put a NO sign over her. It really wasn't the best visual way to represent the canons, but whatever. I wasn't complaining, because the girl was attractive. For the rest of the extended weekend I would always glance at the poster. If I was going to that college, I would have joined the Canons just so I could flirt with her.

Later the NO sign made more sense to me when I read the rest of the information and realized that the headline and the picture weren't what went together, but the picture and the details in the description.

"The Canons is an all-male choir dedicated to the arts of music, camaraderie, and wooing women."

So basically, the picture meant "No women". I got it. That was unfortunate. I guess this girl wasn't in the choir. She probably wasn't even a member of the college and was just a pretty face that someone had pulled off the internet. Still, at least it had got me to notice the poster and realize that there was an all-male choir. What I had really hated about choir in high school were the girls. I have nothing against the opposite sex, but when I was new to the choir business the sounds of female voices naturally dominated over the men's, especially since girls took up the vast majority of the choir. I figured I would much rather be in an all-male choir. For one, there would be so much less drama. Maybe it's just a guy thing, but being around girls too much can sometimes get super annoying. So basically, maybe I'll join the Canons if I end up transferring to my hometown college.

Then still later it finally hit me. I groaned. I face-palmed. I pulled out a bottle of brain bleach.

The pretty poster girl was Justin Bieber.

Here's a post in response to this entry. I thought it was worth reposting as its own entry. These thoughts are incomplete, by the way, so feel free to add to them.

I think you're just better able to express your thoughts. It doesn't make you a different person: you just find that you have a different way of interacting between environments. I don't see myself as being different people between my blog and my regular life either, just that I've found more than one way of expressing myself. My blog and my comments on other blogs is basically me typing out my thoughts in a slightly more organized matter than I would in real life, where I say more or less the same things to express the same core thoughts.

Meanwhile, if you knew me, you would know that I don't really care about the norm so much. I do, in a sense, and I really went with the flow for my senior year of high school, but I don't let social norms dictate the ways I express myself when I deem it necessary. I love bowties and Superman. Most people know that. They may not be what everyone else is into, but the world weary know that not everyone can be the same. Some people have asked me "Why?", as in "Why are you like this?" I tell them that it's because I'm just that guy.

We're all different. The sooner you realize that the sooner you'll be comfortable with expressing yourself. Look at the person across the hallway and realize that he or she also has some unique interests that you might not be interested in. Maybe football isn't your thing, but that doesn't stop you from judging people who find that athletics is part of their identity. Then there are people who are into anime, which I think is weird, but I guess there will always be people who will enjoy anime so I shrug it off. It doesn't define them, and they have every right to have their own interests. It would be boring if all my friends were too much like me, and I like it when they're open about their interests so that I know more about them. In fact there's a girl I'm thinking of asking out on a non-romantic date just because I have a hunch that she's completely different than me and has interests and views that I won't think are cool, but I want to find them out anyway because I don't want her to just be a face in the hallway. I want to know her better, just as I want to know everyone better in this new setting.

This diversity is good. It makes us more world weary if we are aware of it and it lets us better know how to handle each other. When you add in your own diversity, you attract new sorts of people. For example, I never would have attracted the friendship of multiple nerds if I hadn't worn bowties, and I have started many superhero debates by wearing my Superman shirts. That taught me something about the interests of others, and I never would have learned these things if I hadn't dared to express myself first.

Just some thoughts. I hope you find them beneficial.

I was told to write a brief testimony in class starting with the phrase "Life hit me hard when". The teacher said it was okay to write something fictional if we didn't feel like sharing our actual experiences. So I wrote a note at the beginning of my writing:

"The following journal entry is a fictional account, due to the author's current inability to express his own feelings directly. Instead, he has opted to write about the feelings of an imaginary individual whose experiences and emotions he shares in a more general sense."

I wrote the rest up in five minutes. In-class writing is so much easier when you have a keyboard at hand. Anyway, the next time class met she handed the writing back to me and told me that she thought it was plagiarized because it didn't sound like the way I normally talk. Dude, how is she supposed to know? I hardly talk in her class, let alone in the way that I normally would have talked when in my own element. Meanwhile, the fictional account comes from the perspective of someone who's writing her thoughts on paper, which is far more patient than man. I think that our thoughts naturally come out differently on paper than when we express ourselves verbally. Just saying. The language I used didn't seem all that unnatural to me, but she kept on emphasizing that I be natural. Well, I got a perfect grade on that miniature assignment anyway, so I'm guessing she was just looking for something to criticize.

Anyway, this little bit of literature is based off of a character of mine, Nixie from the IDES continuity (not that anyone has been keeping track), and I wrote it thinking that I was going to share it with you guys anyway. Enjoy!

Dear Journal,

Life hit me hard when my parents got divorced. I was lucky I was eleven and old enough to appreciate the reasons. My poor brother Mickey never heard of the concept before. To imagine Mother and Father officially apart must have been alien to him. I at least saw it coming. Dad was never around home. He was married to his work. I guess he loved us in his own way, but he was silent and didn't talk to us. The most I ever saw of him was around the holidays, but even then he was a man of few words. He would mostly let Mom talk to us, and when he spoke on his own it was usually only to solve disputes between me and Mickey.

It still hurt that he didn't know how to love us in the way that we wanted. I love him, too, but I just don't know how to have a relationship with him. He's a very smart man, so in part I found that I could connect with him. In some unspoken way, he understood me, understood my desire to learn, to sharpen my mind. Mom understood, too, but in a factual way, like it was cute, but it wasn't a reality she shared with me first-hand. With Dad, I guess he saw a bit of himself in me. I didn't know how to acknowledge that and still don't. I'm definitely different and set apart from him, but he's a fundamental part of my existence, half the story to my very origins in this universe. Yet, I can't have a relationship with him?

The saddest thing is that things aren't very different. I don't live with him anymore, but I still see him just as often. he and Mom merely live in different houses. The biggest change is that I don't get to see Mickey at home anymore. Now I have to look him in the eye and know that I get to live with Mom's attention and he doesn't, that his life at home is empty and lonely. Then i can't help but wonder if it would have been better if we switched places, for he surely needs mom more than I do, and if anyone can feel a bond with Dad it's me. How can I be a comfort to Mickey? When I go to school, will I be his proxy mother? I'm too young to be feeling this much nostalgia for a simpler life.

Love,

Nixie

Dear Blog,
It just occurred to me that my sister celebrates her golden birthday tomorrow, which officially makes her a preteen and separates her from the tragic events surrounding her birth by more than a decade. September 11, 2001 is today a day a mixed feelings for me. While thousands of people died, my mother was in the hospital pushing a new life into the world with all her might. In all this, I was in my aunt's custody, being told to watch the news for homework.

I knew then just as much as I know now that it was a day I would never forget, and the circumstances for my family especially were unique. I knew that celebrating my sister's birthday would conflict with the need to mourn the lost, and that the mourning would feel strange as I reminded myself that there was reason to be happy. Ten years later, on the Tin Anniversary of the attacks, I could say that I appreciated the feeling and all its complexities more so than I had originally conceived them to be, but from the start I was still on the right track.

Every time September 11 rolls around, the alienating bittersweet feeling captivates me for the entire day. I always write a journal entry about my feelings. I always stop by a half-raised flag and hold my hand over my heart for a minute in solemn silence. I contemplate on the loss, but then I remind myself that here in America, as is the case with my sister, there is always hope, even in the darkest of days. After all, the smoke rising from the World Trade Center couldn't blot out the rays of the sun. Then, usually, I cry.

This is my sister's day. That's a fundamental relationship. So is the relationship between man and country. On September 11, I find myself at my most human. Everything I stand for, everything I believe in comes to a halt, as if time stood still for 24 hours just to state me in the face, and so I can stare back. Time doesn't say anything to me; it just looks knowingly at me, nods its head, and continues on before the silence becomes awkward. All the goods and evils of the world - the things that I live for and the things that I fight for - pull at me in opposite ends and stretch me out. Then the most important element of my humanity rises, where I am pulled in a third direction to rediscover my relationship as a man with God. I'm a believer in that perfect plan of his, whatever it may be, and I believe that he can hit seventy times seven birds with one stone and that these confusing events were all somehow meant just for me. Somehow the craziness of the world is meant to help me grow as a person and call me to a higher destiny.

In its own subtle ways, September 11 helped to define me. It's not on a daily basis, but I recall being an eight-year-old boy and thinking that I wanted to serve my country. Normal men grow up to fight for small things, like impressing a loved one, but they are capable of so much more. As it happens, I too live for loved ones, such as my sister. She is indeed a very special person and with living for, yet she is also a symbol of this country and its needs. I can't celebrate her birth without also thinking of my obligations to my larger family, my entire country, and the day it needed the love of its children the most. Maybe this is my calling.

Tomorrow I wear white. Johnny Cash was right when up front there should be someone in black, and I respect the fine young men of this country who cry with those who weep. This country deserves BZP Lovers who remember the poor and downtrodden and come down to them. Tomorrow is time for that. Meanwhile I, for very similar reasons, will wear white. I wear white out of hope that we will see brighter days. I wear white to remind myself that there is comfort even in sadness. I wear white because my humanity depends on it. I wear white because Johnny Cash wears black for me, but most importantly I wear white because all I have is prayer. I pray for the lost and the lonely who suffer from September 11, 2001, whose lives are eternally filled with an empty seat at the table, and I pray for my sister. Happy birthday.

Sincerely,
Monosmith

So now that I'm done with the melodrama of high school and casual friendships that come together due to circumstance, I figured that it's time that I actively invested in my friendships, maybe even in a non-Platonic relationship for once in my life. Here at WIT, it's about an hour's drive away from home. A friend of mine - let's call him Sky - commutes from my home town and has an open offer for letting me carpool with him. It has been a bit of a hassle to make sure that I meet up with him at the right times so that I don't miss out on the offer, because he leaves without waiting, but I like that. It means that the responsibility is completely on me. It also means that I'm actually putting some investment in my friendships back at my hometown college.

When we arrived home, they dropped me off at the college, nowhere specific. I walked along its campus and was killed, resurrected, and killed again by the nostalgia. It's only been one summer, but the college classes I took here, the friendships I made, and the very spirit of the landscape effervesce with warm memories. I didn't know how much I missed it until I returned, and I realized that I was home.

Returning to my local college was a distant dream before, something I thought was a nice idea but not all that emotionally significant, but now that I've gone other places I want to go back so bad. The people in population centers are so different. I live in a see of people living for themselves. It feels so empty to me. Back at the private college, it's very much a different atmosphere. Forget that my hometown is by its nature academically very ambitious: the real guts of the matter is that the people I met in my senior year of college were dedicated to charity, and old-time egalitarian American ideals prevail. I honestly didn't think that the atmosphere would be that different between a private school and a community school, but apparently it is in my case.

I was hit with a second wave of nostalgia when I heard loud cheering and realized it was coming from the football field across the street from the campus. I ran over and climbed the fence (ah, the good old memories of sneaking into football games), and I found a place in the stands next to a group of old friends, including my cousin and my best friend from high school. We had a few meaningful conversations, including how weird it was to be sitting where we were.

Seriously, it was weird. The class directly below us is now the senior class, but I've always remembered them as being younger. It's like being a parent and still thinking of his children as babies even once they're reached adulthood. Meanwhile, another younger cousin of mine scored a touchdown. A lot of people cheered, including a new class of freshman I have absolutely no familiarity with. I'm now some old misfit who no longer belongs. I wonder if I can still fully call this place my home.

Here's the thing about nostalgia: even if we appreciate the moment, once the moment is gone we miss it. We think "ah, those were good times." Does that mean we want times to be like that again, or do we wish we could literally go back in time and live it over, or live it again but change our decisions? Do we desire to have that time in our life as if it's a ball we can hold in our hands, a physical object that we can put in our pocket? Why isn't enough that we can watch old video game recordings? Do we want to continue the friendships and the experiences, even though they no longer serve us? The person becomes alienated from himself, no longer belonging in his own life.

Forget basic reproductive instincts and love - I believe that the most irrational human behavior is nostalgia. It can make even the bad times look good. It can drive people crazy as they dwell in the past, which they can never return to. We have survival instincts to keep us alive, but it seems that the only reason we want to keep on living is so that we have more and more memories of times that are now effectively dead.

I wish life was still simple. Certainly, you're only ever a child once. My childhood memories collectively still live in me. In many ways I am still a child, in addition to being an adult once adult memories are included. I sometimes wonder if that child is static, nothing but memories, or still has a mind of his own.

Continuing to feel nostalgic was no problem. The rest of the night was spent that way. I later returned to the local college to find college friends and see which high school friends stuck around. I already knew a few, most of which were from the nearby Christian school. I mainly talked to the people I knew directly from the college, however, and I found many of them that night.

There was...Dash, Ana, Katrina, Wendy, and Mark, among others. These names would mean nothing to the random reader, but they mean a lot to me. It was nice to discuss a variety of things, from my personal feelings of the night to movies to philosophy. Sometimes we simply recounted old conversations. Why those are even relevant I don't know, but I think nostalgia comes into play. Again, I am perplexed by the nature of this drive.

Do these past moments define us, or are we defined by who we strive to become?

Meanwhile, the party dissipated half an hour to midnight. I still stuck around for an hour more, made a few new acquaintances, and wallowed in bittersweet feelings. Gradually my mind made itself up. My heart has an anchor connecting it here. My convictions went to "maybe" to "I will definitely try".

Then I met someone named Megan. Every Megan I ever meet ends up being cool and dark-haired. The trend remains unbroken. I was talking with some other guys and said that I just instinctively loved everyone on campus, like I could just give someone a hug. She walked up to me a half a minute later, which confused me, and then she gave me a hug. While of course I found it awkward because I was caught off guard, I didn't object and I hugged back, because I meant it when I said that I could just about hug someone.

Meanwhile, the next day I spent time with a few Calculus friends and a fellow Who-vian. We ended up watching the Season 7 premier episode at a professor's house (where I met another good acquaintance with a few good memories). It was all cool and my only regret was that I didn't bring one of my bowties. There was also a friend who went emo, and I found myself missing the way he was before when he was more of a non-emo nerd. Why do I care about the way he was, though? Is that relevant? As Totall Recall ponders, "the past is not important", and what matters is who you are right now. Why do I continue to see him as if he's still the shaggy-haired nerd? It's part of his memories, I suppose, but are memories just some dead substance a person happens to carry around with them like undergarments?

If only I could be like the Doctor and just zip through the time vortex and stay with people as I knew them. Except that would never work, because in science fiction the simple answers never have simple results.

The next day, Sunday, I woke up early and went through all of my morning rituals. I went to church an hour early and met Lois. She's a part of the band (it's one of those churches) and was rehearsing early as well. We had a nice discussion about a wide range of topics including Superman, Carpe Diem, living selflessly, school, the past, the present, and the future. I guess I can have those conversations with just about anyone because people have now accepted that this is the way that I talk, but it's so much more rewarding with her. She got these conversations back when we were in middle school. She has insights of her own.

It's really worrisome that I should be returning to these feelings. I've had them before, but their irrational nature took me over and converted my mind into a machine for obsession, which was degrading and unhealthy. I've been to the lowest depths of my spirit when I was overcome by my obsessions; I don't want to return. That's one of the reason that, having fallen so low, I don't look up to Batman. That's one of the reasons I was afraid to have any feelings of attraction whatsoever until I was in my thirties, to just take a decade off. That's why for the last year I've been thinking a lot about how love should be rational, contrary to popular belief. And yet I act irrational. I take the effort to come back to a life that may or may not have any meaning for me, and that's what frustrates me. On the whole, I'm still capable of acting very rational. I have ideas of how to have relationships with other human beings based completely in healthy and rational behavior, and with these developing worldviews the way my brain has learned to process data has changed and it's easier to do that.

Like many people, I really want a better life, a life with happiness and love, a life with comfort and family. It occurred to me when I went to church in the evening with my uncle. It was one of those churches without the sing-song worship formula, far more formal, and everyone dressed up. The sermon was about how David stole Bathsheba from Uriah and about respecting relationships, among a wide range of other implications. A couple in front of me put their arms over each others' shoulders. Sitting there I felt a sense of belonging, a sense of family shared by everyone in the hall. Granted, the only two real relatives were my aunt and uncle, but there was still a fellowship very akin to family life. I realized that this would be the perfect place to have a first date, where a relationship could be based in fully rational behavior and positive thought, not in promising but empty cravings without direction like with Clark Kent's shallow crush on Lana Lang in Smallville.

For a moment, my behavior that week had been rational. Then I crashed the next day when I found myself in an existential crisis.

I walked in on a few friends on Labor Day at the college and randomly said "Life is nothing but chaos and we have no control, even over ourselves. We live for the future but there's no knowing what it's going to be like, and even then the future will one day be the past, which cannot be changed. Even the control over the self is an illusion, because I'm going to randomly move one of these chairs...So I ended up moving this one, see? But a moment earlier I was honestly thinking of moving that one over there."

That creates another problem. How can I be defined by what I strive to be when that is subject to change? Does that doom my childhood memories to meaninglessness, since I didn't strive for the same things that I do now? Am I then defined by what I am destined to become? In that case, I am defined by death.

I cogitated on this thought and others related to it for the rest of the day. I forgot someone's name, which provided another problem because that says something about the unreliability of memory. Just how significant is the past if for all we know it's nothing but a memory? I thought back to the themes of Total Recall, where it was impossible for Douglas Quaid to know what was real and what was not. For all I know, I forgot something completely significant to my life, or remembered things very contrary to the way they are. Writing about these thoughts a week later, who am I to say that it even happened? For all I know, I'm constantly reinventing a past all the time. Oswin in the latest Doctor Who episode did it. There have been numerous fictional characters who have had a lifetime's worth of memories only to find out that they were implanted in them and that they were only a year old, like the replicants from Blade Runner and the clones from The Island. I've written about a fictional character of my own, Deleta, who, using only the power of his chaotic will, completely forgot the most significant details to his life. For all I know I was born yesterday, and I have been having these thoughts, or so I think, since I was four or five.

Eventually I got over it.

After the week was over, I returned to WIT. Things went on as usual. Then Thursday came. There's a spiritual event that goes on at my hometown college every Thursday, and I made it a major priority this year to go out of my way to attend. I made sure to catch up with my commuting friends, Sky and his brother, that day so that they wouldn't leave without me.

They turned me down for literally no reason at all. It was a shock, because they had always seemed open to the idea. They said that would be trouble, even though all I do is sit in the back, make no noise, and let them listen to their loud music. I don't even request that they drop me off at my house. They just changed their mind at the last moment because it was apparently an uncool idea.

I was angry because these spiritual gatherings on Thursdays mean a lot to me, more than almost anything else. Sky knew that, and he turned me down very rudely.

My way of dealing with it was to walk slowly back to the dorms. There was a in informational group gathering in the common room. I interrupted and said (in a statement far less censored than this) "On a tangent, I'd like to just go behind my friend's back and say [insert profane insult here]! I just wanted to get that immediate thought off my chest in a large group. Thank you."

The sad thing was that it didn't even occur to anybody that what I said was completely inappropriate. That's the atmosphere I find myself living in.

Then I went back to my room and told the whole story in detail to my dormmate, "Lundgren", and best friend on campus, the details that I wasn't going to share with anyone else. He patted me on the back, I curled up on the couch, and I felt bad about my situation for a while. A part of me also felt guilty about saying what I said about him to a large group, even if it was anonymously.

However, after that was that, I forgave him and more or less forgot about the experience, or at least emotionally. Obviously, I remember it from an objective standpoint, otherwise I wouldn't be recounting this tale. A number of things happened that simply turned the angst off. First, I'm a Christian. It's what I believe. The second is that in high school there was a stereotype that drama was for girls and guys were just "cool with it", in other words having a significantly shorter short term emotional memory. Yes, that's thinking through stereotypes, but so long as in this instance it helped shape me into a more positive state of mind I thought I might as well use it to reinforce my mentality. The third was because it was in the past. It was done. It's nothing but a memory. There's nothing I can do to change it. Zip. Nothing. As far as I'm concerned, it might as well never have happened.

Fortunately, the existentialist in me didn't surface too much, thanks to the first two reasons.

Then something completely irrational happened, and it was potentially the most disturbing thing that happened all week. A girl I made friends with, "Polly Esther", who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, ADD, a speech impediment, and a few other autistic behaviors, came to me that night as I began writing this entry. She had an impulsive desire to go out into the nearby forest that night and go on a nature walk. It was late, and I had other feelings on my mind, including the emptiness of not being able to attend an event that was significant to me. it was also dark and none of us had any quality flashlights.

My first instinct was "This is dangerous." I went to my dormmate Lundgren and asked him to come along. I was very nervous. My hyper friend was getting more and more on the edge. I wanted to turn her down, but I irrationally didn't want to say no, so the most rational thing I could bring myself to do was to ask Lundgren to come along with, because there was no way I was going with only one person who spontaneously with no decipherable reason to go into the forest except for "I'm following my heart."

Lundgren was also really concerned. Apparently so were Polly Esther's roommates from her apartment. Lundgren kept on bringing up that a sexual predator was caught in the woods last year. I didn't know that until then, but he basically verbalized some of my fears. We tried talking her into going out into the daytime, but she really wanted to go right then. We walked her back to her apartment, and eventually I gathered the courage to voice my opinion and say that, for rational reasons, I agreed with Lundgren. It was painful to see her disappointment and hurt, but for the sake of sanity it was better to put a foot down here than letting the relationship reach a place where one of us would have been even more hurt.

By far, it was more disturbing than the horror film I watched lately, The Possession. I was never scared, but that night I found it difficult to sleep. Later Sky's brother, upon realizing that I actually meant it when I said that I would be accepting their offer to go home on the weekends, every weekend, said that I was being lame.

"I'm not being lame," I said. The point was irrelevant. The nostalgia might have been an irrational urge, but I didn't think that there was anything wrong with wanting to go home instead of sticking around on the weekends at WIT when no one else stuck around.

"Yes it is. It's really lame," said Sky's brother. So now I know the reason why they have occasionally screwed me over. Might I add, that's a really lame reason.

Thus concluded my week, and with it this reflective analysis from the perspective the theme presented in the title. It's interesting, by the way, what happens when you write about your own life from an interpretive stance, as historians often do. It gives life a little more meaning than just a jumble of events piled together, and it also helps to figure out where I am going and who I am in a more eternal sense.