Rationalizing.

"The trick to loving is letting go."

- The Jane Austen Book Club

So let go, so let go,

Jump in,

Oh well, what you waiting for?

It's alright,

'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown...

- "Let Go," Frou Frou

"Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past."

- Celine, Before Sunset

We hold on too tight. We're nostalgic. Photo albums, journals, home movies--we love to relive as much if not more than we love living itself. Yet it's painful. To hold onto these memories hurts. We end up wanting the past back instead of hoping for a better future and enjoying what we have now. The past can be a trap and being too preoccupied with it is dangerous.

Nothing lasts forever; everything must end. For better, for worse, that's just how it is, and you can either try to hold onto it--whether you do so consciously or otherwise--or you can just do what you can with the time that you have, and when it's over, appreciate that it happened. You can try to stay in a moment that has passed. You can try to recreate something that's gone. You can try to hold onto something that's not there. But sooner or later you will have to keep going. You will have to move on. Then you can either hold onto the memory and live in it, or you can live in the present and let it be. Love that it happened, learn from it, embrace it, then let it go.

I suppose that letting go really is all you can try to do. You can't try to hold on anything for too long or it will just slip away faster. Just enjoy what you have, love what you have, immerse yourself in the present. Let it wash over you and bask in it, and when it's gone, let it go.

I wasn't going to just rant and moan and get all preachy but I have a migraine and need to sleep. Maybe I'll fix this up another time.

Edit 11/12/08
11:28 AM
I didn't really clarify any of that. It's fluid but it's mush. I started off saying, "We hold on too tight," and that's really what I meant--not, "let go of everything and don't remember anything," but, I guess, only hold memories in the open palm of your hand. If they stay, they stay. If they fall away, don't try to close your hand but let them fall. Then there's room for more.

Laaaaaaaame. Whatever.

'The Bridge of San Luis Rey,' Thornton Wilder

Like all beautiful women who have been brought up amid continual tributes to her beauty she assumed without cynicism that it must necessarily be the basis of anyone's attachment to herself... This assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded from the fact that she had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gave birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday...
(102)

Madre Maria stood with her back against a post; the sick lay in rows gazing at the ceiling and trying to hold their breaths. She talked that night of all those out in the dark (she was thinking of Esteban alone, she was thinking of Pepita alone) who had no one to turn to, for whom the world perhaps was more than difficult, without meaning. And those who lay in their beds there felt that they were within a wall that the Abbess had built for them; within all the light and warmth, and without was the darkness they would not exchange even for a relief from pain and from dying. But even while she was talking, other thoughts were passing in the back of her mind. "Even now," she thought, "almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
(123)

I'll get around to writing about this and about the Interview stuff one of these days. Swear.

I'm assuming you already know or don't care who won the NCAA Men's Basketball finals...

Okay, really quick: during the last half hour of my incredibly lame night at work, 2 guys came in to watch Kansas and Memphis in OT during the NCAA finals. Kansas ended up winning by like 7 points, and the MVP was Mario something who made the 3-pointer to tie it up to begin with when Memphis missed a bunch of free throws or something. So the game is over and the announcers are talking about how amazing this kid is and how the way Kansas came back from being 9 points from behind to win by 8 or whatever it was is going to go down in the history books, blah blah blah. They're replaying this kid's game-tying 3-pointer and the crowd is still going wild, and they're talking about how this kid is going to be known for this shot for the rest of his life, how he's always going to be remembered for this, and so on and so forth.

I couldn't help stand there and think, wow. If this kid never does anything else to be remembered by, if all the happiness of his life hinges on a three-point shot during a basketball game when he was in college, then that's really, really sad. I mean, I'm not saying that it wasn't amazing or that he doesn't deserve to be remembered for it or that there isn't a really good chance that this is what he'll be remembered for even if he does continue to have a more illustrious career, and that's way more than I'll ever be remembered for by anyone. But still. How's he going to feel years from now when he can barely make a free throw, and his entire life has been defined by making a great shot during a single basketball game that, odds are, a lot of basketball fans don't even remember any more. I guess if he's lucky, he'll manage to go out there and do great things off court and be remembered for them as well and be able to do something that makes him happy and doesn't let the highlight of his life be this one shot. Poor kid. He's got a lot of pressure on him now.

Well people come and go in our lives and no one stays forever...

...New loves come and new priorities and new responsibilities and new lives and death. We do what we can with people with the time we have with them. You come and go in and out of others’ lives, and if you’re lucky, you will change them before they are gone. For, they will be gone, sooner or later, whether you’re ready to move on without them or not. If you’re lucky, you’ll move on knowing that you have left your mark on their lives, that they carry a bit of you with them – knowing that you have not forgotten, and they haven’t either.


So I wrote that back in February. Except it's not completely right. Yes, you're lucky if you change someone before you leave their life (or they leave yours). But I should have placed more emphasis on, "If you're lucky, you'll move on knowing that you have left your mark..." Knowing. It's so hard to know that you've changed someone's life, yet most of us need that knowledge - that reassurance that our time was not wasted.

"We do what we can with people with the time we have with them." I sort of found out this year that often, that time is a lot shorter than you'd think, and when its over, all you have is your memories of it. And it's hard to hold on to those. You want to let them go, and in some ways, you need to. Memories are things of the past and you can't hold on to them like they're the present. But you can't forget them, even if all evidence of their occurrence has dissipated. Even if you can't recognize the changes you inflicted, you have to remember that at one time, they were there, and even if you can't see them any more, they could still be there. You can't let yourself feel like you wasted your time with anyone, and if you do, you have to ride it out and get past it.

"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods."
- C. S. Lewis

"Without doubt there's no free will, without free will there's no humanity, without humanity there's no divinity."
- God, 'Joan of Arcadia'

Faith is like a shape-shifting factotum. It looks different all the time, and it does so many different things. It pops up everywhere. There are so many different kinds of faith, and when you get down to it, I guess you could say that everything is faith. Well, memories are faith too. Holding onto memories is trusting that the past did happen; in this case, it's trusting that you did really do something worthwhile. It's easy to say that you want to do something to "change the hearts of men," even if it's only fleeting, but it's harder to hold onto that memory of what you did and continually gain strength from it after it's gone. Often, it seems, the effects of what you do really are short-lived, even if we'd like to think that everything we do is going to change people's lives forever, including our own. Perhaps it does change people lives forever, but if it does, it's often subtle, like a scar or blemish covered over with make-up: invisible and unknown to everyone but the person who inflicted it and the afflicted. After a while, it fades and the person seems to forget it was ever there, but he can't ever truly forget - the mark has been made. Forgetting the marks you've made on others is a crisis of faith.

"Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death."
- Miguel de Unamuno

"Skepticism is the beginning of faith."
- Oscar Wilde

We make marks in all sorts of ways, on our friends more than anyone else. On the most basic level, our best friends bear our marks more than anyone else - those friends that we can trust with everything, who are always there for us, to listen, comfort, help, cheer up, or just be around. You don't have to be a person's best friend, though, to be a good friend. Sometimes you don't need someone who's going to listen to your problems and talk you through them and help you out - sometimes you need someone who's not going to ask you any questions and will just take your mind off things. Sometimes you don't need someone who's going to be particularly kind and sensitive and thoughtful - you need someone who's not going to treat you any differently than normal. Sometimes, a good friend is simply one who will give you what you need - or, rather, what you think you need - what you want.

Elliot's thoughts: Listening to Molly made me realize a person doesn't have to be perfect to be exactly what you need.
- Scrubs

I guess it comes down to what kind of friend you want to be. Do you want to give friends what they want, what sometimes they only think they need, or do you want to give them what they really need? The problem is, people are more apt to like you if you simply give them what they want all the time. Giving people what they need, what is best for them in the long run, isn't always the most popular route, and it's usually not the easiest. If you want to give them what they really need, you have to be sharp. You have to be able to tell when they really need to be distracted from when they're just running away from something. You have to be able to tell when intervening is going to help and when it's going to push them to the edge. You won't get it right every time, but hey, you've got to try. Right?

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same...
The Fray

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Now playing: Matchbox Twenty - Bent

"To die so young is more than merely dying; it is to lose so large a part of life..."

"Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you got till it's gone?"
- Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi"

So my Facebook homepage feed told me today that a guy I had a class with last year joined a group called "Stay Strong Nick." Description: "To a brother who could always make us smile, you're forever in our thoughts and prayer, we love you brother." Recent News: "Nov. 3- Nick was in a severe car accident last night. *Nov. 4, Nick passed away late this afternoon...our deepest condolences go out to his family." Related group: "STAY STRONG GARY..YOU ARE IN OUR PRAYERS". Description: "PLease leave and stories or memories you have of Gary. RIP GARY DEVERCELLY..you will always be in our hearts..we will never forget you "CALI" We love you G-Baby 9.4.88- 3.30.07"

This is the part that Blogger keeps deleting on me that I've written twice already and am now trying to remember:

I hate these groups. Mostly because there are too many of them. Far too many. It's lovely that people gather together to share memories and love for a lost loved one, but none of them should be lost. No matter what the reason - an uncontrollable terminal illness, a freak accident - it's a tragedy every time. Too often, I feel like it's probably the result of some reckless act of youth. When we're young, we have this subconscious belief that we are impervious, that we are immortal. I hate that. Nothing can touch us or hurt us. I feel like this is almost a natural, inherent attitude, that occurs in everyone in various degrees. Bad things don't happen to us, or to the people we love - only to other people. Other people get into horrible car accidents, other people get alcohol poisoning and die, other people get assaulted - it's always other people. And this attitude is reflected in what we do. We get careless and thoughtless, we take so-called "calculated" risks that only calculate what we risk in terms of ourselves, not in terms of others. We do stupid things because "it's only one time" or "just this once." We flirt with fate, because nothing can get to us - nothing can reach us, in our youth. We've got it all: we're young, we're healthy, we're carefree, and we've got our whole lives ahead of us.

Except that's not always the case. Bad things happen. Often to people who don't deserve to have bad things happen to them. But they happen. And when tragedy strikes, we feel it deeply, but often only fleetingly. We mourn in that dramatic melancholy that belongs only to the young - the kind that lasts only a while before our world moves on, and in a sense, we forget that it ever happened or could ever happen again. Not everyone does this, but many do. And then we go back to our reckless lifestyles until one day, we stop, for whatever reason - there are many.


"Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerers and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment."
- Harlan Ellison


We never really value our lives or the moments we're given. There's so much in every mundane, little moment that we take for granted. Cracking a joke with a stranger. Sitting around in silence with a friend. Meeting someone new. Going on a trip. Getting a new job. Listening to a speaker. Eating your favorite food. Dancing. Taking a solitary walk. Splashing through puddles. Alone, these things are simple experiences that everyone can understand. Woven together, they're your life.


"There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves--so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful."
- L. M. Montgomery


We waste a lot of time being angry. I guess that's okay, on one level - without the anger and pain and bitterness and negative emotions and bad moods, the good stuff wouldn't seem so great. But letting that control us - it'll drive you nuts. Shakespeare said, "Sweet are the uses of adversity," and they are. Everything that we experience, it becomes a part of us, and being positive about everything we experience makes our overall life that much sweeter. Of course, that's easier said than done.


"I don't know, you know, I always think that if I could just accept the fact that my life was supposed to be difficult, you know, that's what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I'd just be glad when something nice happens."
- Jesse, Before Sunrise


I guess we just do the best we can and that's all there really is...

I dunno. I'm not really succeeding in the whole transposing thought/feeling to words deal tonight.

Haha. On that note, one last quote:

"I quote others only in order to better express myself."
- Michel de Montaigne

'Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time'

By Rob Sheffield, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. It was a great book - when he was young, he married a girl he met at graduate school in the late '80s - "a real cool hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl" - nothing like himself, except in that they both loved music. He used the mix tapes he made as a boy and during his relationship with her to chronicle his life, his love for her, and what he went through when she suddenly passed away in the late '90s.

I loved it because it toyed with the idea of how our subconscious connects different things in our lives - like songs - to feelings or emotions we experience when we are involved with them. An object or a song or a movie or a book - none of these are merely things. They are all alive with the feelings or thoughts that we associate them with. Newsweek's movie reviewer David Ansen did something similar recently - he's been keeping a list of every movie he's ever seen since he was twelve, back in 1958 or so. He wrote an article that appeared in the magazine recently about how what he was watching at the time brings back memories for him of what he was thinking, how he was feeling at the time.

I thought a while ago about doing something similar myself - recording different associations like that. It's not just music - it's clothes, writing, smells, and so much more, too. It's both good and bad - it's comforting to have memories, but disconcerting in that it makes letting certain things go, incredibly difficult - to make myself break these associations. So many things have a history for me, and my past is never really gone - it's still with me in the little things I see and hear every day.


"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
- Maya Angelou


On some days, it feels like it'd be nice if the crazy machine in Eternal Sunshine was real, and certain memories and connections could be erased from our beings. Or, at least, if we could have the option of locking them up and forgetting about them temporarily. Not forever or even for a long time. To be liberated from them without having to work at it, just for a day. That'd be lovely...


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Listening to: Fall Out Boy - Hum Hallelujah