Poem #2

Forgive me if this seems disjointed. It can be difficult to tell ones own story, especially when it didn't 'happen'.

I have a moment.
But no moment stands alone.
Imagine you have fallen, because you stumbled, you tripped.
You fell off the side of the castle. Your fortress. Your family’s.
But you caught yourself. You climbed back up. One step, one handhold, one foothold, one at a time.
Then, as you reached the top, the footholds fell away. Your hand slipped. You hang there by your fingertips.
Don’t worry. Look. You’re friend’s there. You friend will help you up.
Crack.
That was your fingers breaking under a hard boot. Your heart breaking under a hard smile.
No.
And now…now you can’t catch yourself.
How could you?
How could your friend?
Here is the moment. It is that brief frozen moment in the fall. The one where you decide to let yourself fall. The one where you stop fighting, because you don’t care.
But you don’t freeze there.
You hit the water and cry out from the sharp smack on your back, the ice covering your skin.
And you can’t fight. You already decided. You’ll drown, crying.
Sobbing, gasping down lungfuls of water until you drown.
…
You wake. It’s bright, so bright. You think it might be someplace good…but the light is blinding, everything hurts…
Not the good place.
Tears well up again. You tried, damn it. You tried.
A sob tears through your chest.
Why? An enemy killing you, that would have been fine…you would have understood.
But not that one. Not the one you’ve loved like family since you were a child.
A curtain is pulled away and the light hurts even more, you whimper in the middle of a sob.
And then you hear your name. Not in anger, not in satisfaction, but almost in reverence. You hear it again, in exultation.
“You’re alive!
“Guys! Guys, guess who woke up!”
That’s the other moment. When you realize it hurts because you’re alive. Because someone cared.
You don’t recognize the one who woke you. Apparently you barely know each other.
It didn’t matter. This one saved you.

Well?
Aren’t you going to do anything?

Rant: "Well, Yeah, But You're Not Gonna Win That Fight."

One of my teachers actually said that to me. Someone who is meant to be teaching students how to deal with the world actually said that if it looks like you might not win, you should stop trying.

Context:
The set-up was that this generation is over-tested. Everyone agreed. Then, to continue the conversation, I said that I thought we were also being given too much homework in elementary school.

(As a brief aside, no one present had any connection to elementary school teachers, so none of this was a personal attack nor could it be construed as such. Well, it could, but you can also say, "Hitler liked puppies!")

She agreed with me that we were over-homeworked. She did not have any reservations there, she just flat-out agreed. Then...well, see title. She said I was not going to win because everyone has always been over-homeworked, in her own words, "Every generation has had seven hours of homework."

I stared at her for a beat. She had just said, in front of her entire classroom, the people under her authority, that she believed something bad should not be stopped because it has been going on for too long. This is a bad idea for two reasons. 1) "Don't fight if the odds are against you" kills just about every major human achievement. Why should we change? Because new ways are, occasionally, better. And the, "It's tradition" argument is always wrong. It may be more efficient, easier, people may be more comfortable...but those are the arguments. Not some random thing about how it was good enough for my thirty-times-great grandfather and so it's good enough for me. 2) If the amount of time the policy has been in place is the thing that is messing people up, then adding more time to the equation is not going to help.

Forget tradition. If someone else has a good idea, listen to it, and if you have time debate, then that's probably a good idea. But the fact that it was good yesterday doesn't mean it's good today. It just means it was good yesterday.

Memory

You could live your whole life and never know if anyone will remember you. You never can know how long people will remember you after death.

It gets even worse when you look at our very old legends: all the ones that still have the name attached tend towards war, violence, and heroism (I'm thinking Achilles)...pretty difficult combination to justify today, unless you're fighting the next Hitler.

And this has scared me more and more as I grow. That I will be forgotten, that people, ultimately, won't remember more than a few years after I'm dead. A generation, tops. And that relies on me having children, who will remember me because I'm they're mom--don't get me wrong, a mom is a great thing to be, it's just not all I want.

And then I start trying to figure out why this scares me so much. Not because it seems an illogical fear, or a logical one, simply to figure it out, dissect it. Why does being remembered matter so much?

And I come to the conclusion that it's to have an effect. If I am not remembered, what effect can I possibly have? And the idea that I would be nothing after death is terrifying. It is no coincidence that these doubts tend to align with when I think about what might happen if I just disappear after death.

And so I want to make my mark. And I look around and try to find where I can mark, and find...I have. I have helped others understand things. I have gone out and put myself out there, leaving a line of fire written along people's souls--and regardless of whether the fire flashes for but a moment or burns a permanent mark, a permanent memory, a dream, I have been an artist and a muse.

This isn't enough. I doubt anything ever will be. But it's enough, for the moment.

Poem

When You Must
There are times when you run or hide.
This is not that time.
This time, we stand.
This time, we fight.
This time, we go hand in hand.
We will not go gentle into that good night.
We will fight so long as we may move,
As long as we may breathe,
As long as our heart may beat.
We fight.

And when we stop...
We lay down our arms.
For to do otherwise is to be the next threat that must be fought.

Revenge and Interesting Torture

My two inspirations: 1) My history teacher talking to us about how people would go out and watch executions and have what amounted to a picnic. Also bringing up the violent entertainments that seem to do so well (for instance, the Saw franchise). 2) My brother's blogpost wherein he describes the advantages humanity has over most animals. He comes up with seven, including vengeance.

And a little connection clicked in my head. Vengeance has a purpose. If we kill things that hurt us, they don't breed. So, perhaps, when we think there is a purpose behind killing something, there is a part of us that wants to see him/her/it hurt/killed. This sort of thinking could spread fairly easily to other types of inflicted pain, especially since this would make it similar to something our bodies want us to do. Or, more simply, it feels good.

The interesting thing about this is that while when this instinct is confused it causes bad things (feuds going on for eternity and such), at it's base it's for good reason. There is a threat to me/my family/my pack/my tribe/etc., and so I must remove that threat. So revenge in and of itself is not a bad thing. It is only when it is taken to the point that it controls the person that it becomes bad--just like any other drive or emotion.