Hello From Long Ago

I don’t talk about Fiona in real life, it’s not a subject that comes up easily in any sense, really until Gemma basically one person outside of myself knew, James knew but he forgot, which I was somewhat happy about because I don’t want to be perceived as a tragic character, I’d prefer to be thought of as a happy person, as that is what I feel I am, happy. The vast majority of people I know have no information about that part of me, and I think that’s a good thing.

However time to time I do wonder whether or not that’s the right attitude, I’m the sort that prefers to disclose my happy or interesting memories more than the sad ones, but then can I expect the people I surround myself with to have an accurate or even coherent understanding of me if they don’t know all of me?

It is not as though I’m not an honest person, (what a horribly written sentence), if someone asks me something I won’t lie about it, but I do tend to, restrain, things, at least in some capacity. Although I think that’s mostly because of my personality, I’m not a sad or worried person, I am extremely privileged in that sense, my life is absurdly good, I literally have everything I want, that’s practically unheard of, that doesn’t mean I don’t want other things but they’re all extraneous things, little bits of pleasure or comfort, I have everything I need to be happy right now, everything else is simply a present, and I get a lot of presents, often from myself since I tend to know just what I want, selfish sure but it’s not like you can be too happy.

Death is a big part of that, but only in the role of perspective. The importance of most things fall to the ground when put up against death. It’s weird in a sense, because I don’t view death positively, I don’t know many who do, it’s literally the last thing I’d like to happen to me, although I have been reading a lot lately about torture as it’s in the news every second day at the moment for some reason, I’ve never been tortured so perhaps in that circumstance death might move up a place, but really what’s the point of seriously considering something so unlikely? Which probably makes you wonder, ‘Well then why make me read a paragraph about something even you think is inconsequential?’ Because I’m selfish that’s why 😛

Apparently when I sleep I sometimes stop breathing for up to 20 seconds at a time, this used to startle Alle something terrible and one night I woke up and found her in tears because she was thinking about what would happen if I died, which is very sweet and all but I took a hard line with her, telling her there’s no point worrying about my mortality like that, it’s only going to hurt her and it will make no difference to whether or when I die. My point is it’s easy to indulge and then become consumed by theoretical sadness, the worst part is that it quickly becomes genuine sadness, genuine pain. I’m not purporting one just ignore the potential for sadness, but it’s not something to dwell on.

People often say they fantasise about their funeral, thinking about how sad everyone will be, and they know it’s self-indulgent and somewhat narcissistic but to me that doesn’t matter, we are all self-indulgent and narcissistic in some capacity. The attraction to this fantasy tends to subside when you lose someone, because it is hard to want others to be hurt, when you know how consuming and terrible it is for those left behind. It sounds selfish and that’s because it is but that’s largely my point, dying is simple, easy, living with the death of someone close is both complex and difficult. I find the matter very interesting because at first it sounds hypocritical, you worry they’ll be hurt because you believe you’re important enough to hurt them.

When Simon died, James’ father, one of the last things he said whilst still lucid was that his funeral was to be a celebration of his life, and not a mourning of his death, he said, my death makes up the smallest part of my experience, it’s misrepresentation he said, he didn’t think that part deserved all the attention. Simon was great that way, such confidence and sure sightedness, it was always a pleasure having a conversation with him because he intimately knew where he stood on everything, people who understand themselves tend to be the most interesting. Mystery is the stage-show term ignorance, flashy and intriguing but ultimately frustrating and usually a negative.

Selfishness has a bad reputation and people often feel ashamed because of it, but from my experience and observations the times that it is worthy of eliciting shame is miniscule.

Honesty isn’t so hard, it’s the openness, the ability to disclose all events, happy, angry or sad ones that is for me. I often think to myself how do so many of my friends get me so wrong? The way they describe me, think of me, it’s not necessarily a negative thing as they are all my friends so they must like what they see, but I wonder why it’s so different, so vastly different, to what I see.

Brent was problematic that way, because I met Stephen, Simon, Sam, Kieran, Kathryn, and Maxwell through him. Brent is prone to story telling and more than anyone else Brent has the strangest concept of who I am, in his view he doesn’t see any particular capacity for love, when Alle and I were together, for the first 2 or so years he was quite adamant that it was simply a relationship of convenience for me, eventually I managed to convince him that I did love her and that she was a big part who I am, so when we broke up he was adamant that I was pretending to be okay with it and inwardly I was in terrible turmoil and misery. Stuff like that happens often and I think it happens to everyone, you wonder why people can’t see you as being the middle ground, why they go from one extreme to the other, we all tend to have very exaggerated views of each other, slight annoyances become frustrations and mild happiness becomes adoration, people are terrible at representing one another, I’m no different, but I do try to see the middle of it all.

Part of the problem is that generally you are representing the person more than you are describing them, by which I mean you become a speaker for or against them, usually both as no one is without at the minimum ‘perceived’ faults, and because you’re representing them they become a reflection upon you, if they’re a friend and you admire them then ideally they become a positive reflection on you, if you dislike them the ‘fault’ you cite against them is still a reflection upon you, as one tends to be saying "I wouldn’t do that", so it’s a sort of, description by absence.

Although criticisms tend to assume a high ground I don’t think that’s quite legitimate, a good example is the common argument of "You can’t criticise me for that because you do it too." That is flawed logic, because even if I do it myself, I shouldn’t be doing it, it doesn’t make them less ‘guilty’ because I also happen to be guilty. It could be hypocrisy if you refused to acknowledge your own ‘guilt’, but so long as you do acknowledge it then I don’t think that makes you a hypocrite. 

Anyhow a friend sent me this link, I think it’s the best story of the year, but obviously I’m a bit biased on the matter, still, see for yourself it certainly made me smile.

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?p=57027088

Oh and th

e new Bon Iver album is beautiful and everyone should listen to it.