Dude, where's my health?
Ugh. For the first time in my life, I lost my appetite due to being sick. I must be getting old. And it isn't that I'm not hungry, I just don't want to eat anything...it turns into some kind of chore. Like at lunch time I had to force myself to eat something because I was getting SO nauseous from hunger. Double ugh.
I know this is old news to all of you, but it's never happened to me before, ok? I never know what to make of it when I get sick.@_@
Today I'm meeting my Japanese language partner for some conversation in a foreign language, which makes it impossible to concentrate on cell bio because I keep running sentence structures through my brain. *growl* Just do the reading and then you can immerse yourself in Japanese grammar, ok???
And Majo...where are you....?;___;
Life and the telling of life
I'm musing on it after hearing a rather depressing story, the concoction of a talented acquaintance and her (most probably talented) friend whom I've never met. I'm trying to figure out whether one person's life can really be as bad as some stories write them. Aren't stories, even fantasy, a reflection of life? Am I just naive and immature if I say I simply have problems with stories of people whose lives suck to the extent that everyday is torment and they just want to die? Like those soap operas where long dead cousins turn up and say they're actually in love with your one true love and then you turn around and your best friend is in love with your one true love too and then you lose your job and then your best friend loses her leg in some accident and then your boyfriend, a good guy torn between 3 good girls, gets flattened by a truck and eye cancer starts tormenting you?
...is this reality? Is angst reality? Does the story of someone who's battered around by fate, punished for crimes which did not originate from him, hates himself for doing things that weren't even his fault, hated by a loved one for an act which was out of his control...really that appealing? I dunno, is this, like...what makes a good story? How is a story like this supposed to end? The immediate response is probably the "sad" ending: the death of the suffering one. It fits with the rest of the mood. Now his suffering is over, but the true perpetrators of all this suffering continue on unaffected and unrepenitant. The message seems to be, "Once you're screwed, you're just screwed." His own penance is for nothing, his own soul-searching is for nothing, because at the end, he's dead.
What, then, was the point of the entire story? Is the so-called "happy" ending, where such a character lives...is that as much of a cop-out as people like to say? Sure, if one's idea of a happy ending is that the suffering character lives and suddenly life is all sugar and spice. But that's an ending which also begs the question, "What was the point?"
With continued life comes endless possibilities. There are so many things still to be dealt with, so many things which remain loose ends. Death is simple, death allows the author and the character to stop dealing with all of this. A *real* happy ending must come at the end of a long hard road, it must be convincing, it must deal with all those issues death would have escaped. At the end, how does one's suffering character find some meaning, how does life become worth living again? If one moves beyond forgiveness of oneself, is it really over? Is death and despair then the only answer, or...if you work hard enough...can you find another one?
Majo and I could have ended our story with the death of one character at the hands of another. For a while, it was slotted to happen. One character could not forgive himself for his crime, the other certainly hated enough to kill. Then I sat down and thought it over. Is that all? The character who would have killed the one he hated, what would have happened to him? He had no future, he never would have been forced to deal with the very complicated issues behind his hate. He would have remained in stasis, never emerging from his shell. And as for the character he killed, well, that was that, he would have died. At the time of his death he would have even accepted it.
And then? The story is over. Completely. This is not an ending which marks a new beginning, this is an ENDING. And that is the most unsatisfactory of all endings.
Perhaps that is the point of some authors. They may be trying to point out that unsatisfactory endings happen in everyday life, but then why write a story? Just to reaffirm to yourself that life sucks? I don't know, some people call that being "realistic"...it still feels like a cop-out to me.
...I wonder if this is the result of me being sick.0_o Maybe this is the Dayquil at work. In any case, I better leave before I start citing stories I've read which exemplify a good ending. Like that Inuyasha story by...Kristen (Kirsten?) somebody about Kagome meeting up with IY in the past after being dumped by Houjou and... you know the story I'm talking about?^^;
The tidal wave
It's only the first full week of school, and already my schedule is crammed like it's never been crammed before. I feel all purposeful, but at the same time, I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL FRIDAY. I think school really is good, because it sure makes you appreciate every second of your holidays. Man.
And now I have to work on my creative writing assignment (which is creating a world...like I don't do that normally :p). Then hopefully some orgo and cell bio before I rush off to an open house, followed by a reception, followed by kempo. Then I have to work on that 50 pages worth of reading for art history. And more orgo and more cell bio because I definitely won't be able to finish them before the open house. Oi vey.
Yayoi over and out.
Watashi o yogoshite
But uh, don't really.^^;
Current song: obviously "Shinjitsu no Uta"
Current mood: wistful, not for any real reason, it's just the mood the song evokes
Ugh, this makes me want to draw poignant romantic pics, which I'm bad at. And I was supposed to wake up at 10. Instead it's 12. *le sigh* And kempo is so blinkin' far away this year, ugh.@_@
I sound like I'm in a bad mood again.^^; It's probably cuz I haven't done anything "productive" yet, so once I start I'll be good. Which means I should stop typing and just go already.
Yup, going.
