djhakase

Norwegian Mountain Immortality
2002-05-13 10:24:14 (UTC)

To write a play

"I've decided to write a play, a play that'll never be put
on stage. About a man that is so detested by others that by
the end of the play a member of the audience (supplied with
hand weapons bandaged underneath the chairs) will shoot the
actor.

The audience member would shoot him out of anger, hatred or
pity. What I didn't realise at the time I thought up that
statement but realised a couple of days later was that that
man is actually me."

I shouldn't start a new diary. The first one systemically tore
apart my relationships with my friends to the point that I
just... stopped doing it. My second diary, a real paper
diary chronicling my time in the mountains, only two months
worth and extraordinarily indepth, almost destroyed me. But
I need to start one. Writing has become a part of me as a
person, something that helps me get by. If I don't tell
anyone or anything, it bubbles up and I take it out on my
friends, such as what happened to a recently made friend of
mine. I'm still not sure if she's forgiven me yet.

I'll probably quote pieces of that diary for as long as I
maintain this one. There's a lot in there. I don't plan to
maintain this even as much as the first one, but I do
intend to write when I feel like it, an impulse I'd been
denying for the past few months since I came back.

Because you see, something happened to me in those
mountains. Something was taken from me. I can't really say
what exactly, I don't know whether it was innocence or
ignorance or my sanity, but since that time, at various
moments since then, I've felt something awful. It as if,
and I am one strange enough to intersperse metaphors
throughout my normal conversation, it's as if a young boy
captured a fly, tore off one of its wings, and watched it
try to fly away, fluttering helplessly on the table in a
sick, pathetic state.

I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but I know one
of the turning points, the night after I lost my mobile
phone. I'll write a substantial bit of it up:

Fuck. I am pissed off and I have been for the past three
hours.

I dropped my mobile on the slopes.

'I've got certificates for never being late or missing a
day of school. That's how much I hated the place. Get it?'
'Nope.'
'I wasn't going to let it beat me. I figure, let it get me
once and I'd be finished.'

And to top it off, my fuck of a roommate asked me to turn
down my music, on my CD player with my earphones down. At
7:00pm. Not 7:00am. While he watches TV which I've sworn
off for the moment.

I need that mobile back.

I've noticed something recently. I'm starting to develop a
scary sort of intensity, a real emotional edge. It's like
I'm approaching the edge of a cliff on a pitch-black night.
I know it's somewhere ahead of me - somewhere - I don't
know where - and I know it'll kill me, but I can't stop
creeping forward.

'If I relaxed my body, I'd fall apart. I've always lived
like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on
living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd fall apart.'

And I know that every day this will keep getting worse
until I get out of here.

The question is, though, if I will cross that line, step
over that ledge, before my time is up.

I know what'd happen if I do. I'd lock up. I'd just lie in
bed, withdrawn in myself. Ignoring everyone, everything
until I recover.

Or I'd do something crazy, hurt myself. It could be skiing
until I break something. Or just walk and walk and walk
until I collapse by the roadside, freezing in the cold.

I know where I'd try to walk to though.

Tokyo.

I wouldn't confront anyone though. Not even my roommate,
who has become one of the people I detest most in my life.

I am through and through an existentialist. No one is
responsible for how I am besides myself. I have created
myself, reacting to forces outside myself to create the
person I am. In turn, everyone is responsible for
theirselves. No one else. And especially not responsible
for me.

So fuck him. He can be the first person to react, then I'll
give him an earful. He makes the rules, I one-up him on his
grounds.

No one can dispute that way of living.

At the same time, I realise I am to other people not a self
but their image of me. So I want to shape those images.

I am learning fast this is incredibly difficult, nay,
impossible to do. The first principle negates the second.
It's when I don't give a shit and not try to shape my image
that the best (and worst) seem to happen. But the worst
always seems to happen when I try to. Maybe it's the
expectations I put on if I try this. I expect to win, so if
I lose I am too disappointed. Rinko and Chako taught me one
thing - if I try, I fail.

Hah. Not a recommended way to approach academic studies.

Maybe that's how I learned to try, by working and learning.
Both fields require effort - effort with women beyond token
seems to be a recipe for failure.

People say 'Be yourself'. I still think that's bullshit.
There is no 'myself'. Your 'self' can not be defined, not
in the sense of being. You can say 'I am', but you cannot
say 'I am this'.

The soul is the greatest question that faces mankind.

But you can say 'Stop trying to define 'this' to other
people. You can't do it to yourself, so why try to do it to
others?'

That I have learned.

In my first diary, I tried to define myself. I failed
miserably, ending up with a larger caricature than before.
When I realised that, I cracked and.... left. My friends
want closure. Closure lies here I suppose.

Fuck. What have I become? Where is the relationship with my
friends, family, my life in Sydney? They are no part of my
life now, as far and separated as is possible on this
earth. My self is being dashed on my stubbornness, thrown
repeatedly against the rocks by a little kid with nothing
better to do but see the results - the sick results - of
his actions.

Is this depression? Yes. I am withdrawn from all external
forces and left only with what comes from within. And it
sickens me, like nothing has. I can not live with myself -
my self-revulsion created from the negative image of myself
held by others bubbles to the surface like toxic waste,
unsealed from the hidden drums of compassion and egotism.

And the one who loved me - I don't even believe she ever
loved me at all any more.

I once thought I could never get depressed. I despaired
before I came here, I'd thought I'd reached the end of the
road, the end of my dreams, but even then, I was
not 'depressed'. My hopes were depressed, but not my self.
This is not despair, it is depression.

I hate myself. It is true. When all the candy floss is
removed, I see only nakedness, the frailty of a human soul,
the pointlessness of fighting against anything --

but even as i write this i revolt against myself, crying
that there is no giving up the fight. there is the now, and
there is the will-be. i will never give up, or that will-
be, even if it kills me because that is all there is. as
revolting as the present is there is always the future and
i live for that. until i reach that i will not give up, not
give up for anything. this is... this is...

This is my statement of life.

No one will crush the future. The future exists to be
defined by me, even if the present is uncontrollable.

Historians and archives dictate the past. Imagologues and
our surroundings control our present. No one claims the
future.

Will I ever be satisfied with the present? I hope so. Will
we ever achieve world peace? I hope so. Will pigs fly? I
hope so.

Hope. Hah. What a useless concept. It's a disclaimer. Even
if we don't make it, we can say we hoped we did, that is,
we could have done it.

Will pigs fly? I don't care. Will we achieve world peace? I
don't care. Will I ever be satisfied with the present? I
will strive for it every day until the day I die.

Yoda said, 'Don't try. Do.' Fucking bullshit from the mouth
of a dyslexic puppet. 'Don't hope. Strive for it.' That's
my fucking principle. That's the principle that I've
defined for myself since I came to Japan, since I stepped
out of parental protection/illusion.

And I know what I strive for. It's the sights along the way
that interest me. Because there's one thing I can say about
me - I won't take the direct route, the 25-lane freeway.
No, I'll take the scenic route, the coastal road, the way
to take everything that'll interest me in.
Because 'striving' is fine, but whether I like it or not, I
have to live in the present as well.

But you know what? I can say things like that, how I've changed and
so on, but for once today I was lost for words to say to a woman. She
actually initiated the conversation! But to be honest it was a mutual
start. It seems most of my significant relationships start out this
way. Someone whom I'd been thinking of talking to throughout my
computer studies courses since the beginning of the semester. Totally
not my type at all, in fact the incredible opposite of what I look
for in a woman, fat chin but slim body, black frizzy hair and dowdy
clothing, but something intrigues me about her. I've often considered
the girls on the Japanese side of my degree but not on the computer
science side. She's promised to have lunch with me tomorrow, which
beats another agonised hour of wondering what to do with the time.
Sezan. Some sort of Hebrew name. It'd be interesting if she was a
Jew. I hope I have something to say tomorrow.




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