I’ve always enjoyed watching actors perform conflict leading to tragedy. There’s something about the way they can express their emotions, the hopelessness of it all. Out of the 21 movies that I own, nine of them are tragedies. They are as follows: Lolita, The End of the Affair, Being John Malkovich, Casino, Leon: The Professional, Goodfellas, Titus, Onegin, and Scarface.

Perhaps I can relate to some of the conflicts that arise, or the seemingly desolate situations that come upon them. In all tragedies, a common element is the way in which the situations will never end well. The corruption of an innocent, organized crime, unrequited love, all themes that can have no peaceful resolution, yet are so attractive in a terribly hopeless way.

The conflicts that arise always seem to be so emotional, so powerful. Perhaps it’s the way in which the conflicts are presented that has always drawn me. Perhaps it comforts me to know that someone has been through similar conflicts as I have, and that they understand this, that they can reproduce it, that they can do it justice.

The actors usually seem to be able to portray an innocence, an ignorance of the only possible outcome in their faces. The look of peaceful bliss on Humbert Humbert, after kissing Dolores for the second time, seems to be a particularly striking example. He seems completely unaware that his actions, though tempting, are not only lawfully wrong, but morally wrong as well.

Perhaps I’m just trying to relate to an idea which is actually beyond my experience, and I cling to this idea for comfort or for pity.

Perhaps I’m simply searching for an answer to the way my current situation will resolve. Onegin seems to be particularly relevant. It seems to be the most realistic answer as of now.

It’s something that I don’t usually think about until the night sets in. The blackness of the sky always makes me wonder.

I wish I knew the answer.

It’s 12:06 am, and I’m very drowsy. Usually, I’ll go to sleep so I can get some work done in the morning, but for some reason, I feel like talking. And as I have no one to talk to, I’ll have to make due with writing. I actually wrote an entry earlier today, and two entries in one day is quite rare. It always seems to be the night, when I’m restless, that my loquacity is uncontrollable.

The Christmas Victoria Secret catalogue came in this week, courtesy of the previous resident, and there isn’t a single redhead in the issue. I’m very disappointed.

I went to the Black Tomato yesterday, which was a small restaurant with a decent atmosphere (though I think it would have been better at night), which served jazz along with your meals. You could purchase jazz albums from the side of the restaurants, and numerous portraits of jazz greats were hung near the top of the walls. The meals were pretty pricey; the sandwiches cost over 10 dollars, and the 7oz. filet mignon was $24.95. I was really considering the filet mignon since I so rarely get a chance to go out and eat at a nice restaurant, but I decided that I had nothing to celebrate. I went with a flank sandwich, which had thinly cut strips of marinated steak with sauteed onions, and melted cheese, baked on French bread. The put a sort of sweet mustard with it, that gave it a spicy, juicy taste, which was excellent. I had to get a pint of Strongbow, since they didn’t have Double Diamond. In total it cost me about $20.00.

It was comical to see what kind of manners people brought to the table. You could tell who was an executive by the way they broke their bread, or you could tell who was a administrative assistant by the way they cleaned their teeth with their tongue. I wondered if their manners were a result of their profession, or their upbringing.

Continue reading

I think I’ll be switching my race to Humans, which is quite a big decision. I’ve never been good with micromanagement, especially in Starcraft. It’s like something I wasn’t raised with, so I can’t get better at it, the way you see older people hit a limit in their two word-per-minute typing speed. In Starcraft I think I hit a limit where I just couldn’t get any better, which completely sucked, because I wasn’t that good anyway. I think that by practicing with Humans, I’ll be better at learning how to micromanage. I’ve been sucked back in by Warcraft 3. It’s hard for me to imagine juggling a top 10 rank on the ladder, and having a girlfriend at the same time.

Somehow I got 94.5% on a mid-term (even though the average was about 90%). It makes up for other mid-terms I suppose, since I believe that I failed two of them. I’ll be able to defer the marks, however, for my Networking and Communications mid-term, to my final exam. That makes my assignments worth a piddly 15%, and my final a monstrous 85% of my final mark. Yay, I guess.

Something made me sad the other day, which hasn’t happened in a while. I seem to usually keep a very level set of emotions nowadays. It’s odd, because when I started dating Christie, things seemed to look better, and when we broke up, they seemed to still look better. I’m not really sure why. It’s like Christie helped me experience things that were good, so now I have those thoughts in my head.

I saw a Mary J. Blige video the other day called No More Drama. I didn’t really enjoy the song, and thought she looked better in other videos. Something she said was quite interesting, however. The lyrics go:

No more tears (no more tears, I’m tired of cryin every night)
No more fears (no more fears, I really don’t wanna cry)
No drama (no more drama in my life)
I don’t ever wanna hurt again

I thought about the idea of never crying again. It’s something that just seems so unavoidable, yet so necessary. I wondered why anyone would never want to cry again. After all, the only way you can feel happiness is by feeling its opposite.

There is a science of crying, called lachrymology, but the resources on this are very scant. The only useful source on this science is the band Tool, which, coincidentally, is my favorite band. They say that a study has been done and a book on it published, although any attempts to find such a book have proven fruitless. Their name is short for toolshed; when they created the band, they wanted their music to be a toolshed for lachrymology.

There are chemical side-effects of crying, of course. When one cries, chemicals are released which heal the body, allowing for much stress to be relieved, not only mentally, but physically as well. It’s not this chemical process that I’m interested in, it’s the very notion of going through life without crying that I’m still trying to comprehend.

Crying seems so important, as one goes through many mental changes. So many aspects of my mentality have been changed by things that have made me cry. I have learned so much from these things. Some of my best artistic endeavors were a result of pain in some way.

Does one need to suffer to create? I believe this is true for many people, including myself, though not for everyone. After all, some joyous works of art come from artistic euphoria.

Crying can be so beautiful, and so productive, and so beneficial. Pain can be all of these things as well, something which Tool discusses in many of their songs, though not as much, I believe, in their latest album.

So why would anyone possibly want to never feel pain again, to cry again? Why would anyone want to end the world of hunger? Without hunger, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate how good that plain baguette tastes. Without pain, one would become boring, drably, something that I have feared for quite a while.

We need it to create, to truly feel. Even if one is not an artist, it takes a certain amount of pain to really enjoy life.

And for this I am thankful.