Success is Temporary, Failure is Temporary, Leave Me Alone!

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
-George S. Patton

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.
-St. Clement of Alexandra

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

That's a small sampling from a motivational quotes website. Gee. Charming.

We're in a new year. 2011 is supposed to be better and brighter and more wonderful than 2010.

Bullshit.

Oh, I can't say that it won't be in absolute terms. I don't have a crystal ball or any other way to see into the future. But just because it's early January doesn't mean that the New Year is full of promise only because most of the year hasn't happened yet. I mean, with each new year, everyone thinks it's going to be great. But is that how the year turns out?

Just look at last year. Try to remember the beginning of 2010. Obama was President (still is). Pelosi was the Speaker of the House (now she's not). The "progressives" were in charge of everything and we all know that means everything that changes, changes for the better (as defined by a bunch of politicians and myopic optimists). How many people died in Afghanistan and Iraq? How many suicide bombings were there in the Middle East? How many people died in car accidents? How many little kids were diagnosed with cancer? How many people are out of work? Homeless? Sick? Dying?

Yes, I'm grumpy. I'm grumpy because, like Christmas, everyone expects you to feel a certain way, as if it's the only way to feel, just because of a date on a calendar. Also, all these motivational people, sites, and sayings make just tons and tons of assumptions about people. If you aren't actually motivated by their popular drivel, then you're bad or evil or something. After all, these people make money by being motivational, so how dare you fail to be motivated by them. What they really want is to motivate you to give them your money.

How about an example of motivational drivel. Let's take a look at one popular motivational phrase:

Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal.
-Mike Ditka US football player & coach

I'll totally buy the first part. No matter how well you do at something, it doesn't last. Just look at actors and politicians. No matter how good your last movie was, the next one could suck. No matter how many promises you made on the campaign trail that got you elected, your actions once you get in office will not always be popular (look how far Obama has fallen in the "popularity polls").

Failure isn't fatal. Well, that depends. If we're talking about skydiving or bungie cord jumping, then failure can damn well be fatal. If you're Superman, Batman, or Green Lantern and some series of bad guys are always trying to kill you, failure can almost assuredly be fatal.

But most of us don't have life threatening hobbies or happen to be superheroes, so no, failing won't really kill us.

It will just make us feel like we want to be dead.

Your boss always wants you to be successful at work (productive, whatever). Your boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, lover, spouse, mutant parasite wants you to always be successful in attending to their wants, needs, and desires. The credit card company wants you to be successful in paying your bills on time. Everybody wants you to be universally successful and will punish you in varying ways and in varying degrees if you fail.

No, it won't kill you, but you'll wish you were dead.

I've noticed that motivational phrases, websites, and people rarely provide practical advice, they just ramble off pie-in-the-sky platitudes. They're like comic book characters. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all have perfect bodies. Except for Batman, you never see them dieting or working out to achieve and maintain those bodies. They just have them. Success and failure are fictional illustions that happen on pages of paper covered with ink. While they can be inspirations, they also can point out that, by comparision, our little lives are pretty dull, boring, and our problems, though not on a magnificent scale most of the time, aren't very easy to solve (nor as dramatically solved).

So next time those of you who produce your motivational books and websites get the bright idea to give some advice to the rest of us, come down to earth first. Learn what it feels like to live with chronic depression or some sort of physical disability. Find out what it's like to have few friends, to live on a budget (a small one), to struggle to pay bills, to disappoint your spouse, to be called "a failure".

Success isn't permanent but failure is a label that, once stuck to your back with super glue, hangs on in your reputation and in your emotions for a long, long time.

Bite me, motivational people.

Who Killed Santa Claus?

I don't like Christmas. I don't care if you think it was the birthday of the Son of God (historically, it couldn't be), it still sucks. First there are the crowds, and then the traffic, and then the crass commercialism, and families going into debt up to their eyes to afford the latest crap on sale they think they need to give as gifts.

The really sucky part about Christmas is the assumption that it's the happiest time of the year. First of all (depending on where you live) it's cold. Where I live, it's cold and snowy (I don't like snow...bad for driving and walking), and cloudy, and foggy, and actual sunshine is on the endangered species list (darn Persephone for marrying Pluto anyway). If you are at all a moody person (I am), then having people around you expecting you to be happy and cheerful just because of the date on a calendar is even more depressing.

The image I posted at the top of this blogpost comes from several blogs, such as this one, supposedly attempting to "take back Christmas" from commercialism and return it to the birth of Christ. Of course if you are not only sick to death of commercialism but don't subscribe to the typical Christian view of the holiday, that's not exactly an improvement.

Consider this my "bah, humbug" article in defense of everyone who can't wait for January 2nd when we can legitimately tell our neighbors to take the f*cking Christmas lights off their house and save a couple of hundred dollars a day in electricity. I'm surprised we don't have Christmas blackouts because of the conspicuous power consumption.

No, I don't hate people (I'm only a little misanthropic sometimes) so if you like or even love Christmas, more power to you. Just don't expect or demand that people like me have a good time in December. I'm waiting for January or better yet, spring.

Bah, humbug!

Oh. Who killed Santa Claus. Don't look at me. You can't prove a thing. Honest. I buried the gun...uh, I mean...

Addendum: Holy crap! Photographic proof! This is who killed Santa! Found at this site.

The Moon a Phantom Rose

It was one of those nights. It's been one of those mornings. The world could be full of people, but I'll always feel alone. As ephemeral as my own shadow, though I stand in the light, I'm always in darkness. I once heard it said that there's a time in every man's life when he finds he's too old to fall in love again. Is there a time when no one can fall in love with him?

I've been listening to the Judy Collins rendition of Jimmy Webb's song The Moon's a Harsh Mistress (1974). It's been recorded by most major vocal artists over the past several decades but never more beautifully; more hauntingly, than by the amazing Judy Collins. The recording is best known from her 1975 album Judith.

It's a song that, once heard, particularly as rendered by Collins, you don't soon forget. If you have a soul filled with demons of emptyness, loneliness, or a love that's been lost, the song will speak to you in whispers in the darkness. Though Collins is better known for such signature pieces as Send in the Clowns and Amazing Grace, The Moon's a Harsh Mistress remains closest to my heart, especially today.

See her as she flies
Golden sails across the sky
Close enough to touch
But careful if you try
Though she looks as warm as gold
The moon's a harsh mistress
The moon can be so cold

Once the sun did shine
And lord it felt so fine
The moon a phantom rose
Through the mountains and the pine
And then the darkness fell
The moon's a harsh mistress
It's hard to love her well

I fell out of her eyes
I fell out of her heart
I fell down on my face, yes I did
And I tripped and I missed my star
And I fell and fell alone
The moon's a harsh mistress
The sky is made of stone

The moon's a harsh mistress
She's hard to call your own

Achieve the Dream

"To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there's the rub."
Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)

The quote is from Hamlet's famous soliloquy where he is contemplating suicide. Small wonder. The poor guy's just found out (from this father's ghost, no less), that his uncle murdered his father, the King, and then married his mother. Hamlet is totally flipped out by this revelation and can't see anyway to deal with it besides killing himself. The problem is, he doesn't know that death will end his pain. "There's the rub", to quote the bard.

To die, to sleep-No more.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.

Last night, I wrote a blog about nightmares or rather, whether it is preferable to live our waking life as a nightmare or to seek the comfort and peace of sleep and dreams. Hamlet wonders if, even in death, we have dreams, or in his case, nightmares, so even suicide is no answer. What's the answer to pain and suffering?

Hamlet doesn't provide an adequate answer for us. He seems to go mad with grief but all the while is seeking revenge upon his uncle Claudius as his father's ghost has commanded him. In a series of misadventures, Hamlet eventually achieves revenge by killing Claudius but then dies as a result of being poisoned. Doesn't seem a satisfying ending, but that's a Shakespeare tragedy for you.

If we can't sleep forever to escape our nightmares and if death is no answer, what's left? As hideous as it seems sometimes, the only other option is to keep on living somehow. If Hamlet had actually gone mad and stayed that way, he would have been harmless (most likely) and would have spent the rest of his days in some asylum (too early for Arkham, though). However, most of us don't have the "luxury" of going out of our minds with grief or dispair, though depression too is a "mental illness".

Is pursuit of dreams or their waking equivalent, fantasy an answer? My blog articles are littered with the images of superheroes, mostly of the dark variety. Batman is a favorite because he is "the night", dark, brooding, and tortured. Yet Batman is the expression of Bruce's frustration and grief at the death of his parents and his need to do something about it. Ironically, long after the death of Joe Chill, the man who killed his parents, Batman continues to exist. If Hamlet had lived after the death of Claudius, would he have continued down a similar path by seeking further revenge as Bruce seems to be doing?

Whatever the answer, Bruce continues to live and Batman gives him the purpose of fighting larger injustices than his own. For me, the pursuit of fantasy isn't just an escape from the mundane and the meloncholy, but a quest for purpose as well. In yesterday's blog Misfit, I described how many of our cherished heroes are anomalies or anachronisms in someway, not fitting in with the world around them, even in secret.

Of course, Clark does "fit in" behind the glasses and the tie, able to lead a more or less normal life while still maintaining his Superman identity and thus fulfilling his destiny to be humanity's greatest defender. Ben Grimm by comparison, is hard to hide behind glasses or anything else, though very early in his career, he did try to wear a mask (and unfortunately, I can't find any images online showing this). He tried to go out in public in a large raincoat and hat, but that didn't hide much.

Ben continually struggles with his appearence as the Thing (and even the name is pretty much a diss), but the hero inside pushes back with courage and sorrow striking a balance. How many times has he come to the realization (in error) that the only thing he has to offer anyone is his physical strength? In reality, from the point of view of the audience, his real power is the ability to live with disfigurement and isolation. He doesn't (typically) withdraw, but projects his rage against external foes, of which, as a member of the Fantastic Four, he always has a ready supply.

The same with Batman, Spider-Man, and just about a ton of other heroes. When the going gets tough emotionally, the tough go out and beat up a bad guy. In real life, getting into a fist fight everytime life gets you down will either get you beaten to a pulp or tossed in jail. What do to..what to do?

The essense of the answer remains, even if the form must be different; find a purpose and focus your emotional response there. What is my purpose? I have a job and a family and other responsibilities, but they don't always feel like my purpose. If they did, my life would be set. In some ways, writing this blog is in the direction of my purpose. The expression of frustration at personal and societal injustices in the form of writing and hopefully, drawing when time allows.

No costumes. No superpowers. No good guys. No bad guys. Just a sense of being a misfit caught in the maelstrom of a nightmare life, trying to turn and twist the disadvantage into a purpose. Battle the nightmare to achieve the dream. Find the magic and hold on to it.

Water and Chains

Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning. Oh, I can breathe, and that's the funny thing. I don't feel like I'm dying exactly, but I feel incredibly heavy, as if I were bound in chains and thrown into the water. I'm sinking. No matter how much I struggle, I can't break my chains and rise to the surface. I'll never see the sun again. In someways, that's a relief, but then people still expect me to act is if I can move, and think, and see.

Sometimes, all I want is to sit on the ocean's floor in my chains in the dark and be weighed down. It's so hard to move at all, let alone try to rise and swim. I feel so heavy. It's like wanting to sleep, but people and priorities say you have to stay awake. How can I rise from beneath my chains?

That's what depression is like. Being chained to the bottom of the ocean. Tons of water over my head. Trapped in chains surrounding my body. It doesn't hurt. It just feels numb. I want to feel numb. If that's all there was to it, then I could sit in the water, in my chains, and be numb. But that's not all there is to it; it never is.

I'm surrounded. Not just by my chains, but by people, and responsibilities, and priorities. They all tell me I should break my chains, rise above the water, and work and do and fulfill and produce. I can barely hold my head up and you all want me to fly. Get real.

They say, "All you have to do is have the right attitude." They say, "You need to look at your depression as a challenge to overcome, not a problem to avoid." Nice try. You first.

I've read Stephen Covey. I've tried Zig Ziglar. I know the principles of cognitive therapy. Replace the old thoughts and perceptions with new ones. Redefine tragedy as difficulty and redefine difficulty so it can be overcome. Even the old Star Trek original series episode What Are Little Girls Made of? chimed in, with the once-person, now-android Roger Korby telling Kirk that turning humans into machines would make it possible to reprogram people and turn feelings of sorrow into joy.

Are people computers? Can we be reprogrammed? Do I want to be reprogrammed?

In keeping with the Star Trek theme, the Next Generation episode The Hunted featured a society that reprogrammed some of its citizens to be the perfect soldiers during a time of war, but when peace came and the programming couldn't be reversed, the soldiers were put on a colony planet (penal) so they wouldn't hurt anyone. A gilded cage is still a cage and havoc resulted (similar to Timothy Zahn's novel COBRA). No, theraputic reprogramming wouldn't make me dangerous, but I don't want to be treated like a thing. I already feel objectified enough. Are my feelings just algorithms? And even if they are, can my current "programming" be overcome?

I suppose some on some level I believe that people can be reprogrammed, but my "program" seems to be very difficult to modify, especially for me. No matter what books, techniques, or therapies I've encountered, although they make things seem kind of hopeful for a little while, eventually something happens, the chains reassert their weight, and down I go beneath the waves again.

A 1930s fictional police detective named Jim Corrigan was murdered by gangsters. He was drowned in a harbor but as death took his body, his spirit refused to give up. Through some supernatural means, he assumed the identity and mission of The Spectre, an undead being who at first, took vengence on Corrigan's murderers in a violent and terrible way, and then spent his further existence seeking justice and vengence against any who had committed heinous crimes. When Corrigan sank beneath the waves and died, something came back out of the water, but it wasn't human.

A man with the unlikely name of Scott Free, born on New Genesis and raised on Apokolips eventually liberates himself from Darkseid's hell hole, travels to earth, and becomes the "super" escape artist Mr. Miracle. What do they have to do with anything?

Corrigan and the Spectre are my soul sinking into the wine-dark depths of the sea, wrapped in chains, and comdemned not to die, but to live in emotional and spiritual darkness. Mr. Miracle is the hope that somehow, the impossible can happen and that the chains can be broken, returning me to life to walk in the sunlight again. Small wonder that I find much of my identity in the pages of comic books, sometimes in the lives of the genre's darkest characters.

That's the nature of this blog and the part of me who comes here to write it. I have established this venue to give a voice to the mute pain that exists only in the shadows, unable to be expressed in the rest of my life. Struggling in the darkness against the pressure around me, can I become free again (have I ever been free)? Do I have the ability to escape from bondage alone? Can somebody save me?

Masks

People wear masks to hide who they really are, at least that's the idea. Kids wear masks on Halloween to score candy and they aren't hiding anything, but that's different. For a kid, wearing a mask is like playing "dress up" and being someone you aren't. That brings us full circle to why the rest of us wear masks.

Conversation goes like this. First person asks, "How are you?" Second person, who just had a fight with her boyfriend over whether or not she should have an abortion replies, "I'm fine. How are you?" First person, whose Mom died last month, whose been too depressed to go to class because of it, and is now flunking out of the spring semester says, "I'm fine."

They're both wearing masks. The faces they have on underneath are too ugly to show anyone. People don't want to see ugly, so we wear masks to hide it. The masks are the smiley faces people expect us to wear all the time. If we didn't wear them, we'd have no friends. Even strangers would shun us. No one wants to look at pain, depression, anger, or despair.

Most of the time, I wear a mask. You can't see it because when I come here, I take it off. My ugly face is bare. That's probably why no one will read this. No one wants to read ugly. No one wants to see it. That's why thousands upon thousands of people can be unemployed but the Associated Press and Newsweek reports that the economy has recovered...not recovering...recovered. It's over. All's right with the world. Let's have a beer.

It's the mask people want to see. Not the ugly reality of people out of work.

When I was a kid, I used to be scared of the old Invisible Man movies. Yeah, they're pretty lame. Lousy special effects, but hey, the first one was made in 1933.

Anyway, I was afraid of the bandages. The guy had his whole face covered, like he was all scarred up underneath. Like there was nothing but ripped skin and blood underneath. The mask was scary enough. What was underneath was a lot more scary than blood and disfigurement. What was underneath was nothing at all. Invisible. You couldn't see it. But it could get you.

I talked about Batman and Rorschach in my last blog. They wear masks, too but then, which face is the fake and which face is the real person? Turns out the stuff made of cloth and plastic is the real face. The face of the guy inside, under the skin. The flesh and blood mask is just what they wear because that's what the world wants to see.

Bruce Wayne, well Christian Bale anyway, is pretty. He's a good looking guy. If you look at him, you won't be scared of him (until he goes off on you, but that's another story). Walter Kovacs (Jackie Earle Haley in the film) isn't all that pretty, but he looks more "normal" than Rorschach. Even Kovacs was kind of edgy, but you really didn't expect him to try and kill you if you crossed the line. Wayne and Kovacs are the masks. Their real names are Batman and Rorschach.

I like superheroes. I'm not into jumping off rooftops at night or beating people up because they spit on the sidewalk, but I like the masks they wear, or rather the faces they wear. The masks of social acceptability keep us safe in one way, but they exact a terrible cost...who we really are. When we take off the mask and roam free, saying what we want and being who we are, we can see the world and the world can see us. There's a price to pay here too, though. No one wants to see our faces, so we're alone.

Tough choice. Wear your mask and have a bunch of friends who only hang out with you if you're socially acceptable and politically correct, or take off the mask, be completely honest and (yes, I'll say it) "transparent." People will hang out with the fake, but they're being fake, too. Take off the mask, and everyone runs away from "the monster." Maybe, they just don't want to be reminded that, under their masks, they're monsters, too.

People are lying when they tell you they want you to be honest. People are lying when they say they want you to be real. No one wants reality. Why do you think fantasy is such big business? No one goes to see Watchmen, or Avatar, or Kick Ass, or Iron Man 2 because it's reality. They go for the fantasy; the escape.

I come here to "be real", but I can't stay. The "fantasy" of my masked life keeps dragging me back by the demands of friends, family, and job. I have to live in the world, so every morning, I shower, shave, get dressed, and put on my mask. When I come here, it's like Batman going into his cave. For a little while, I can be who I am in a dark and secure cocoon. Too bad it never lasts.

Time to suit up again. Where's my "face?"

I am more

In the 2005 film Batman Begins Bruce Wayne, caught by his would be love interest Rachel Dawes on a night of debauchery with a couple of "European swimmers" (if you've seen the film, you know what I'm talking about), tries to explain to her that:

This isn't all I am. I am...more.

Her response becomes the code phrase that lets him tell her (as Batman) who he really is later in the story.

I'm also more than this, but this is becoming a more insistent part of my personality. This is the part of my personality who is depressed about life, misanthropic, agoraphobic, and generally wants to wad up the world and throw it in the toilet. Frankly, I think I'm just about too late. The world is already in the gutter and being swept in the flood of blood and pain toward the open grating leading to the sewer.

I am more than this, but I don't always want to be. I need a place to retreat from trying to be better than I am. This is it. Maybe I'm just hoping that I am more, and this is just a part of me who emerges when I feel particularly beaten down, ignored, discounted, and feeling like crap. I hope that's all this is. My fear is that this is who I am at the core and ultimately, this is all that is left of me after you strip away the veneer of civilization, political correctness, and everything else the world expects of me.

In Batman Begins, near the end of the film, Rachel refers to Bruce's face as his mask. The Bat mask becomes his face, "the one the criminals now fear." In the film (and comic book version of) Watchmen, the character Rorschach refers to his rather unique mask as his "face". There's a blurring of identities both characters endure as a result of the paths they've chosen, or the paths fate chose for them.

Is this a path I've chosen, or does fate or God control what happens next? Am I more, or am I only what you see? Who am I, the mask or the face?