Quotes
-
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
-Andrew Marvell -
[…C]ried Frodo[,] “[…]What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had the chance!”
“Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”
“I am sorry,” said Frodo. “But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.”
“You have not seen him,” Gandalf broke in.
“No, and I do not want to,” said Frodo. “I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death!”
“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. For even the wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when it comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not the least[…].”
—J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Ring Sets Out" -
For me, there are two symbols going on here. I've often used the notion of trains/subways as a metaphor for depression (the dirt, single traveling; perhaps the prospect of leaving everything and everyone behind, again being singularity). Reading(/art), on the other hand, has always been a Noble Passion. It's education and enlightenment. Thus, the bettering of people and society. Healthy and wholesome, wholly what depression is not.
I would view an image like this as one of the Noble Passions in the midst of our painful world. It's the hope that makes studying and glorifying the arts so necessary and worthwhile. It's what makes living worthwhile.
Yet this image caused me marked confusion.
I have been trying to make sense, for a while now, of the fact that there are elements of my depression I very much enjoy and appreciate (even now, my brain is immediately wondering if that's not some thought influenced and created by the depression or simply some insane idea loftily thought up while the depression isn't that bad at this moment).
This picture (rather surprisingly) elicits such strong emotions from me not because the two symbols contrast each other but because they exist together here.
Yet, behind this, there was always this question of "Why?" As per always, I need to have some reason, to explain it.
As I said before, depression is sickness. It is suffering. It is unhealthy. So why be drawn to it? I can provide an explanation of the beauty in sadness, the way that I think our best natures can come out during suffering, etc.
All of which would be valid. But I think the part that unnerves my need for an explanation of everything is evident in my uneasiness about depression appearing with art as if they belong together. It's that, bluntly, I like it, sans explanations – and, as I've said multiple times, I really shouldn't necessarily.
I imagine it's the same uneasiness I get when liking something simply because it elicits nostalgia. Nostalgia over something that was defensively great (i.e. aspects of my childhood)? Acceptable. Longing purely out of nostalgia? Problematic.
And the reason that it seems so inappropriate for it to feel like these two symbols above go together is because, while I can defend art along such lines as I've done above, I just want to simply like these things.
Maybe it's because it's general; after all, you generally don't just like a book for no reason: I have very specific reasonings as to why The Great Gatsby is the shit. It's that, on some purely emotional level (ugh…), I just want to idolize Art.
While this brings up questions and ideas of its own, it also zeros in on an issue I've been trying to deal with for a while now: I'm tired of running from my depression. I don't mean in that I accept and fully embrace the disorder that will be a lifelong ordeal; I already do that openly, perhaps overzealously. I mean that I accept that it's not only something I partially enjoy for very particular reasons but that it's something which colors the entirety of my world and that I can't understand or experience the world outside of that lens.
Art is beautiful in the environment of that empty train station right before daybreak, when there's near to no one there.
You can see strains of this argument in past entries (third portion): the narrator has to stress that healing is the important thing, at the end. Yet perhaps that too simplifies it. There are aspects of depression I like, even if they may not be healthy for me. And saying that I had to learn to cope with depression always seemed like a diluted argument compared to saying you must heal from it but the former may be reality and it's what I want. I don't want to render myself nonfunctional or in massive pain but I don't want to have to offer explanations for, say, the morbid.
When something means a lot to someone, I think you should share it (I've mentioned this somewhere on this xanga before). And that has inevitably meant that I want someone who can appreciate depression with me.
More than that, I want someone who'll equally understand the religious experience I have with art.
Or someone who thinks going through as many museums as we can get our hands on in the spans of a day is a worthwhile effort.
Or would be piqued by the prospect of going out to a park at 2 in the morning.
Or to stay up all night just analyzing the shit out of everything and anything.
Or really loves hip hop.
Or horror movies.
Or feminism.
Or quotes.
Or, if ze doesn't, ze's at least willing to try to see why I do and tries to be a part of it just as I want to see everything that ze appreciates, and why, because ze's a person with a story and a history and dreams and aspirations and feelings and those are important and interesting.
Okay, so maybe I can't quite divorce myself from needing an explanation for things. But I think the reason why this no-explanation buisness arose is that there is clearly an emotional, non-explanational, aspect (even if elicited by a logical reasoning) of all this.
And I want someone to have, or try to have, that same emotional reaction to these things that I do. Because they're important to me.
And they are how I see this world.
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