(no subject)
Ever struck by that feeling of how very strange life is?
It's almost unreal. To exist in this quiet moment, a silly aimless girl ensconced in a room fool of books and all the useless modern appliances we collect to stave off boredom and apathy. Trying to transport ourselves somewhere where things matter. And yet in this world, at this second, incomprehensible things are happening to people I don't know - it's a vast and terrifying feeling to lift yourself away from your solitary existence and imagine the life of someone else without romanticism, without self-delusion. Not in relation to your own self, but almost objectvely.
It's so frustrating when I can't explain a feeling.
I'm reading a book called Birdsong about the experiences of a fictional man named Stephen Wraysford in the First World War, among other things. It's one of the best books I've ever read and through it I occasionally experience one of these brief moments of clarity. It's like taking a sledgehammer to the chest. So often we hear about or think about the Wars - films, books, old men in wheelchairs on the news. Coffins carried on the shoulders of young men in uniform and the brilliant red of poppies. It makes us sad in that distant way that recognises horrific events but doesn't really understand them. How could we ever begin to understand such things? It's too huge to comprehend, like thinking about giant stars millions of miles away in space, trying to imagine yourself hovering above a colossal sphere of fire and gas, trying to imagine the heat blistering your bones. It's too vast; too much.
Those men, so young and human, not just characters made of printed paper or actors on a screen, but like us, like our brothers and fathers. Buried in dirt and decaying flesh, a life of metal and terrible noise. I close my eyes and try to fill myself with the feeling of coarse fabric filled with burrowing lice, the sweat between skin and helmet, the awful weight of a gun, fingers frozen in grime and blood, the way the heart would thunder, the skin crawl. Running across a cratered wasteland towards death, surrounded by exploding metal, finding yourself falling to the ground and into the ruptured stinking flesh of something that may have been a friend or brother. It's worse than a nightmare, the only word that comes close is Hell and even then it doesn't convey the sheer unnatural horror of it. It's a crime, a terrible terrible crime, against something intrinsic, something deep within us that recoils and curls and dies at the knowledge.
I can't do it. I can't force myself all the way into the vision because my heart and mind just can't manage it. It's giant stars in space as far as my limited experience is concerned. But sometimes, reading these words written by a man who didn't know these things either, the jolt of understanding hits me that this is not just some imagined passage of time I'm reading about - it happened. These things happened, to real people, in real places, these things were experienced. Suddenly, for the tiniest briefest second, I swear I'm there and I feel it, just for a second and god it's terrifying and then it slips away and I can't recall it. The thought sends a thrill of pain up through my chest and slams into my brain. It's like whiplash, it punches the breath out of me and brings tears to my eyes. In the cold sunlight and comfort of my room I feel something terrible.
But I don't understand. It would be a monumental insult to a lot of people if I claimed I did. God, how could I ever, in my easy, meandering, frivolous life. There seems so little meaning in it, in comparison to such events. But did these men then, so many years ago, find more meaning in mud and death? In the scream of shells and men alike? And is it meaning worth more than what I may find in life? Is that 'meaning' and understanding one we should wish to reach? And what difference would it make? What do you do with this terrible thing you have found, these visions of unnatural and incomprehensible things? Is there any enlightment in it?
It doesn't seem there is. When I think of it, it only makes me lonely. Vastly and insignifcantly lonely.
There are people out there living lives like this. It makes me feel guilty over my little cares and selfishness. It makes my life seem foolish and pointless, but that is life. Who would wish to live in war and poverty and death?
I'm not a good person really. I say stupid things and feel superior because I think I'm smart and I cover up my inability to communicate with people with sarcasm and a cynical and flimsy hate of eveything. The people who endure harsher lives are probably often not any better or worse than I am - the men who died so heroically in the trenches had their flaws and their wishes and their silly defense mechanisms. But they were stripped of all those things and turned into sad memories, names carved on stone memorials to be wept over. They're dead heroes now and are not afforded the luxury of being average.
I'm rambling on here because it got to me, the futility of it, how stupid it all was, it was so unbearably stupid. It's kind of embarassing really and maybe I won't post it, maybe this is one I'll keep to myself.
I'm back into quotes now, so here's the one that started me off on this. From Stephen Wraysford's journals, 1918:
'I do not know what I have done to live in this existence.
I do not know what any of us did to tilt the world into this
unnatural orbit. We came here only for a few months.
No child or future generation will ever know what this
was like. They will never understand
When it is over we will go quietly among the living and
we will not tell them.
We will talk and sleep and go about our business like
human beings.
We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our
hearts and no words will reach us.'
- Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.
It's almost unreal. To exist in this quiet moment, a silly aimless girl ensconced in a room fool of books and all the useless modern appliances we collect to stave off boredom and apathy. Trying to transport ourselves somewhere where things matter. And yet in this world, at this second, incomprehensible things are happening to people I don't know - it's a vast and terrifying feeling to lift yourself away from your solitary existence and imagine the life of someone else without romanticism, without self-delusion. Not in relation to your own self, but almost objectvely.
It's so frustrating when I can't explain a feeling.
I'm reading a book called Birdsong about the experiences of a fictional man named Stephen Wraysford in the First World War, among other things. It's one of the best books I've ever read and through it I occasionally experience one of these brief moments of clarity. It's like taking a sledgehammer to the chest. So often we hear about or think about the Wars - films, books, old men in wheelchairs on the news. Coffins carried on the shoulders of young men in uniform and the brilliant red of poppies. It makes us sad in that distant way that recognises horrific events but doesn't really understand them. How could we ever begin to understand such things? It's too huge to comprehend, like thinking about giant stars millions of miles away in space, trying to imagine yourself hovering above a colossal sphere of fire and gas, trying to imagine the heat blistering your bones. It's too vast; too much.
Those men, so young and human, not just characters made of printed paper or actors on a screen, but like us, like our brothers and fathers. Buried in dirt and decaying flesh, a life of metal and terrible noise. I close my eyes and try to fill myself with the feeling of coarse fabric filled with burrowing lice, the sweat between skin and helmet, the awful weight of a gun, fingers frozen in grime and blood, the way the heart would thunder, the skin crawl. Running across a cratered wasteland towards death, surrounded by exploding metal, finding yourself falling to the ground and into the ruptured stinking flesh of something that may have been a friend or brother. It's worse than a nightmare, the only word that comes close is Hell and even then it doesn't convey the sheer unnatural horror of it. It's a crime, a terrible terrible crime, against something intrinsic, something deep within us that recoils and curls and dies at the knowledge.
I can't do it. I can't force myself all the way into the vision because my heart and mind just can't manage it. It's giant stars in space as far as my limited experience is concerned. But sometimes, reading these words written by a man who didn't know these things either, the jolt of understanding hits me that this is not just some imagined passage of time I'm reading about - it happened. These things happened, to real people, in real places, these things were experienced. Suddenly, for the tiniest briefest second, I swear I'm there and I feel it, just for a second and god it's terrifying and then it slips away and I can't recall it. The thought sends a thrill of pain up through my chest and slams into my brain. It's like whiplash, it punches the breath out of me and brings tears to my eyes. In the cold sunlight and comfort of my room I feel something terrible.
But I don't understand. It would be a monumental insult to a lot of people if I claimed I did. God, how could I ever, in my easy, meandering, frivolous life. There seems so little meaning in it, in comparison to such events. But did these men then, so many years ago, find more meaning in mud and death? In the scream of shells and men alike? And is it meaning worth more than what I may find in life? Is that 'meaning' and understanding one we should wish to reach? And what difference would it make? What do you do with this terrible thing you have found, these visions of unnatural and incomprehensible things? Is there any enlightment in it?
It doesn't seem there is. When I think of it, it only makes me lonely. Vastly and insignifcantly lonely.
There are people out there living lives like this. It makes me feel guilty over my little cares and selfishness. It makes my life seem foolish and pointless, but that is life. Who would wish to live in war and poverty and death?
I'm not a good person really. I say stupid things and feel superior because I think I'm smart and I cover up my inability to communicate with people with sarcasm and a cynical and flimsy hate of eveything. The people who endure harsher lives are probably often not any better or worse than I am - the men who died so heroically in the trenches had their flaws and their wishes and their silly defense mechanisms. But they were stripped of all those things and turned into sad memories, names carved on stone memorials to be wept over. They're dead heroes now and are not afforded the luxury of being average.
I'm rambling on here because it got to me, the futility of it, how stupid it all was, it was so unbearably stupid. It's kind of embarassing really and maybe I won't post it, maybe this is one I'll keep to myself.
I'm back into quotes now, so here's the one that started me off on this. From Stephen Wraysford's journals, 1918:
'I do not know what I have done to live in this existence.
I do not know what any of us did to tilt the world into this
unnatural orbit. We came here only for a few months.
No child or future generation will ever know what this
was like. They will never understand
When it is over we will go quietly among the living and
we will not tell them.
We will talk and sleep and go about our business like
human beings.
We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our
hearts and no words will reach us.'
- Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.