Playing dead vs Playing Death

I´ve been fighting against this post for days. I should have abandoned the whole idea, but, I don´t know why, I kept on insisting. Maybe I could get something out of this subject, or maybe not. Let´s see.

Playing Dead vs Playing Death 

I read an interview with an actor that usually plays the bad guy, and, as it happens often in movies, or at least in those ones I am thinking of, bad guys tend to die spectactacular deaths, and so he did. Over, and over. Danny (that´s his name: Danny Trejo)  believes no one else in Hollywood has died so many times (or killed so many times) as he did (see LINK). But there was a sentence, that hooked me immediately as I read, which was:  "not just anybody can play dead".

I first smiled a condescendent and superior smile,  thinking, oh, c´mon. But then I realized that he had one moment of enlightment few humans experience in a lifetime. That was a definite philosophical statement. Being dead is nothing, really. It´s a condition each one of us reaches someday. And, as other things we experience in life, there´s no rehearsal. Either you get it right from the begining or you blow it, period. I was thinking about that while I was reading Don Quixote. In one of his conversations with Sancho Panza, he says something about the perfect death, and that would be an unexpected one in the battlefield, of course. Well, dying during a battle does not exactly come as a surprise, but, again, and this is very human, even soldiers do not expect to die. In fact, death is always unexpected, right? There´s always hope even in the most desperate situations. We cling to life until we can´t anymore. The surprise comes with the realization that we cannot scape. And that reminded me of the best scene of the first movie based on Stieg Larsson trilogy, I think is the one called  Men who hate women. The hero got to solve the mistery and to know the identity of the serial killer. The only problem is that he is about to become a victim as well, too bad for him, but, before going on with the kill, the bad guy not only describes his modus operandi, but also his drives. What really turned him on was to recognize in the eyes of his victims the moment they understand they were doomed. The realization of the end of their lives by his hands. A mix of surprise, disbelief, anger, perhaps? The definite end, no second chances. And, on this case, the killer played death, the major role, leaving the victims to the secondary role of simply dying.  
That´s why I think Danny is a fortunate man. He´s been having the great chance to face different ends for his different lives. Maybe not that different, considering his roles do not vary much, but still. He´s in a clear advantage when compared to mortals like you and me. He plays dead all the time. He´s rehearsing for his ultimate act. And has he learned something from his experience? Of course he did.
What he learned seems kind of a cliché, but I guess all the great truths are like that, so obvious that can easily be misunderstood: "When it´s time, it´s time. When it comes, it comes, so don´t think about it too much. Don´t be afraid of death". 

Then I read another interview, that one with Woody Allen ( HERE), and I could find points in common in the two different reasonings, which is kind of comforting, I guess. I am not sure Woody has played dead very often, but he certainly played with death as a writer, and as a director. Bottom line, what they say is pretty much the same: life ´s short, we´re insignificant creatures, everything passes. Get used to that. Of course, it´s hard, especially for some who have big egos and want to leave a legacy for future generations. C´mon, guys. That doesn´t make any sense, because, as he points out,  the whole universe will be gone eventually.
So why do we do what we do? Why to bother getting up everyday? Oh, well, since we´re around, we must do something in order not to get terribly bored, depressed or both. In his words: "the key is distraction" .And: "The truth of the matter is that your life is pretty much out of your control". 
Then, the best thing you can do is to chill out, and find something you think will be a good distraction. Since we´re all doomed, we better have some fun before the very end.





      

What hurts the most?

I´ve read an article where I learned that a person had developed a scale of pain for bites and stings and, in order to do it properly, he let different insects bit and sting his flesh before categorizing the level of pain felt afterwards.

What would be the use of such scale I can´t tell, maybe getting to know that a wasp bite was categorized as 2 meaning that it is painful, but not excruciating (that would be a 4), would have a soothing effect. However, if a tarantula hawk crosses your way, and that encounters works out really bad for you, meaning that you were bitten at the end, and boy, that hurts as hell, knowing that this is a top 4 type of bite would help you somehow?


Anyway, the article goes on to present the story of another man who was accidentaly bitten by a black widow spider. The bite wasn´t that bad, but the symptons after the venon started to spread were something else, pure agony, the worst pain he have ever felt (LINK).

Black widow spider

Scales of pains, categorizations of agonies. Interesting subject. I would tend to think pain is highly subjective. Something that would be very painful for me couldn´t be that awful for you. It seems thare´s a gender component as well. I´ve heard/read once that women are more resistant to pain then men, but I also read/heard that is the other way around, so, who knows, it´s a touchy subject.

I always had problems with categories in general. I don´t like the idea of putting things into specific compartments, adding values, and  attributing grades. When thinking about pain is even worse; every time I experienced some level of it, I hated it.  I don´t think it ever crossed my mind any attempt to categorize how much pain I was feeling. I just wanted to take something that could make it go away.
That´s my way of dealing with pain, others think it differently. Scientists, doctors, nurses, for scientific reasons I guess. So when I was asked to grade the level of pain after a surgery, I took the question as a valid and scientific one, even though I wanted to use very unappropriate words to describe what I was feeling, and that is also something interesting; why do we want to curse when we feel pain?
All of that made me think about pains and the different types we can experience through life. What would hurt the most? The more physical ones that reflect injuries in parts of our body, or those we usually associate with psychological agonies, such as the pain we experience after a breakup?

I wish I knew. I have the impression that although  the level of pain experienced can be highly subjective, there´s nothing like pain to attach us to the present. It´s like an anchor, forcing us to live the actual moment. There isn´t much space left  for remembering the past or thinking about the future. It´s just us, the agony and the god damned endless present.

I love this version of King of Pain by Alanis.
Have a good day.

  

Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth: writing fiction

I think I was always a writer, always wanted to be, just didn´t know if I could.  Either way, I wrote mentally long before I actually started. It´s a common thing among writers, I guess. Not trying to be pretentious, but I once read an essay by George Orwell, where he mentioned that, he was always creating stories from scenes of his everyday life. Because that´s where literature exists and breaths. We can be heroes, just for one day, a song by David Bowie. And that´s true. Literature is happening everyday around us, we just have to be aware. In a way, a writer is like a photographer. We need a snapshot, a sparkle that triggers the creative process, and then we continue from there, we create new lives.

 I have several of these in my mind, mundane things, faces that passed me by, sentences I´ve heard, colors, odors. I can´t help it, it´s something I´ve done without even noticing. I am always collecting memories, and I keep them stored for an occasion I can use them.  

There´s also music. Many of the stories I wrote came from lyrics I´ve heard, songs I love. Listening to them helped me creating situations where those songs would be playing; a break up, a love scene, or something completely different where a certain part of the lyrics fits perfectly. It is incredible, exciting, and almost magical. All of a sudden, I see the characters, I visualize the plot, I hear their voices, and then I know; It´s time to let the process flow. I have to tell that story.

The stories are not mine. Not autobiographical, I mean. It always amazed me how difficult it is for readers to understand that. I don´t want to write about my life. No way, that would be boring. Citing Orwell for a second time, but I think he must always be mentioned, good writers are invisible. It´s the story that counts and that just reminds me of Oscar Wilde and one of his brilliant sayings, I guess he was thinking about poets, but it is valid to all writers: the good ones are pale figures, really insignificant. Why? Because they´re not worried about being, they´re busy creating.   

Once the story is there ready to be read, it gains its own life. What a wonderful thing that is, giving voices to characters, bringing them to life.   

As I said, I always wanted to write. I never thought I could, though. But one thing about writing is that it is a hard-wired condition. Writers are born writers and one cannot escape or ignore this urge for too long.

Once I started, I could never stop. I just finished my first book. Sixteen short stories. Slices of other people´s lives, ready to get known by others, probably very few others, but that doesn´t bother me.  

I love what I do. And I do cause I love, I cannot live from what I write, but then I remember Monterroso. For him, getting paid for writing was something surreal and almost indecent. Anyway,  I am truly myself when I write, and that reminded me of a song by Regina Spektor, “beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth”. That´s exactly it. 

Wishes

I was in the kitchen preparing dinner, when my youngest said: "mom, I don´t want you to change".

When I took her plate to the dinning table, I asked what she meant, and she answered: "I dont want you to get old, cause you´re so beautiful. If you get old you will look less beautiful". I just smiled back.

I´ve been thinking about your request, sweetie. And, as much as I wanted not to change, this is simply not possible. What I am today is slightly different from what I was yesterday,  and you probably look different as well, I can tell. A new tooth is filling the gap left from the one the tooth fairy took last week, and that is just an example. You gonna turn seven, you learned to read and write, you´re facing your fears. You were so happy to finally learn to swim, and you want to sleep alone, in your bed.

It´s impossible, because we live in different times. You´re the future, you look forward to what will come. I am the past, I look backwards, in a search for things I left behind. And that´s not either good or bad, it is just the way it is.
Right now, we share our presents together. Right now, I am your beautiful mother, the most beautiful woman you know, and that´s very sweet, especially because all daugthers think their mothers are gorgeous, and that´s fair enough, I´m very pleased you see me like that.
However, I know this will not last. Not only because time will pass for me, but mainly because it will pass for you, and I am sure you will grow up to be a very good looking young woman, and by then, when you´ll look at me, you´ll see a different person. Older indeed, but that wouldn´t be so important to you anymore. You will see me with a critical eye, you´ll spot my ugliness for the first time.
I know it´ll hurt, for you and for me, but it´s part of life. You will understand someday.
So let´s enjoy our presents together. Let me be your beautiful mother, and you, my seven year old girl.

Oscilate Wildly

Smiths has been my soundtrack on the last days, and of all the songs I love, the one that brings tears to my eyes is Oscilate Wildly, an instrumental one, and the reason behind that is that I already have all the lyrics in my head, lyrics of a huge number of sad songs. And also because I live to write, something I once describe to a friend as a curse, altought at the time I said that, I just wanted to sound clever. But after wondering a lot, and also after reading a novel by Javier Cercas, I´ve came to the conclusion that that´s what it is, a curse. I go around in a constant search for a good story. Nothing is insignificant. Everything can be used somehow, someday. We´re vampires of others people´s lives, or lives that we just made up from a snapshot we get.

I thought about that when I saw a picture on monday, of a Free Syrian Army fighter playing with a dog (LINK). Since I saw the picture, I couldn´t stop thinking; who was this man? what are his bieliefs, how was his life before this gruesome war started, and I thought about the dog, about their accidental encounter, and wondered if they both make it to the end of that day. And also how was it possible for this man to ignore the background, the killings, the destruction, the gassed victims, and enjoy the company of a dog on a sunny day?

Maybe the answer is in an essay by George Orwell, A Hanging (check HERE). Because we happen to be alive now, at this very moment. Because we´re alive up to the moment we´re dead. On this essay, Orwell describes the day he witnesses a hanging. The prisioner who´s going to be hanged walks in front of him, a walking dead. There´s a puddle on his way. What does he do? He steps aside. For what, one could ask. To avoid getting wet,of course, altought it may seem absurd. To me, the main reason is because he can step aside. At that moment, he is still a living creature. Avoiding the puddle reinforces his humanity. He does it, because he´s still alive.  
The man plays with the dog because they´re both alive in the middle of chaos, death and suffering. Others didn´t make it, too bad for them. Escaping death brings a furious happiness, something both Orwell and Cercas mention. We will keep on stepping aside puddles, playing with dogs up to the moment we cannot escape.

Bubble

When I was a child I remember watching a movie about a boy who lived his entire life inside a bubble.  I think the main character was played by John Travolta. It was a drama, because the thing this boy wanted the most was to leave his sterilized space, so he could interact with other people. He wanted to touch and to be touched by others. However, I have this belief that bubbles are not that bad. In fact, the only way to keep things going sometimes is to create one around us, live inside a limited perimeter, isolate ourselves from others, and I just remembered a song, that has been happening to me very often these days, a song by REM, I´ve read it was elected the saddest song ever written, and I think is unfair, Everybody Hurts, a song about resilience. Anyway, it is a fact: everybody hurts, but we can read this in two different ways, right? We can get hurt and we can hurt somebody. And we usually get hurt by somebody´s actions or words, even unintentionally. But I think the boy from the movie was either too young or too naive to know that.
There are the others and there´s us (and  by us I mean you, and me, as individuals, separate ones. As you may have already noticed, we - you, me - are basically alone and that I´ve got from a song by Andrew Bird ). The others are usually too worried about themselves to notice what´s going on around them. Because that´s the way we are in general, we cannot see the world from a point of view different than ours. As in that expression, as much as we try (and I guess we never bother to try hard enough) we can´t walk in other person´s shoes.  So, in a way, we´re all inside bubbles pretending we´re not, minding our own businesses.

But another characteristic we humans share is this unexplicable faith in the future, a place we never get to really know. And then we keep on holding on, as Michael Stipe tells us to do, hoping for the day we won´t feel hurt anymore.

    

Shreds

Depression # 1

It just happened, I was in my bed, in the dark, alone, trying to sleep. As it happens to all kids, I was afraid of the dark, but the nightlight was even scarier, It had the form of an elefant, it was yellow, a yellow elefant shining in the dark, a creepy thing, so I didn´t want the elefant. I was in the dark, fighting my fears, the monsters that were around trying to bite my feet, and all of a sudden, the attack came from the inside. 

What I felt was a bigger than life fear. I think I had a panic attack when I understood what a long time after that, or I should say before, but I read years later, Camus has defined as one of the absurds of life, which is, we simply die.
But the fact is I was a child, I had no idea of who Camus had been or writen, although I have to say, once I got the chance to read him, I had this feeling of identity. As crazy as it might seem, I sensed I met an equal. But that was long after that night and, again, I was, like all kids are, unaware of so many things, that I couldn´t fight that feeling with rational or even irrational arguments. I felt helpless.
I don´t recall much of that night, but I do remember the feeling, the awful and permanent sensation of being helpless, and of knewing by instinct I would say, that there was no way out, no solution. We die, it´s a fact.
So I kept that moster inside of me, while I felt his attacks on my flesh for a long time, or maybe it wasn´t that long, but when we´re small, the time seems to last forever.
And I remember my second encounter with death.
We lived in a house with a huge yard, or I thought it was huge, I don´t know. One day, while I was playing outside, I found a dead gecko. A curious thing about childhood, at least mine, is that I didn´t fear animals of any kind. I guess it´s a natural thing, atavic to our species, and even to others, to experience in order to learn. Anyway, Geckos are quite cute, and wonderful creatures that can climb walls. I used to catch them by the tail, and the funny part was to witness one of the wonders of nature: geckos can get dettached from their tails, and escape predators. Most of the time.

The one I found couldn´t escape. I felt sorry for it. Ants were attacking his body, trying to get pieces of its flesh. I got a shoe box and put the dead body inside. I wanted to dig a hole in the yard, but all I had was a small plastic shovel, and the soil was so hard... I did my best to bury the box, but the hole was not that deep. So, on the next day, I went back to the spot of the burial, and realized my effort was in vain. The ants were there, finding their way inside the box, inside its body. So I tried to cover the box with plastic. It didn´t work as well. Death cannot be defeated.
One night, my father found me crying in despair, alone, looking for a way out, knowing already that I wouldn´t find any. He asked me what was wrong, but I couldn´t tell, I just couldn´t. He wouldn´t understand, that´s what I thought. So I lied and said I dind´t want to grow up.  I remember my parents trying to convince me everything was fine. I tried very hard to believe. But I knew that was a temporary thing. Death cannot be defeated.