You can be me when I'm gone

[burntcopper]

Pondering a couple of bits. Identity, a few other things. Mostly transience.

Random snippet of conversation from yesterday, where the others were talking about the strangeness of things changing, and why things were different in other places while I eyerolled and went '...because it is?' (and got accused of harshing the joy with my putdowns and unwillingness to join in debate after the cocktail steak pasty). I finally boiled it down to the fact that I simply don't expect things to be the same from one place to another, and I don't expect anything to be the same when I come back to it after a time away. Change, even when it's infinitesimal, is what i view as normal. I may be a homebody in many ways, but change is the constant. Things shift, it's what I expect from the universe and accept as the norm. it's just different because it is.

Another bit was shifting identity - not being the centre of the universe. Always expecting to be the bit player or sidekick in any story, never the utter standout or leader, and the fact that I can be replaced. I expect to be replaced, because I'm not important enough that I can't be. World moves on without me quite easily, thankyou.

Seriously. I'm well known for being extremely self-absorbed. And for being arrogant and an attention hog (often being accused of seeking it when I'm not). Not to mention several other traits like bitchiness, volume, being very opinionated and blunt, etc etc. Take all that, then take the fact that I've never, ever deluded myself into thinking that I'm the main character in the story - I identify with the sidekick or the friends most of the time. Helping tell it, maybe being a decent part, but not the focus. I may be envious of the lead but I know i'm never going to be it. The only time I ever lead is convention dances, and even then I'm part of a clan of several. Show people how to do things by example, but that's it.

Still replaceable, always destined to fade away. Even looking at baby's first tattoo, which translates as Ghost/Foreigner/Not Us, got in the single week of my teens that I was feeling emo, tells you a bit. My twitter bio is a quote from Sandman, the last line of this (someday getting either the whole or just the last line on me somewhere):

All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone;
We must speak of other matters,
You can be me when I'm gone.

I told someone that I find the fact that as part of my belief system as an atheist the fact that there is no afterlife, that this is what you get and all you leave behind is your body to rot down to feed other things is comforting. I'm very happy with that.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

This post makes a lot of sense to me - the idea that everything's impermanent, including ourselves.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Yeah. you're not the same as you were when you were younger. no-one is.

Part of me being very bitchy and 'harshing the joy' as one mate put it was after one mate had continually bitched about the rain (seriously, Cornwall) and then why nothing made sense or logic and things weren't in the place they expected. I nearly screamed in the high street 'Because the world does not turn on logic and this is a different place. You are here and this is now, bloody well deal.' Also. I get extremely exasperated when someone insists that there are rules to the universe, and that they stop working at the extremes like 0 degrees kelvin. To which I tend to go 'no, the rules are arbitary and put in place to try to explain/place your definition of logic and stasis on something that will always change. The fact that they 'stop working' means that they're faulty and need to be re-worked to encompass the stuff you didn't expect.'

:cough: /rant.

[deliaepigram.livejournal.com]

See, this is precisely why I like you, Heather.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Spending some time living abroad (2 years in Germany, 2 in France for me) is very good training in how things are just different elsewhere. In many ways you don't come back. You always know that there are different ways of doing things, that ours is not a unique solution and in some cases is not the best. But at the same time you can get glimpses of why others solutions can't apply here even if they are logical, better, and not just different.

And as for 'rules' just not working at extremes, that's what makes the world interesting!

[gmh.livejournal.com]

To me, the highest form of living is to be adaptable to change in a way that benefits yourself and others as much as possible; a sense of unerring balance vis-a-vis life and the Universe.

Change _is_.

The art of life is using that change without undue effort.


It is the major theme of Sandman, after all: Dream is aware that many of his perceived obligations are self-imposed and not real, but is still fundamentally unable to change himself (or to opt out of the game, as Destruction does) - as Lucien says of Dream's effective suicide;

'I think he did a little more than let it happen... Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.'

[peterjevans.livejournal.com]

I can’t remember when I gave up on the idea of the universe making any kind of sense at all, but I know it was a very long time ago. Quite frankly, I find the notion of a world that remains in any way static, or ordered, or is even comprehensible at the most basic level completely awful. To think that this morass of seething quantum uncertainty and relentless, brutal biological vileness might have some actual meaning… That sends a shiver through me.

Of course, the alternative isn’t exactly comfortable. A random and ceaselessly protean universe is quite a scary thing to find oneself in, and maybe too much for some people. I suppose that’s where religions come from; an attempt to impose a pattern all that mess. But if you stare at anything long enough, and you’ll see a pattern. It’s how our brains are built.

Take all that, then take the fact that I've never, ever deluded myself into thinking that I'm the main character in the story - I identify with the sidekick or the friends most of the time. Helping tell it, maybe being a decent part, but not the focus.

Honestly, I think you might be slightly underestimating the effect that you have on other people. In their stories, who knows what part you play?

I hope you’ll forgive me if I continue to consider you a core member of the ensemble cast.