Why I shouldn't have read 'Denouement' at 4 AM · 12:03am Nov 12th, 2014
Because then I end up writing stuff like this.
I wrote this sort of pseudo-metafiction-slash-review stream-of-consciousness 'thing' to myself after finishing Background Pony (about 5 months ago), which took days to read but was totally worth it even though the ending was horribly, horribly depressing. I don't think I smiled for a while after finishing it.
Then I kind of forgot about it and never did anything with it. So, here it is, all
Pretty major Background Pony spoilers ahead. I wouldn't recommend reading if you haven't read the story. (If you haven't, where have you been for the past two years?)
____~~~____
Words have power.
Sometimes, they have more power than you could possibly imagine.
This story, its ending chapter in particular, is a shining example of that power of words.
These words are for you: they are drab and they are dismal and they are dull, but they are yours to make poetry with.
The final chapter contains many stunningly poignant phrases and quotes, but this is among one of the most chillingly beautiful of them. The ideas and thoughts presented in this story are so chillingly depressing and soul-crushing, and yet so undeniably convincing in thought that the reader has to wonder if, despite their sadness and misery and bleak emptiness, there is some truth to them.
And, indeed, I have made 'poetry' of my own with these drab, dismal, dull words.
.
.
.
This story is the constant, miserable wailing shriek of a lost soul doomed to undergo an unending, world-shattering existential crisis, remembered to be forgotten until the end of eternity due to unfortunate circumstances beyond her control and a curiosity that would end in Lyra bumbling into a creation-old universal constant destined to make all who know it forgotten, even to their very selves.
This curiosity would get Lyra killed.
Not in body or in mind, no, but in spirit, in life, and in truth.
What is existence itself but a mere snapshot of its own entirety? Those who exist in this greater existence, these fleeting, momentary cameras in the theater of life, represent but a fleeting, rapidly-fading snapshot of the entirety of themselves. No camera can claim to have enough film to have remembered it all, but even if one did the harsh corona of time would fade and eventually erase these negatives of life.
These momentary snapshots are nothing but chains of fading and half-forgotten images, half-remembered truths and lies destined to only ever be fully-or even partially-remembered by the cameras that created them, and to be withered and forgotten by all else from the harsh glare of the weathering corona of time. It is fatalist, yes...
But for all its fatalism and half-emptiness, the harsh, mind-bending truth of this solidly-founded existential crisis cannot be ignored. Cannot be forgotten.
The only pain of remembrance is the need for remembrance...
...
…However, all hope is not lost.
Pain is fleeting. Existence is fleeting as well, yes, but does this fleeting existence have to be dull and painful and cold and empty, as fleeting as the emotions that it consists of? No, no, it can be blissful in its fleetingness from the view of those existential cameras, those fleeting voyeurs of the grand theater of life, but to allow yourself this bliss, you must disallow yourself the pain that invariably and inexorably follows it. A force cannot exist without its opposite, for what is the real definition of pain if all that exists is bliss?
These opposites, however, should never meet lest they destroy each other, leaving nothing but blank emptiness in the place of blissful, painful existence, a clean slate that meant nothing, means nothing, and will never mean anything again.
Existence is only painful if you allow it to pain you. Remembrance is only painful if you allow it to pain you. Life is only painful if you allow it to pain you. Truth is only painful if you allow it to pain you. Allowing yourself to feel pain is necessary, for one cannot know bliss without also knowing pain.
Lyra allowed herself to be pained by this existence, to forsake all that she knew and loved if it meant that others would not be pained as well. Like any heroic sacrifice, it was entirely unnecessary for her to throw herself into an all-consuming void of her own making, a blank emptiness in the place of blissful, painful existence that was no longer blissful and only painful, because her spirit had been broken, her life had been destroyed, erased, and made void, and Lyra, fragile negative that she is, was exposed to the impossible-yet-irrefutable corona of truth of the Firmaments, of the Nocturne, and of Princess Aria.
Existence is as a stack of old newspaper, with the bottom of the stack, the forgotten, fading insignificance of a snapshot of the past; the top of the stack, the clean, crisp, freshness of the snapshot of the now, a blissful, fleeting thing that is, by its very nature, becoming the forgotten, fading, insignificant past the same time as the oldest reaches of the past become nothing more than a blank emptiness; and the unwritten and yet constantly-written visages of the future, a relative unknown that becomes more and more vague the more one looks into it, a fleeting thing that is the now and yet is not, and yet defies description because everything that it is is everything that was, and everything that was was everything that is. Here tomorrow, gone today; here today, gone tomorrow.
One could forever vacillate on the nature of existence, of the nature of everything that is, was, and will be, but to do so is to dwell on the painful truth, the shining corona of the blank emptiness that constantly threatens to consume us all in its nonexistent-yet-existent wrath, the bliss-less, painless blankness that both threatens and welcomes. I cannot dwell on these truths, for I believe that the fleeting nature of existence is meant to be enjoyed in its fleeting blissfulness to its fullest.
Pain is a drab, ugly, horrible thing; a necessary evil, yes, but one that I refuse to dampen my blissfulness in my fleeting existence as a joyous voyeur in this theater of life.
After all, what is there to live for but the joy of existence? In this moment, this fleeting, once-future-then-present-now-past moment...
I was. I am. I will be.
And to have been and to be and to be is a most joyous, blissful thing.
To live is to be...but is to be to live? When one's existence is pain, rather than bliss, that is not the same as to live. Remembrance is pain, but it is a blissful sort of pain, a cathartic release of nostalgic, tragic emotion that is painful and yet blissful all the same.
Some say it's better to live in blissful ignorance than in painful truths.
The painful truth is that everything, no matter how important or unimportant it is in the grand scheme, this wordless all-encompassing plan, must end. It is the way of things, the unbreakable cycle, the irrefutable fact. Entropy is inexorable.
I accept this truth...or at least, I think and I believe that I do, but at the same time I realize that I cannot truly bear it in its entirety, for it would saddle me with a burden greater than that of Atlas, who carried the very world on his shoulders.
For to truly accept this truth, to face it with all of its intended meaning and power, would crush my spirit and my will to live in the same manner that Lyra's was crushed. To face death in its full, bleak emptiness, the painful truth and yet cathartic bliss that marks the end of the film roll, is to mean that one is at peace with their experiences so far and has the will to end their own existence before their autobiography has been written to its extent.
We are the solidarity and the divide all at once.
Few have the will to do such a thing, but those that do all have the same thing in common.
Their spirits, their wills to live and to experience, have been crushed, totally and absolutely, perhaps due to a world-shattering existential crisis or the loss of their greatest joy, as Lyra had been, or perhaps simply due to never having the true spirit and will in the first place, to be bleak and empty from the start, at peace with the future before the past or present had even been thought of. Born empty, dying empty.
Together, we find truth, and I think it is a beautiful sound.
The truth is a beautiful, blissful, yet painful sound, as in the ritual pyres of the Native Americans, or in the long, mournful howl of a wolf. It is a beautiful thing, the truth, and yet it is a hateful, horrifying thing all the same.
...How about you?
____~~~~____
"To live is to suffer;
to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Man, reading this again after almost a year...BP really messed me up good.
static1.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/Holy+i+did+not+expect+that+_b69560b77813882aaf80f082ee6519a5.jpg
Still like it though. The nihilism is real.