[Matt's smoking, and takes a drag as he thinks about this a bit.]
I think strength is when you keep going, even when it'd be easier to shut down. [A soft noise that would be a laugh, if there were any humor in it.] I don't have that much. But I know people who do.
Shutting down happens eventually though. There's only so much a human mind can take...
[Like in a war; there is no victory, it's simply an illusion because even after the battles are over, the war stays not just on the outside, but on inside. It's always a continuous fight. Never ending. The war with one's self, between selflessness and selfishness and duty -- the war to maintain the balance.]
But let's be philosophical with the subject at hand. Subconsciously, your brain can shut down without you even realizing it, because the mind fuels the body to move forward, takes a particular ailment and dulls it down, make it easier for the mind to accept when in fact it is simply rejecting it.
So in this case, what is strength? The lie that one's mind subconsciously conjures to keep going? To accept - to whatever level acceptance - what is being done when you don't really want to accept it but you will compromise...
[He knows, on a level he can't deny, that he's dead, twice dead, if Kannagara counts, and there's a lot of things he wouldn't want to consign to not counting, as important as they've been, as real as they've felt.]
I'm not even supposed to be alive. The shit I've been through here... I'll take it, if it's the price to pay for the really amazing stuff. I don't think that's deliberate blindness or anything. I think it's almost like real life. You have to take the crap with the good, if the good's gonna mean anything.
And strength is knowing all of that, and finding a reason to go on anyway. Maybe it's believing the good outweighs the bad.
[video | private]smiling_uminoMarch 19 2011, 06:00:54 UTC
[It clicks, like a cogwheel locking in to place, holding the pressure and force at bay.]
Ah...
[Iruka makes an understanding noise. This man - or boy - is one of those people. The dead come alive, walking amongst the living, like a ghost of a past that walks down the halls and sits quietly in his room, a ghost that speaks more cutting words and cause more damage to those that matters around them.
A ghost. Breathing.
Funny how strength wanes when the dead becomes the undead. Iruka wonders what would happen if someone he personally knows has been dead for a while suddenly walked amongst those around him.]
Then you've seen more than one side. Your own reality and this one. Can you say with confidence that the good does outweigh the bad? Do you believe that?
[Matt takes another drag. He didn't have much of good or bad, back home. Mostly, he just drifted along until all the shit hit the fan at once. If that had been it, there's not much question which way the balance would've tipped.
In Kannagara, there's death and love and pain and something more that he doesn't quite know what to do with yet, a feeling like he's finally at home in his own skin.]
[video | private]smiling_uminoMarch 20 2011, 04:01:37 UTC
[Does he? Iruka wonders and the word that leaps to his tongue automatically is a yes. Except it lodges itself within the prison of his mouth, held back by the shackles from his throat.
This is what he dislikes about Kannagara. It makes thoughts poisonous because he remembers his own enemies -- his village's enemies -- and what they've said, their own words heard by his own ears and not just through rumors or from a chain of command. And it makes him wonder.
(Second thoughts on your beliefs, questioning your beliefs -- what if people knew, then you'd really deserve to be labeled short of a traitor, don't you?) ]
I'd like to hope that it does.
[A realistic answer, as much as it is a blinding no, while also a yes at the same time.]
[Matt can't claim he had enough faith in things evening out, before, to wish he believed. It was like he had an instinctive sense that it wasn't the way his world worked, even before he knew it to be the case.]
[video | private]smiling_uminoMarch 21 2011, 03:11:07 UTC
[There is a pregnant pause, a weighty one because that makes Iruka think. Battle with the things he tells himself and the things that are present before him.
When he answers though, it breaks his heart a little bit.]
Something like that...
[Because this place is not my home.]
There's a saying that the only reason something can be called be beautiful is because they don't last long... nothing lasts here. But everything is beautiful, isn't it?
[He spins his cigarette around between his fingers.]
I'm not quite twenty. There's a way, at home, to cut someone's lifespan short. But I'm pretty sure that didn't happen to me. That was just... all I was supposed to get. Doesn't seem fair to me.
[video | private]smiling_uminoMarch 25 2011, 09:06:37 UTC
In my world, it's game over too.
[Iruka pauses and considers, weighs what is being said here.]
But nothing is fair, I suppose. I teach children back home and more often than not, those children return in coffins before I am buried in my own. It's not fair... but... it is what it is. What is there is not here, so perhaps what you have been denied there, or what has been taken from you if you aren't sure, you can make up for it here.
I just question if death itself is even sacred at all at this point.
[video | private]smiling_uminoMarch 26 2011, 18:24:28 UTC
It'll never leave you. The pain of losing someone, no matter how temporary it is here. Just like how you'll never forget what it feels like to die.
The most logical thing to do and say here is making everyday count. But then if one becomes too jaded, or if the mockery of death is something the mind gets used to... is that game over as well?
And I also think that this world might not be real. I mean, it's like a construct, and it's too small, and it breaks rules. But all we can really do is proceed as if it is real.
[Matt's smoking, and takes a drag as he thinks about this a bit.]
I think strength is when you keep going, even when it'd be easier to shut down. [A soft noise that would be a laugh, if there were any humor in it.] I don't have that much. But I know people who do.
Reply
[Like in a war; there is no victory, it's simply an illusion because even after the battles are over, the war stays not just on the outside, but on inside. It's always a continuous fight. Never ending. The war with one's self, between selflessness and selfishness and duty -- the war to maintain the balance.]
But let's be philosophical with the subject at hand. Subconsciously, your brain can shut down without you even realizing it, because the mind fuels the body to move forward, takes a particular ailment and dulls it down, make it easier for the mind to accept when in fact it is simply rejecting it.
So in this case, what is strength? The lie that one's mind subconsciously conjures to keep going? To accept - to whatever level acceptance - what is being done when you don't really want to accept it but you will compromise...
Reply
[He knows, on a level he can't deny, that he's dead, twice dead, if Kannagara counts, and there's a lot of things he wouldn't want to consign to not counting, as important as they've been, as real as they've felt.]
I'm not even supposed to be alive. The shit I've been through here... I'll take it, if it's the price to pay for the really amazing stuff. I don't think that's deliberate blindness or anything. I think it's almost like real life. You have to take the crap with the good, if the good's gonna mean anything.
And strength is knowing all of that, and finding a reason to go on anyway. Maybe it's believing the good outweighs the bad.
Reply
Ah...
[Iruka makes an understanding noise. This man - or boy - is one of those people. The dead come alive, walking amongst the living, like a ghost of a past that walks down the halls and sits quietly in his room, a ghost that speaks more cutting words and cause more damage to those that matters around them.
A ghost. Breathing.
Funny how strength wanes when the dead becomes the undead. Iruka wonders what would happen if someone he personally knows has been dead for a while suddenly walked amongst those around him.]
Then you've seen more than one side. Your own reality and this one. Can you say with confidence that the good does outweigh the bad? Do you believe that?
Reply
In Kannagara, there's death and love and pain and something more that he doesn't quite know what to do with yet, a feeling like he's finally at home in his own skin.]
Yeah. I believe it. Don't you?
Reply
This is what he dislikes about Kannagara. It makes thoughts poisonous because he remembers his own enemies -- his village's enemies -- and what they've said, their own words heard by his own ears and not just through rumors or from a chain of command. And it makes him wonder.
(Second thoughts on your beliefs, questioning your beliefs -- what if people knew, then you'd really deserve to be labeled short of a traitor, don't you?) ]
I'd like to hope that it does.
[A realistic answer, as much as it is a blinding no, while also a yes at the same time.]
Reply
[Matt can't claim he had enough faith in things evening out, before, to wish he believed. It was like he had an instinctive sense that it wasn't the way his world worked, even before he knew it to be the case.]
Reply
When he answers though, it breaks his heart a little bit.]
Something like that...
[Because this place is not my home.]
There's a saying that the only reason something can be called be beautiful is because they don't last long... nothing lasts here. But everything is beautiful, isn't it?
Reply
I think... Kannagara's more balanced than my world was. I mean, I think the gods at least intend for us to be okay, and happy.
Reply
[Because Iruka can't honestly say he is happy and there are people who aren't. Not truly. There is contentment and there is making-do. But happy?]
Reply
[He spins his cigarette around between his fingers.]
I'm not quite twenty. There's a way, at home, to cut someone's lifespan short. But I'm pretty sure that didn't happen to me. That was just... all I was supposed to get. Doesn't seem fair to me.
Reply
[Iruka pauses and considers, weighs what is being said here.]
But nothing is fair, I suppose. I teach children back home and more often than not, those children return in coffins before I am buried in my own. It's not fair... but... it is what it is. What is there is not here, so perhaps what you have been denied there, or what has been taken from you if you aren't sure, you can make up for it here.
I just question if death itself is even sacred at all at this point.
Reply
But. I'd rather care than not. Never really got around to it in my world.
Reply
The most logical thing to do and say here is making everyday count. But then if one becomes too jaded, or if the mockery of death is something the mind gets used to... is that game over as well?
Reply
And I also think that this world might not be real. I mean, it's like a construct, and it's too small, and it breaks rules. But all we can really do is proceed as if it is real.
Reply
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