blind man's bluff

Kalafina - I Have a Dream

I don't know what to do when the music ends.  Click play again?  There are other things to do, I guess...but they all seem to carry the weight of reluctance.

Does it matter, not to listen, if my mind insists on replaying the melodies in the background constantly anyway?

I'm susceptible.  The greatest way to connect with another is to speak generally in a way that seems very specific -- let the audience bring their own interpretations to your words, but convince them that it was your idea, your expression, that reflects so perfectly their innermost thoughts.  Give them directions vague enough to take them wherever they want to go.

I'm fluent in Japanese, but far out of practice with day-to-day conversation.  What this means is that speaking and listening in that language require effort on my part.  Without focus, I only pick up a few words.  Listening to this song, I hear bits and pieces of meaning.  And my heart and mind, my wretchedly human parts, fill in the rest.  The overall sensation is haunting, and agonizing, and arresting, and lovely.

There are times when I denigrate freedom - utterly, even as a concept - when I mark it as a mere construct, one of the central pillars supporting this entire crooked ruse we call "existence."

Other times, I hunger for it between every listless blink of these hollow eyes.

To want something, and to know it can do you no good!  What accounts for the lingering desire?  Is it frailty, self-delusion, or something infinitely less sympathetic?  The irrepressible human spirit.

It's a catch-22 where the urge to escape pain is, itself, a source of the stuff.  Is it a consequence of ambition?

What does anyone want?  How do they know?

On the drive to work today, I passed a dead possum in the road.  This prompted me to research possums to uncover whether there was any truth in their hanging from trees by their tails.

There isn't.

How upsetting it was to learn that!  The novelty of the image, to me, was perhaps the only redeeming feature of these most unsettling beasts.  Stripped of their humorous pendulous habit, there is little else in a possum that might appeal to me.  And so a former source of a bit of mirth gives way to none other than total detestation.

What is gained?  If I had lived my entire life believing possums hang from trees, I'd have been happier for it.  But I have seen the truth, and it is disappointing.

When I was in second grade, I pondered whether there might be a case where knowledge of the truth could be harmful.  I proposed a hero, tasked to do battle against a fell beast, whose valor was enabled by his ignorance of the beast's true dreadfulness.  Were he to know the full measure of its power, I surmised, he would be affected by fear, and less likely to succeed.  In this case, I thought, it would be kinder to keep the full truth from the hero, to better bolster his courage for the deed.

Maybe this was foolishness.  My second-grade teacher seemed very surprised by the question, and was unable to provide an answer.

Is freedom possible without knowledge?  With it?  Or...is knowledge anything but an acknowledgment of the absence of that quality?

I'm not the first to go down this road, not by a long shot.  It's well-traveled; I'm in good company.  There's a poorly-defined face somewhere up ahead, cloaked in a darkened shroud.  It's waiting for me with a message carved into this nebulous medium known as "reason".  I have eyes to see!  Ears to hear, fingers to feel....but other senses are needed for a signal such as this.

Such folly, to write things down where anyone can read them.