So I'm a huge Spider-man fan. I always have been. I'm also a huge fan of the movies. I know some people don't like them. They aren't 100% accurate. People complain that Peter wasn't smart enough or that he wasn't enough of a smart arse. These things are in the movie but they're just portrayed in a very subtle way. More valid arguments are some of the changes to characters. The third film was mostly rubbish, though. But I don't see that as being the directors fault. The studios were forcing him to shove stuff in, like Venom and the Black costume, which he didn't even like. Ok, so it shows. Yeah in the movies he has organic webs instead of mechanical webshooters. But it's a change that makes sense.
But something they did get completely 100% right was the costume. I really feel strongly about this. Now that Sony is rebooting the Spider-man franchise with Andrew Garfield and a new director, they've gone with a new costume. And I'm sorry but it looks like utter shit.
This is Spider-man as he first appeared in "Amazing Fantasy." What a classic design. Simple, yet elegant. Eye catching. This Steve Ditko design has been celebrated for so long and with good reason. It's superb.
And there's the costume from the Sam Raimi movies. Looks great, right? Not only a great looking costume, but faithful, too.
So this is what we'll be seeing in the new movie:
Now here's the thing: That entire design smacks to me as change for the sake of change.
Ok, they wanted to make a new costume. Maybe something that looked different to the old movies. I can kinda understand that. The thing is, they didn't need to. Spider-man is the kind of character who can be played by many different actors. They could have used the same costume. Or kept the same basic design from the comics but used different materials for a different look.
One of the thing that annoys me about this is the way the colours look when photographed. The web lines are so thin you can barely even see them from even slightly far away. The changes don't seem to serve any functionality, in the shape of the lines on the costume and so forth. The whole thing just looks clunky.
And there's way too much blue. See how in the promotional shots they've tried to dull the colours and darken parts of the costume? (Like those absurd silver feet.) It's as if they know how off puting the fluro colours look.
They made all these changes that make the costume look just wrong. The biggest reason is that it's too similar to the old costume. All the blue looks weird because if you're gonna have the Spidey costume look so similar to the other one- these changes are gonna stand out in the wrong way. What I'm saying is that if you're going to have a change, then go all the way. They didn't go far enough. Personally I'd have loved to see the Alex Ross design which he came up with ten or so years ago.
It's slick bold and vastly different but retains just enough of the basic elements that people love and recognise on Spider-man. The eyes and mask, the basic red with webs and spider logo. Looks fantastic. I'd have loved to have seen it on screen. It's strength is that it dares to be different.
So they changed the costume just enough to make it look weird and wrong but not enough to give it a bold new look. The result is something that just doesn't look quite right. Regardless of the costume I am still hoping the project will be good. Andrew Garfield seems like a great choice to play Peter.
But I still think the original movie costume was absolutely PERFECT.
Ok. So this is the third in a row of my self absorbed and depressing entries. Next few will be more fun and whimsical I promise.
1999. I was in high school. Year ten to be exact. I’d taken one of the main roles in the annual school musical. It was a comedy set in the 60’s called “Charades.” The story involved secret spy stuff and two bungling KBG agents, Dimitri and Olga. I played Dimitri.
Being quite sheltered in many ways, I actually knew very little about The Cold War. I hadn’t learned about it in high school and managed to avoid almost every film, tv show, book etc about the whole thing. It’s funny that I actually first learned about the cold war thanks to landing this role. But that’s pretty typical of my tunnel vision. I had borrowed an audio tape from the local “Doctor Who,” fanclub. It was a radio play by BBV which was basically a knockoff of Doctor Who starring “The Professor,” and “Ace.” (These knockoffs floated around for quite a while, during the years when the show was off air, until Big Finish secured the license to make Dr.Who radioplays. They’re still going to this day and I highly recommend checking them out at www.bigfinish.com
Anyway, this radio drama I’d borrowed just happened to have a Russian character in it as played by Mark Gatiss, I believe. I spent all weekend cooped up in my bedroom, listening to this characters scenes and slowly repeating them. I’d actually already got the part despite not having auditioned in a Russian accent- you simply did your own audition and they decided which part was best for you. I remember when we all sat down for that first read through, after I read my first line everybody just stopped silent. They all turned to me with their mouths hanging open in shock. Oh christ, I thought. I must sound awful.
‘Daniel Burnett IS Dimitri!’ Mr. Wong, the drama teacher called out, pointing at me with both arms. Whew. They seemed like me!
So I got this part and ended up spending most days at rehearsal after school. The cast and crew was pretty enormous, but most of them had tiny parts. So between scenes you’d have tons of people from high school just hanging out. I’ll never forget this time in my life, because it was the only venture outside of school I’d ever managed to do. (I had a disastrous run with Tae Kwon Doe and Lacrosse, which I’ll have to tell you about later.) Usually I’d just run home after school and try to mind my own business. I certainly didn’t interact with many people outside my small, mostly geeky group. This drama production was mostly filled with really nice people who seemed genuinely impressed with my acting. To this day I still believe I can do comedy. I understand it. I feel the beats and the timing. I’m told I can be quite witty, but that’s for you to decide.
I learned a lot during this time. I’ve always been uptight, shy and stressed out. The drama teacher was one of the most laid back people I’ve ever met. Perhaps too laid back, but none the less, it did me a world of good. I was paired with somebody called Sarah who played Olga. She was in year 12 and spent a lot of time telling me to chill out. Relax and just have fun. It’s a lesson I’ve been trying to heed ever since.
I remember that kindness and the valuable life lessons learned from this time. But I also remember something else, which has haunted me ever since
One of the girls in the play was my age. We’ll call her Jayne, because I think it’s rude to name names. Jayne knew me from primary school. We weren’t friends. But we knew of one another. We sort of just stayed away from each other. She knew my past reputation. When I came to high school I was desperate to lose my rep from primary school of being the bedwetting loser. I was nice to everybody and spent most of the time just trying to keep a low profile and stay out of everybody’s way. This acting thing was a godsend because people love somebody who can make them laugh. And I can always make people laugh.
Jayne was in the play, but she had an extremely minor role. She lived very close to me. On this particular day rehearsals ran quite late and the sun had started to set. She didn’t have anybody to walk home with. As we filed out of the gymnasium after end of rehearsal, I remember her coming up to me. I could see the thought process going through her head as she spoke.
‘You live near me,’ she said. ‘It’s getting dark.’ She frowned as her brain mulled this over. She was weighing up which would be worse. Being kidnapped and raped on the way home or having to walk home with me.
It took her about a minute to decide.
‘Fine,’ she finally said. ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’
‘Sure, I don’t mind,’ I said. Now, her attitude probably makes her sound like some pretty little thing who treats people this way. No. She was an extremely plain looking girl. Only people like me got this kind of treatment.
Something you need to understand is that I had already reached the point in my life where I felt completely alien. When a young man meets a young girl, there’s usually something niggling in the back of their minds. You weigh each other up a little bit. Maybe I could date this person? Maybe they might be interested. Who knows? This is the process of a normal human. But I was not normal. My mind went something like this:
This person is disgusted by my mere existence. She has to occasionally put up with me, which must be an awful thing to have to endure. Christ, I feel sorry for her. Of course she’d never be remotely interested.
So you see, such a thing never crossed my mind. To this day I still make that assumption. When I meet and talk a girl I simply assume they will never be interested. Because it’s true. (I was proven wrong only once when somebody asked me out.)
‘I don’t like you,’ Jayne said.
‘I uh.. See.’
‘I mean I don’t like, like you,’ she added.
‘Right,’ I said.
‘I’m not trying to.. You know.’
‘Yes. Of course not.’
‘This is just walking home. So I’m safe,’ Jayne said.
‘Quite,’ I said.
‘This isn’t some.. Ploy, for us to spend time together,’ she said.
‘Uh, yeah. Ok.’
So I walked her home. The walk took about half an hour. Every five minutes or so we’d repeat that conversation, more or less.
‘I don’t like you. This isn’t… anything. It’s just walking.’ And so forth. She didn’t get it. She couldn’t grasp that I considered the possibility of anybody, not just her, being even remotely interested in me in such a manner was about as likely as a squadron of talking sausages to start swooping down from above, complete with bat wings, top hats and monocles.
But it wasn’t enough to just say it. Not just once or twice. The thought that I was would make this outrageous assumption was so repugnant to her, must have offended her so greatly, that she had to keep drilling it into me on this walk. Over and over and over and over. She had to make this point; it was clearly imperative to her. Can you imagine how strongly she must have felt about that? What kind of disgust would cause somebody to ram this point home so violently time and time again?
This is the kind of feeling I invoke in other people. I always knew it, but I’ve never forgotten that day. You know what else? I’ve never asked anybody out. Ever. Whenever I’ve thought about doing it and nearly worked myself up to making the plunge, my mind takes me back to that day, with that girl, who worked so tirelessly to make that simple point.
Let’s continue the theme on how I’m completely deranged, shall we? In my previous entry I talked about how I struggle with physical contact with another person, in any way, shape or form. But there’s another aspect to this which probably needs saying, too.
‘You don’t hug properly, Daniel.’ Somebody said that to me when I was fifteen. It’s stuck with me ever since because it’s true. It was said to me by a friend at the time, who happened to be an extremely thin girl. I’m uncomfortable with small, skinny women. Always have been. I’ve always been attracted to fuller figured rubenesque women. It’s been years since I’ve really considered a skinny, fit woman as being compatible in any way. The same way a man or woman wouldn’t consider being paired with an umbrella or hat stand, the thought of me asking out or dating a small, skinny girl seems, well just wrong.
I don’t know why. There are a number of reasons probably, but something happened when I was young, which I think has added to these troubles. It all began in 1991 when I was about seven years old. I was in year two of primary school and had recently changed schools and befriended somebody who lived nearby. We’ll call him Jake for the purpose of the blog.
Jake and I used to hang out fairly often. His family was also quite active. My own parents rarely went out and almost never took all of us kids out for the day. I don’t necessarily blame them either. I know I was an unbearable brat when taken out for the day. I was far happier being left to my own devices. Anyway, his family went on these day trips quite often. A few times Jake asked me to come along. After a while I just started asking if I could tag along. I think I started to annoy him in the end. I certainly bugged his mum.
Jake was a mischievous kid. I was not. My parents were firm but completely fair, I thought, so I usually followed the rules. I did what I was told and believed what they said. Jake was much more of a brat. He was way more hypo than me and probably corrupted me a fair bit. He showed me how to break into his grandmothers house, who lived nearby. He did this fairly often if he wanted to go there and nobody was home. He also invented a lovely little game which involved taking rocks as big as our heads and putting them onto a road overlooked by a pedestrian bridge. The objective was to place them on the road so that a passing car would hit the rock with its tyres. We’d then sit on the bridge above and watch the chaos unfold. Charming little game, huh? We did this only once, although I’m sure he’d done it plenty of times before. After about twenty minutes the police turned up. Terrified the hell out of us, too. Or it terrified me anyway, being such a goodie goodie and all.
One day Jake was over our house. It was a hot day and we didn’t have a swimming pool or anything, so sometimes we’d play with the hose out the back. Jake had the brilliant idea for a game which involved filling up empty bottles with water and running around the backyard trying to pour them on each other and get them wet. We used some empty coke bottles and whatnot but after a while we realised that it was taking too long to fill them back up again. So we went and looked for some more bottles to use. We found some glass bottles. Perfect!
Yeah. A couple of kids running around the backyard, aiming glass bottles at each others heads trying to get each other wet. Running on wet grass and giggling like maniacs. Great idea, huh? (I’d like to point out that my parents were around at the time, but they’d seen us playing with the plastic bottles and didn’t see us when we sneakily grabbed the empty glass bottles.)
Of course there was an accident. My fingers slipped and I ended up whacking poor Jake right in the head with the bottle. The glass didn’t break. There wasn’t any blood. It was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. It must have hurt like hell though and he cried. Mum came to make sure we were ok and scolded us for using the bottles and whatnot.
The next time I was over Jake’s house, I remember the mother cornered me in the kitchen. I remember she had a long face with fierce eyes that were slightly exotic. She was a single mother and always seemed slightly defeated. There was also the faint hint of disgust lingering when she had to deal with me. Maybe because of all the times I asked to come along with Jake and his two sisters. Anyway, she cornered me.
‘So Daniel,’ she said calmly, looking down on me. ‘Why were you throwing bottles at my sons head?’
‘I.. Uh.. We, er, came up with a er.. Game,’ I mumbled. ‘It was nothing… he’s fine.’
‘You think it’s fun to throw bottles at Jake’s head?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said in absolute terror.
‘In future I’ll thank you not to smash glasses bottles on my sons head.’ And then I realised. She thought I was to blame. This whole thing was my idea and I was some kind of troublemaker that was corrupting her son. Her son, who put rocks on the road for cars to hit. Who came up with the idea of using the glass bottles in the first place.
That’s a little background for Jake’s family and me. It’s important to know these things before we continue. What I’m about to describe has affected me my entire life.
Jake lived in a house nearby, as I said. He had an older sister who was in year 7, I believe. She was tall with blonde hair and played the trumpet. He also had a younger sister who must have been about three or four. I can’t quite remember. I just know she was very young, but able to run around and talk. She didn’t go to school or kindy or anything like that.
Going to Jake’s house was always fun. It was a much nicer house than our own. Jake’s mum clearly had a lot more money than us. They had a two storey house with plush carpet and a plethora of new electronic toys. A huge sound system with cd player adorned the lounge room in a fancy glass cabinet. The house had a swimming pool out the back, too. We just had a ratty, narrow backyard and thin, dirty carpet inside. Our CD player was a tiny black box, which sat on an old, rickety wooden trolley. Theirs was three layers of shiny, silver boxes with a display which lit up like the space ships in “Close encounters of the third kind.”
I can’t remember his younger sisters name, so we’ll call her Ashley. Ashley was a bright young girl who loved to play. She adored her older brother and sister and absolutely loved spending time with them. She’d often hang out with Jake and me and we’d all play. Now Jake liked to get worked up. He didn’t really have a restraint button, as many kids don’t. But he was especially bad. The whole thing with bottles was more a result of that and him pushing things too far, than me. I was terrified of adults and doing something wrong.
One day we were in the upstairs lounge playing with Ashley. I think we were pretending the floor was lava and were jumping from sofa to sofa, trying desperately not to touch the ground. Jake would also jump onto the coffee table, but I didn’t dare. Anyway we were all playing this game together and getting quite worked up. Jake was getting carried away and his young sister was too, of course.
Somehow, Ashley ended up falling from the couch onto the floor- which was lava! I grabbed onto her arms and tried to pull her to safety. I was so caught in the moment of the game worked up by everything that I had no idea what was going to happen.
Ashley started to scream. She burst into tears and screamed louder than I’d heard anybody ever before. Her voice was so shrill it hurt my ears. Her face contorted in absolute agony. And she kept screaming and screaming until their mum came racing up the stairs.
‘What happened?’ she screamed as she came to help. ‘What happened?’
About forty minutes later we’re standing in a hospital reception. I had to go with them because my mum and dad had gone out while I was at Jake’s house. So they had to take me along when they raced to hospital. They’d managed to piece together what happened by then. Daniel was to blame. Daniel had done it. Everybody seemed to ask me if this was true. I didn’t understand what was going on. I told them we’d been playing. I told them what we’d been doing when she started screaming.
We waited. It felt like days. I have no idea how long it must have been. Hours probably. But it felt like days. Jake’s mum seemed to come and go. She made phone calls to the father. Everybody talked to one another urgently, looking back at me accusingly from time to time. Finally, she came over to me.
‘You pulled her arm out it’s socket,’ she said calmly. Her eyes told me she hated me. Despised me. ‘You did it. Look at what you’ve done.’
I had nothing to say.
‘Look at what you’ve done to my daughter.’ There it was again. What have you done to my son. Look at what you’ve done to my daughter. ‘This is your fault,’ she said.
Honestly I can’t remember what happened next. I have no memory. I was absolutely mortified. The guilt overwhelmed me. I had broken her. Those cries of absolute pain… the pain she had felt was my fault. I had done that. I had broken her. I didn’t mean to. I was sorry. God I was sorry. We were just playing after all. How did this happen? I never meant to hurt anybody. I wasn’t thinking, we were all worked up. Jake was crawling around the coffee table for gods sake. I never meant to do this.
‘This is your fault.’
That was when I became afraid of touching people. Girls in particular. Tiny, skinny girls who were shorter than me. I’ve never gotten into a fight either, in my entire life. Whenever I have had to touch somebody, for ballroom dancing or some kind of activity.. It’s been difficult. I’ve been gentle. Far, far too gentle.
I’m still terrified of breaking people. I’m 6’2 now and reasonably fat. When skinny girls try to hug me, I hardly touch them back. I feel like I am going to snap them in half. And they complain.
‘Daniel, you don’t hug properly.’
No, I don’t hug properly. I break people.
I need to clarify a few things. Actually I’m drunk right now so maybe this isn’t going to be as clear as I’d like. Fuck it. Oh well. I’m sure that many of you who listen to me are probably growing tired of my bleatings. And yes they are ramblings and often they say the same old tired shit. I’ve lost more than a few friends over the years through my self loathing and despair. Believe it or not this is absolutely nothing like I used to be. I was five hundred thousand times worse than this. So much worse. Let me explain by laying out some of my history a little bit. I’ll try not to make it too dull. Maybe I’ll throw in a dinosaur here or there. Or perhaps some kind of monstrous Giraffe bent on infiltrating the worlds supply of salt. Ah fuck it, here’s must the pathetic truth. I don’t know exactly where and when it really began. But something my mum told me can perhaps shed some light on the matter. When I was young, mum used to take me to a playgroup of some sort. It was before pre primary and kindy and all of that. Apparently she had to take me out shortly after. Why? Because another child was tormenting me.
‘He’s such a happy baby.’ That’s what people used to say when they saw me. As soon as I woke up I seem to have become delighted by the prospect of life, the universe and everything available to my baby senses because I’d bust out a gigantic smile and absolutely glow with happiness. ‘Such a happy baby.’ So many years later I was pulled out of this playgroup. Because one of the other children was bullying me. Attacking me. Pushing me over. Knocking me down. Causing all kinds of a fuss. I have absolutely no memory of this. At least I didn’t until Mum mentioned it to me. Maybe it’s just the power of suggestion here, but I think back to that time and while I don’t remember specific events as such I do remember going to a bunch of places. The problem is that my memory has blended a lot of them into one. But the thing that stands out to me now is how I felt. I tend to remember things in terms of how I felt at the time. And I remember feeling absolutely glum, terrified and confused. I don’t know if I was always shy. I don’t know if that began at the playgroup after this went on. But I do know that I was shy by the time I was 6. I have a distinct memory of being down the shops with mum when she ran into a work friend. I was terrified of meeting her, so I hid behind her legs. I still do that to this day. I run off if a friend runs into another friend. Once I was hanging out in the house of somebody I happened to be sleeping with at the time, and a friendly local stopped by to fix her curtains or something. I hid in the bedroom in absolute silence. Why? For gods sake why would an adult behave this way? I pissed myself and I pissed the bed. Not then, silly. Not with the woman. But when I was younger. In year one in primary school I used to wet myself all the damn time. When I did it on my birthday, my teacher beat me up for it. She scolded me and actually said ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s your birthday!’ That stopped by the time I changed schools next year. But the bedwetting didn’t. And it hadn’t for my older brother and sister, too. They were 3 and 6 years older than me, so such things were far more serious to them. So if they had a friend visit gthe house, which stunk of piss- they’d blame it on me. Little Daniel in year 2. But who was I to blame? I was the youngest and stuck with a reputation that never went away. And you know what’s really sad? I didn’t manage to stop doing it until I was 12. And that was after begging for literally three months to get some sort of medical assistance with the matter. To this day I can not believe my parents let this go on for so long. This caused me so much turmoil in primary school it isn’t funny. But that’s just the start of things. I didn’t play sport. My dad wasn’t huge on it and my brother hated it. I didn’t go to any little league things or afterschool clubs. When I arrived in year 1, just about everybody had already been enlisted in these things. They already had skills that far exceeded my own. I was a pale child. I had no social skills, too. I didn’t really play with other children. I didn’t learn any of the little tics and lies you need to pick up in order to survive. I was unbearably honest- and still am. Most of the time. I can not tell you the agony I experienced in my primary school years. People looked on me with disgust. Every day I was tormented and picked on. If for some reason we did dancing or any kind of activity that involved touching somebody, girls would act as though I was diseased. To this day I see the look on their face. Imagine handing a girl a dead rat covered in maggots and dripping with juice from the bin of which you’d just recovered it. That’s the look I got. Every day. For years. When I was in year 7, I ended up at a friends house. I say friend, but really he just let me hang around among others now and then. He got bored one day- and he and his older sister decided to just start pushing me around and tearing into me with insults. When I went to leave, a forlorn and overly tired mother emerged from the house. She’d been there all along in that dusty house but this was the first I’d seen of her. The house was dirty and dusty. Her teenage daughter was out of control and her son wasn’t far behind. ‘I’m sorry for what they said to you, Daniel,’ she said with desperate eyes. ‘It’s OK,’ I replied. ‘I’m used to it.’ And I was. You have to understand that I had been learning this lesson every single day for seven god damn years. I knew it was true. I agreed with them. I started to feelvsorryfor anybody who had to put up with me. I feltvsorry for someone who had to touch me. I *still do.* ‘You shouldn’t be used to it,’ she said in horror. ‘You shouldn’t have to.’
High school. Suddenly I was pimply. I don’t mean acne the way your normal teen gets. My case was so severe I had to go on a dose of very severe drugs that really fucked me up. My entire face was LITTERED with pimples. They went down my neck and onto my shoulders, down my back and all over my chest. I had stopped pissing the bed and instead, I had transformed into a disgusting, sweaty, pimply mass of terror. I left high school and became afraid to leave the house for about a year. During this time, after the acne had been taken care of, I became fat. I’ve been up and down ever since. By twenty I was very visibly becoming bald. I’m 26, turning 27 and my baldness has reached a stage most won’t see until their mid thirties or early forties.
But Daniel, what’s the point of telling us all of this? Ok, let me put it this way. I’ve been asked out once, in my life. I was 20 at the time. When this happened.. It was like being told the sky isn;t blue. Just sit back and actually try to imagine that. Imagine being told the sky isn’t blue, or the sun isn’t really there, it’s just the moon night and day. Impossible to believe isn’t it? But what if it WAS true. How would you feel? Having been taught all these years. Having KNOWN these things to be an absolute fact- a cornerstone to base other facts upon. That’s what it felt like when this girl asked me out. I truly believed it was never going to happen. And these are just the physical aspects. I haven’t even begun to list how socially retarded I am. And now I’m tired and worn out. Perhaps I’ll elaborate furthur. But for now I’ll say- look I’m sorry to harp on. But when I walk down the street and I see people looking at me, I still see disgust. When I’m near somebody, I feel sorry for them. When somebody has to talk to me- I feel bad that they have to put up with me. So I try to end the conversation as quickly as possible- to be nice. And when somebody touches me… I feel sick. On their behalf. I genuinely feel bad for the other person when somebody touches me. Some days I still can’t bear to go outside into the world and see those looks. The disgust and confusion people throw my way- and they are disgusted and confused. I do believe I am genuinely strange. I don’t adhere to any kind of.. Standards in terms of looks or behaviour. Or dress. I’ve always stood out. I’ve never been able to hide away in the corner and not cause a fuss. Jesus Christ, I’ve spent all my life trying to do just that. So yes. I mope. And I’m sorry. But let me end this by making a few points clear: 1. I do not believe for a second that finding a romantic partner is necessary or a solution to ANYTHING. I learned that lesson from 15-22. Slow learner but I get there in the end. 2. I appreciate anybody who puts up with me when I enter in such mopey moods. But sometimes going outside is so utterly unbearable and makes me feel like absolute shit. 3.Again- this is not about appealing to women. That is just a side effect of the greater problem: That I am so unusual in ALL aspects it makes me impossible to relate to almost anyone.
Somebody recently told me that i haven't been degraded to the point where i've lost my sense of "hope," yet. I found this comment interesting because it's something several people have told me over the years, and it came right before a very trying personal period for me at the end of last year.
Everybody needs a sense of hope in order to get through the day. How else do we get out of bed and get on with life without going completely insane? Sure, for some there's a sense of duty involved. Parents would understand their responsibilities, at least I'd hope they would. But everybody has something they care about, something that gets them out of bed each day.
But in todays world, or at least from our Western perspective, what actually is hope? What does it mean for the average joe who works the 9-5? Does one's definition of hope change as the years go by? Many of the people who said I had too much hope and had yet to learn the realities of the world were older people who had endured hard times.
Perhaps people bottle themselves up and try to convince themselves that they don't really care and therefore don't hope. The lover scorned will endure his agony and vow never to care for anybody every again. I believe some people are so deeply affected by these personal tragedies that they really do convince themselves that they don't feel a thing. How can you be disappointed about something if you didn't expect something better? If a girl doesn't like you, then it's oK because you don't care for such things anyway and never really wanted it.
I suppose my personal outlook is rather childish. But I think it's been this way my whole life. If there's one thing I've always found unbearable it's definitely been apathy. Give me passion. Give me hatred. Give me love, romance, ecstasy and agony. Give me the burning desire to own, to want, to love, to hate or to believe. But for god's sake, have a fucking opinion. In this way I respect those who have different viewpoints than my own but care passionately about them, than somebody who simply flutters through life like a helpless, vague pot of emptiness. I've encountered many of these people through the years. People who seem utterly empty. But it does make me wonder.
Surely even these people believe in something? Perhaps they just never reveal their true beliefs or interests around me. Maybe they're just to shy or insecure to stand up and declare for what they believe in. Perhaps. I'd certainly like to think that's the case for these people. Perhaps it is the case for most of them. But I can tell you now that there are some people out there who really are just empty. I consider these people to be the closest thing a real life monster. Why? If you don't care about life- or get excited about anything- then what kind of human being are you really? I knew somebody like this once. They were utterly selfish and justified their own life by having children, which they didn't look after properly. I suppose they were self conscious enough to justify their own actions. "I'm not a bad person, who doesn't feel strongly about anything. Who doesn't love or really care. I'm a parent. I have my children." But as i said, it's just justification. This person didn't look after her child, who had learning difficulties and as a result needed extra attention. Despite this, this person went and had another child. Why? To justify her own empty life. I find that monstrous, thus such people are real life monsters.
But, to get back to my original point. I consider myself to be a passionate person. And hope has always been a strong part of my life. People write this off as being naive or inexperienced. I find this insulting and condescending. It makes me angry that these people won't consider looking at the world from a different viewpoint. A positive outlook. No, the only reason this guy thinks the way he does is because he hasn't learned better yet.
I refute this sentiment. I'll refute it to the day I die.
There's nothing naive about choosing to see the wonders of the world. Yes bad things happen and the world is a big, bad scary place. Most of the world isn't safe and millions of people live in poverty and despair. Every day one person makes a conscious effort to cause another person harm. But so what? Life isn't fair. The problem we have as humans is that we tend to think that life ought to be fair. You do good things and good things will happen to you. The reality is that this simply isn't true. The world is what it is. Bad things happen sometimes. But so what? Good things happen sometimes too. The world is flawed and that's what makes it beautiful.
You can't have light without dark. You can't have the good without the bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm pleased about the millions of people in harms way. But the overall picture of life, the universe and our place in it is a beautiful one. And it's good to have healthy reminder of the reality of the world, especially for those lucky enough to live in the Western world. The floods in Queensland are terrible and there's much suffering to come out of it. But if the same thing had happened somewhere in the third world, the community would seriously struggle to recover. Look at Haiti.
Hope is about accepting the negative parts of life, while embracing the positive. It's about caring about something so much that it keeps you going every day. Many things energise my life and give me hope. Art is definitely one. I include all forms of art in that. Paintings, music, TV, theatre, comics- all of it. I also believe in potential. Human beings really are amazing creatures and when we put our minds to it we can achieve great things. There's nothing better than seeing somebody doing something they love and doing it well. Their excitement, their energy, sense of joy, purpose and dedication is inspiring to me. I believe people are basically good. Most people try to do good, in their own way. I also think that a good deal of people become weighed down by life. I don't blame them. Life can be extremely tough. The single mother struggling to look after her child, the cancer patient still trying to live his life. These people often despair because they feel helpless, or they feel bad because they're trying.
My hope can offend people. I have friends who I admire. Sometimes they think that my image of them is wrong, ie you think I'm better than I am. I get that a lot. What these people don't understand is that I'm not putting them on a pedestal. I know they have flaws and limits. I know they struggle. That's what I admire. The fact that they struggle. They find it tough but they keep on going. I find great joy and appreciation in the little things in life, such as these. I have an overwhelming sense of positivity. I look at the future and what it might bring and I begin to wonder. Hope sent us to the moon. Hope gave us the greatest scientists, the greatest musicians and the most memorable adventures.
