Blogger has seriously altered its UI. Here’s hoping the thing still works.
I got home from an extended visit to the family on Friday, and since then I’ve been readjusting to Life in Augusta. I didn’t do anything over the weekend, really, except a bit of posting and chatting. One rather odd thing that happened was Paul pulling my chair out from under me as I was sitting down. I fell hard on my butt…though to be honest, it didn’t hurt. I was more surprised than anything. “What the hell?!” I spluttered, staring up at Sean, who was laughing. “What the hell?!” He managed to respond through his mirth: “It wasn’t me!” I turned on Paul. “What the hell?!”
Today I’ve been sort of bouncing around websites, reading things. I followed a lot of the links on Hyung Sun Kim’s site–you know, the one that was cooler when it was Kung Fool–and Derek Kirk Kim’s Small Stories Online. That last brought me to Imitation of Life by Neil B. It’s a web-comic-journal-thing, and I’m finding myself very intrigued by the emotions he can express through the combination of images and words. This entry in particular moved me…that fourth panel is haunting, what with the clear image of the man’s eye in the swirl of the rest of him. Like his whole being is a mess, a hurricane, and in that one snatched moment he was able to impart that on the two guys in the car…and then, with the pulled-out shot of the bridge and receding car, he’s gone.
I don’t know how I would feel if I saw someone about to commit suicide, but I think that journal entry brought me very close to whatever that feeling would be.
That, and things like it, and angry people, and violence…they all make me feel so sad and helpless, when all I want, all I truly desire in life is happiness, for myself and for everyone else. I get so frustrated when people are unhappy. It makes me unhappy. Feeling like this doesn’t provide any solutions to the world’s problems…but I think that at least it helps me not to lose my humanity, even if I go on to agree, for example, that military action is the best option sometimes. Solutions have to be had, fast ones, ones that save people. This isn’t war-mongering or callousness…it’s pragmatism, which, just like my desire for universal happiness, has its place.
I wish I could save that man on the bridge.