If you put love on a continuum and give it an adversarial relationship with pain, it soon becomes apparent that you have created not a contest, but a cooperation. Love and pain are partners, they work together and at the same time. They care for each other in such a way that one refuses to let the other carry more than their half of the burden, and in such cases when it becomes obviously unequal, such as when you get a little too pleased with your own happiness, the other one swoops in and strives hard towards equanimity, often taking too large a swing, making the burden tip the other way. It is a tug o' war without the war, a tug o' compassion, perhaps. It is the ugliest form that a beautiful thing can take, but it is still pretty fucking beautiful...
And if life's not beautiful without the pain well then I'd really just rather never ever see beauty again:
I had a surprising moment yesterday when I found that I was able to explain to someone that love and hate were the same, and that they were both opposites to indifference. It wasn't surprising that they understood, but it was surprising that I was able to communicate the idea, and in so few words, to boot.
Another surprise came two days ago when I had a strong urge to engage in some sort of activity that was in some way life affirming. The only thing that I could come up with was the riding of motorcycles, but I quickly figured out that such an activity would be way, way too dangerous. I mean really, what the fuck was I thinking? A head hits the ground and all you have left is strawberry jam... And everybody know, Strawberry, Strawberry is the neighborhood ho.
We've listened to more of life's end gong than the sound of life's sweet bells:
It happens that I can't listen to We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank without being moved to tears or depressions, both of which are denizens of the same coin side, of course. It is an impressively powerful collection of songs that, no matter how shitty or great my life happens to be at the moment, manages to hit that exact spot that resonates indefinitely. It is crazy and beautiful and sad. It is the human condition and the human experience, and both of those are things worth crying over.
Of course, sometimes, on occasion, in rare instances, the tears are driven by something esoteric, something no one else could possibly understand, something like the presence or absence of just One Wing:
Don't worry about it, it's just a little thing between me and Brock and some other people that I love... It's no biggie.
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