Stuff I Like

Savannah, GA - setting for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and where I got married

Happy endings are for suckers.

One of my favorite poems is Edgar Allan Poe's Annabelle Lee.  A young man in love shares his story of pain and loss.  The description is beautiful to me.  The resentment, the anger, and the utter devastation--I crave it.  It's real.  It's part of the human condition.  Happy endings are for people who want to escape their reality.  Romantic comedies are predictable, and well, they pretty much make me cringe.  Blah.

I'm not interested in escaping.  I'm interested in the everyday insanity that so many people try to ignore or cover up or even pretend doesn't exist. I don't particularly want to be emerged in it personally  (I have enough of my own issues, thank you very much) but participating as a casual observer amuses me.

Give me gritty, raw misery.  Give me a story where the "bad guy" wins.  Give me a story where the protagonist gains a deeper understanding of his faults and how they're leading to his demise but ends up past the point of redemption.  Give me a love story where one person puts their heart and soul into the other only to have that person leave without an explanation.  Give me Iago's "Demand me nothing, what you know, you know.  From this time forth I never will speak word."  I love that his actions go completely unresolved.

I like to learn--and it seems there are far more opportunities to learn from chaos than from "normality."  Whatever that is.  It's probably just one giant charade that we all put on so others don't realize we're nuts.  I enjoy figuring out the logic another person used to get to their conclusion.  The steps I can't follow, well I chalk that up to the person being crazy and just not realizing it yet.

I like people who stand up for themselves and what they feel deeply passionate about.  I can even tolerate not agreeing with it to some extent--again, if I can follow the logic.  We shouldn't care what others think or approve of (short of being illegal maybe) and yet we're constantly trying to fit in, to find that balance between what we enjoy most and what our social circles consider acceptable.  We shouldn't have to try to live up to others' expectations but our own and yet I'm guilty of doing just that my entire life.  And it took me years to realize it.  Smooth, huh?

So I'll take the conflict, the disapproval of those around me, and I'll figure out for myself what makes me happy.  With the help of the people around me who "get it" of course.  Audrey Hepburn was quoted as saying, "I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone."  Yes, there is a difference.