Large Fierce Mammal

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment is about memories.

In my conceit, I will posit that I’m a pretty good story teller. I often bring that skill to bear when teaching or simply explaining something to one or more people, by telling an entertaining anecdote, and this may at times be drawn directly from personal experience. In one particular case, Mrs. LFM and I were sitting drinking and talking with a group of people when the conversation took a direction that gave me reason to tell of a brief encounter I once had with a Great Horned Owl in a driving snowstorm deep in the woods. Without getting into detail today, suffice it to say that the group was enthralled, and as it turned out, one gent in particular.

Years later, Mrs. LFM and I were in the company of that same gent when the conversation came around to interesting encounters with wildlife. As we politely listened, my own story was recounted as his personal experience. There were a few minor differences — the bird was a Snowy Owl rather than a Great Horned Owl, he like I had been hunting and was forced to abandon the pursuit in favour of retreat in the face of an unforecast blizzard, but where I had been armed with a rifle, he had a bow. In every other respect, it was the same story.

I have never corrected the man’s recollection because I do not believe his telling of it meets the definition of a “lie”, as in an intentional act of subterfuge. Mrs. LFM suggested later that I tell stories so vividly in person that it’s easy for some people to visualize it all to the point where they can later believe they were actually there. Whatever the mechanism, this is not the only time it’s happened, and I have every reason to believe it will again — I hear my own experience recounted to me by someone who honestly believes that what they’re remembering is a Truth from their own past. (more…)

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment is all about truth, lies, and the perils of clinging exclusively to either.

Mytho Logique begins with a lovers’ tiff, and goes downhill from there. Spoiler: Society, then, now and forever, may resemble this remark. (more…)

Say the words “True Love” in front of an audience of any size, and everybody will understand what you mean. Except they won’t. Today, a lot of meaning is lost to the subjectively unique and emotionally fraught mental sieves perceptions are filtered through, and that includes the word “understand”.

Before going further then, let’s define what I mean when I use the term True Love —

“Throughout this series I’ve applied the title of “dark sentiment” to a variety of emotions, events, human acts, portrayals, and situations. Tonight we’ll talk about the darkest sentiment of all – True Love.

“True Love is the darkest of sentiments both because it has the power to motivate those blessed enough to be possessed by it to the performance of feats that are incomprehensible to the great unwashed, and because, in its truest form, it does not exist to most of the world. In that, it is truly dark because True Love is only understood by the few who are granted its epiphany by the Gods. I speak in absolutes here because I, and my beloved Mrs. LFM, are so possessed.

“If you’ve ever truly loved a Dog you’ve experienced True Love. To understand True Love you must first grasp the one thing that seems anathema to it – the fact that all living things must die. While I myself intend to live forever or die trying, the aforementioned fact is one of the Great Truths of the Universe. One that any mature being must embrace with an open heart or be forever doomed to doubt, misery, and the hell of the hesitant.

“Many will contest that statement, and to them I will point out that likewise, many do not know whether their asshole is bored or punched. Nay, ignore the clamourings of the ignorant good reader, and hark instead to my words, consorting not with those who will remain ignorant of True Love in perpetuity. True Love is not of the realm of the touchy feely nor is it born of gonads and strife. It has nothing to do with saving kittens from drowning, nor children from bullies. It has nothing to do with good or evil, although it can be a force for either. It is actually a fundamental power of Nature that, like Glinda the Good Witch, can only be underestimated at your peril.

“True Love is passionately fierce on a primal level, and no mating pair possessed of its power can be defeated. The best an enemy can do is kill them. Both of them, for to leave one alive is to guarantee doom. A Man blessed as I, and a Woman blessed as Mrs. LFM, lives every moment, sleeping soundly at night, in the certainty that there is only one other Human in the world who can be relied upon in any hour of need – one’s Mate. That in the inevitable cycles and evolutions of life, the waning of strength on the part of one will inevitably be compensated for by the waxing of strength in the other because their souls are intertwined and in balance. True Friendship is comparable, but its power does not even come close to True Love because True Love generates its own power.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 1 — Day 28

If your own life experience leaves you ill equipped to grasp the enormity of this, let me offer you these nine simple rules: (more…)

“Throughout this series I’ve applied the title of “dark sentiment” to a variety of emotions, events, human acts, portrayals, and situations. Tonight we’ll talk about the darkest sentiment of all – True Love.

“True Love is the darkest of sentiments both because it has the power to motivate those blessed enough to be possessed by it to the performance of feats that are incomprehensible to the great unwashed, and because, in its truest form, it does not exist to most of the world. In that, it is truly dark because True Love is only understood by the few who are granted its epiphany by the Gods …” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 1 — Day 28

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment, In Memoriam, is the tale of an aged horloger who has turned his talents with clockworks to recapturing the most perfect moment of his life. A widower near the ending of his days, he spends his nights crafting in perfect detail a perfect memory of a perfect dance. It is also the tale of a little clockwork musician who must abandon the love of his short life to be True to his creator’s dream.

A Merlot tonight I think. (more…)

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” ~ Will Rogers

We were saddened to learn yesterday morning that our Dear and Esteemed Friend Julian, who you will know to be a regular commenter here and of whom I have previously written, is mourning the death of his beloved Dog Molly who went to sleep yesterday for the last time. Tonight’s Dark Sentiment will be a departure from scheduled programming as the LFM Clan join him in his time of grief.

I never had the honour of meeting Molly, but I have lost, and will again lose, treasured Dogs. I don’t believe I flatter myself when I say I know how he feels tonight, and will for a while. Many of you reading this know what I mean.

“If you’ve ever lost someone who mattered, regardless of their species, you have experienced grief. If you haven’t so far, then you eventually will, because all relationships in Nature come with an expiry date. Neither good nor evil, it’s the way of things, and grief is the process Nature has given to some of her creatures (not only humans) to permit adaptation to getting on with living.” ~ Dark Sentiments 2012 – Day 7: Grief

No small amount of what I’ve published here from the beginning has been inspired, in one way or another, by Death, in all its complexions and variety. My studies of Death will continue until I get one of my own, and along the way so far I have come to some conclusions that have brought both the inevitability of ultimate endings, and the coming to terms with their aftermath, into focus for my own life and experience. Julian doesn’t need me to define the enormity of his loss or his grief in the wake of it, but in the possibility that he may find need to reach for a hand in the darkness, I make this offering of a few of my own observations both from within and without the state we Humans have named Grief. (more…)

Zing is an 8 minute animated short film produced by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH, and tells the tale of a frantic interlude involving a busy Grim Reaper, a demised cat, and the little girl who wants him back.

Synopsis:

Day in, day out, Mr. Grimm is busy with his job as the Reaper, harvesting people’s lives. One day, his monotonous existence is interrupted by the door bell. It’s a little girl. She wants her cat back. Little does she know that she’s the next life on Mr. Grimm’s list.

If you read the comments this film attracted when it was posted to YouTube by its producer, reactions veered hugely toward the negative. And yes, many of the complaints do hold water, but I don’t tend to justify why I find enjoyment in things, and choose to share them with you, Goode Reader, because they held someone else’s water. (more…)

Here’s a bit of advice inspired by one of my favourite scenes from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A lot of movies have tried my patience with overly gloatinous villains, but this one gets right down to the nitty gritty of why it pisses me off so much. (more…)

“One hundred and sixty-one years ago today, a light of dark genius was extinguished forever under bizarre circumstances that remain unclear to this day. At approximately 5:00 AM on Sunday, 7 October 1849, at the end of several days of delirium, Edgar Allan Poe regained complete consciousness only long enough to speak his last words – ‘Lord help my poor soul!'” ~ Dark Sentiments – Day 7

That quote is an excerpt from an article published here on the 7th day of the first season of this annual event. In that piece I dealt exclusively with the mysteries that still surround the death of Edgar Allan Poe. Tonight’s Dark Sentiment will take a more holistic approach. (more…)

Icarus augers in (bottom right between ship and shore), to the complete disinterest of the local population. Click to enlarge.

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment was directed by Marek Skrobecki, and was inspired by the song Danny Boy. Described by the director —

“A seemingly ordinary city is inhabited by people suffering from a serious condition strangely enough, their headlessness does not seem to bother them much. Headless individuals walk in haste and chaos around the town, stumbling and falling all the time. The blindness of the city inhabitants is in fact a kind of social disease, of a mass stupefaction. Duped by “headlessness”, a reference to 20th-century totalitarian ideologies, those people follow an irrational blindness. Together, they create a mindless, intolerant community. It is the protagonist – the only one, colloquially speaking, to have his head screwed on the right way – who seems to feel the most lost and lonely in this “headless” crowd. As he wanders the city streets, Danny Boy is constantly filled by dread and sadness at the sight of its headless, duped and aimlessly hard-pressed inhabitants. In the privacy of his home, he slowly constructs a machine which will help bring his solitude to an end …

“The final scene of this 10-minute animated film presents Danny Boy walking away as a dramatic event happens in the background: a plane hits one of twin towers visible on the horizon. It seems that the catastrophe comes completely unnoticed by the inhabitants of the city suffering from the ‘headlessness’. The tragedy of the passengers of the hijacked plane or of the people trapped in the skyscraper is left on the sidelines of everyday life, like the fall of Icarus in the Bruegel’s painting. The last individual who might have been able to use his brains and watch the world in a critical way gives this capacity up, preferring to lead a happy mindless life with his beloved woman, intolerant of his otherness.” ~ Danny Boy – Marek Skrobecki

Lest the final scene of this film be viewed as some sort of swipe at US domestic and foreign policy, as I understand the intent of those who made it, and view it myself, this is painted with a much broader brush. The visual reference of 11 September 2001 is etched upon the public consciousness of the world, both in horror and delight depending on nationality and inclination, and therefore offers a powerful monument to the perils of willful blindness. Rest assured that a generation as yet unborn will declare these events meaningless by virtue of either being deserved, “in the past”, or both. (more…)

It was with the kind permission of our Esteemed Friend of the LFM Clan Stephen F. Kaufman, of whom we have previously written here, that his deceptively simple but far from inconsequential statement of Truth appears at the top of tonight’s Dark Sentiment. I encourage you to read his words, Goode Reader, and consider their meaning in the light of your own endeavours and experienced outcomes.

Next, and with the aforesaid in mind, please move on to this connected bit of Wisdom —

“My senior high school English Teacher, the esteemed Paul Brison, used to say, “Works of art are never finished; they’re abandoned.” While this wise utterance obviously has applications in every field of human expression, I’ve always embraced it as defining the fundamental difference between proof reading and rewriting to death. In overthinking lies doom.” ~ A Tendency to Overthink

It’s said that a story has three parts — a beginning, a middle, and an end — and ignoring those cases where a story ends on a “cliff hanger” (in which case the writer should be shot), this is true whether the story be enthralling or the biggest waste of time ever put to pen. If the work saw the light of day, it can be safely said that the writer at some point decided, or was compelled from within or without, to make an end of it, “completed” or not.

The end of action in an endeavour must never be confused with its completion. In a voyage from point A to point B, with arrival at point B defined as completion, sinking the ship 10 miles short of the destination represents an end to the voyage, but certainly not completion.

Having now defined completion with a degree of completeness sufficient to the matter at hand, let us now return to the Esteemed Kaufman’s sage advice.

While the end of an endeavour may be forced into being synonymous with its completion (ask anyone who has ever worked to deadline), the doom of stultification awaits he who embraces the belief that there exists a fast track to the point where the work needs to be ere labour may cease absent loss of its creator’s self-respect.

When a person achieves what passes for success today, it is said that they have “arrived”, as though their journey has ended, and their status is to be admired. The yardstick that measures such success is made of treasure and property, and the power they represent is the power to consume, without fear of limitation or consequence. Few today are of the sort who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and never forget where they came from. Who continually strive to be a better creature of Nature than they were yesterday, and measure themselves against that one rather than anyone else. Who truly seek understanding of the Truths that lie outside the artificial constructs of men, and express them through their passions. Who bring those passions to everything they do.

The art and meaning of truly striving is lost in a society that has managed to infuse the next generation of people, those who will be expected to do the work that needs doing, with an expectation of instant, easy success, mostly by permitting them to pass through the public education system on the basis of work that was “good enough”, if it was done at all. Likewise, “education” has been permitted to assume the mantle of a sentence one is forced to serve before the fun starts, rather than the lifelong, joyful process it’s supposed to be. Worst of all, in schools full of mediocrity, lacklustre has been rebranded and sold as the new excellent. ~ Art, Science, Life, and Reality – Certified Organic

These considerations being far from complete, we will revisit the subject before the current season is. I am neither done nor complete, even as I asymptotically approach it.