~~`dark side of light' ramblings.

[reenka]

mistful has been writing this story, `dark side of light'... it's dark and gripping and painful and beautiful and frightening. i think this story had taken over my brain the past few days. it kept coming back, like a sort of waking nightmare, like a dilemma i couldn't fight my way out of, like some sort of puzzle. it raises so many questions, and it doesn't quite answer any of them, which is so maddening and yet so -right-, somehow. the only other fics that i kept thinking of afterwards were ip, brief interval, and draco veritas. it occurred to me that they were all about the choices and consequences of love, the lies and delusions and unrequited/requited fear that is always there... and who we become and what we become just because we have been lying to ourselves for so long, we think we are who we pretend to be and maybe we deserve our fate as it finds us....


who do we choose to become-- in war, in peace, in the struggle between dark and light and the way a balance is needed and craved and maybe impossible. it's so painful and nearly torturous, but -real-, especially when the reader is doubting and questioning their own responses and beliefs just as much as the character.
    i always say i don't believe it when love isn't enough, when everything just falls apart but is real anyway, and nothing can really save you or redeem you, not the truth, not your most true feeling, nothing. in a way, i'm of two minds about it-- i believe, but i fear, just like anyone. and it's the fear that makes it such a shock, because you want to think that if love exists, there's nothing to be afraid of, that you can't really be alone even if you are, if you just know that you've loved and been loved in return. but though that's pretty enough, but not really psychologically true. our need is so huge, and our fear of solitude and our anger run so deep, that even in love, we can never really let it go, and we clutch it to us because we think we can't ever have it and it's best to curse it even as we cling.

the thing that touches me about `dark side of light' is that it really makes me -ask- and gives no easy answers and that's okay. it's the questions that matter, as much as the answers. i don't think knowing that draco loves harry just as harry loves draco is the answer. it's only another question.
    and maybe that's one thing that's powerful about reading things by degrees, about works in progress, serialized. because you wade slowly through it, stopping at crucial points, without knowledge or assurance of any sort of future, asking yourself things you can't answer.
    what is enough? what is faith worth? can love save you? what do you need to live? does love change you? -can- love change you? can it be too late?

i think the thing that lingers for me about stories, afterwards, is the imprint of the emotions with no resolution, just my reactions, the questions that kept me up, wondering, turning them about in my head over and over. i think ip is still meaningful to me because the question it raises to me is so eternal-- the question of the nature and ultimate destiny of love. it's probably just me and my fascination with unrequited love, partly-- i think the stories where the question is largely, can this requited love survive or "work out" don't touch me as much, because i think that the assurance has already been provided to the larger, more vital question-- if you know you love and you're loved in return, it has already worked. i still believe that at that point of certainty you've let love change you, and you can therefore change your life, and possibly change the world around you.

you've breached that ultimate gap, you've achieved the level of Faith, i think, and at that level the faith is very like religious faith. it doesn't matter what -happens- anymore, once you believe. death can have no dominion. fear can be overcome because it -has already-, essentially, been overcome. you attain a strength that is serene and all-encompassing. now, most people (obviously) don't really achieve this level of love. fear is always present-- the doubt of ourselves, the hatred of ourselves, the doubt of the other, the hatred and fear of the other (whom you love).
    at that point, you're still able to believe you're a monster, do monstrous things out of fear and despair. and it's so easy, to take the easy way out, to run away and to create that self-fulfilling prophecy, where you are what you're afraid of, because you're afraid of it. so easy to think that if you face yourself, you would die, like from a dementor's kiss, because you are so dark, frightening, unworthy and stained with the past and with your own fear of the future. and in fact, this hypothetical love you maybe have can't save you, because the fear and despair are stronger, then.

and finally, i believe that asking these questions, writing these dark, deeply painful stories is important and vital to one's growth and life as a writer. these are the questions we live, and we can't pretend we know the answers, most of the time. i myself have been frightened and disturbed by the sorts of things that i write, things that i'd run away from in other's writing, things i never want to see. but maybe that's why one -should- write them, and think about them. if it's a nightmare, one should face it. if it's a dark, endlessly painful future, one should incorporate the lessons it offers into all other futures.
    because even if you're not touching upon it, if you don't use your awareness of the questions, they're going to eventually come back to haunt the characters, and you. the questions are always there, the fear is always there. their responsibility to themselves, their need for comfort, for meaning, for redemption, is always there. their love, i think, and love in general, is also always there, just for the reaching.

even so, much as i need and cling to the questions, turning them over and over in my mind, i think this quote by rainer maria rilke kind of sums it up for me:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.