~~not saying it.

so i was trying to explain the importance of stories to me to her. why is it that i -need- things and want things and believe things so deeply linked to their telling. fictionally yours. why is it that it matters what happens to buffy and spike, or harry or draco or heero. most people just read the book, just watch the show-- they don't take it with them, they don't let it ask them questions they can't answer, they don't place themselves into that book or tv show, they don't care more about the lives of these characters than their own, most of the time. this may be a good thing.

and i was trying to explain why it's not true that hatred is more prevalent in the world than love. how do you explain how loving your enemy is something that makes complete sense? it never happens, does it. does it? is that why we write fiction? to explore the things that never happen? to pretend?

i don't believe that love is so weak. i think it is merely a matter of perception, of opening your eyes, or retelling the same story in a different way. it's hard to make someone understand if they don't already. i really think that i only make sense to people who already agree with me, most of the time. to the rest of you, i'm probably spouting rubbish. what if i said that pain and hatred are just the obvious things. joy and love are so vital, so integral to the existence, the continuing weft and weave of the world, that we don't notice it. when it rips, when it gushes and hurts and bleeds, we know something is there. we know we're alive because we bleed-- or more simply, we know we even have -blood- because we lose it.

i don't just say this here, ruminating and babbling in a stupid journal. i believe it and i think it all the time. reading ivyblossom's `question answered' kind of made me remember that old thread in my mind from yesterday. saying goodbye because every moment is a goodbye, every moment runs away with us, turning us marginally into someone new, changing us. you never know what you're saying in the present, not really, until it's in the past, framed in a whole intricate tapestry of context and subtext and all sorts of things. you just -say- things, and the meaning you usually assign to them is so fragile, so transitory.
    goodbye can mean so many things. love can manifest in so many different ways. everything is both hidden and completely out in the open. it's just a question of seeing it.

it's a question of memory, in the end. who do you think the other person -is-? when you're living with them, who are you living with? because sometimes it's their past, and hopefully sometimes it's their future, the person who you imagined, the person who -could- be, the person you fell in love with because they danced into sight in that one moment of waking dream when they became more than you ever thought possible, when they walked into the ever-shifting light of possibility. why does draco stay with harry (or vice versa)? why did they get together?
    he's a jerk, and the other is no prize catch. we're all fallen, all of us not as brilliant as we would like to think. there are a million and one reasons why things won't and can't and aren't. there are a million and one ways for things to fall apart, for endings to come-- any second, it could all end, quietly or loudly, desperately or simply.

any second, it could begin.
    it's a question of memory. it's a question of vision. it's a question of inertia-- this is how it always was. they are always saying goodbye. they've always hated each other. they can never see eye-to-eye, because they will never want to, have never wanted to, can never want to. they are too different-- their relationship is too stable. if something is stable, we don't like to think that any second, it could end, it could change. we are walking on a knife-edge of uncertainty, every moment a revelation, and we hate it, mostly.

even if they're in love-- even if they're friends. if they're friends, why do they need to be lovers? if they're enemies, why mess with what works? he's a jerk, it works, go with it.
     love is always there, in the reflection of hatred. joy is always there, in the shadow of sadness. there is balance if you know how to see it, and there is the way through the mirror if you learn to believe.
    that is one of those things that probably made no sense to anyone but me. but ivy's story kind of says that i'm not the only one that feels these things.

    Sometimes he wonders if his melancholy is just another form of joy. Thoughtful, considered, lingering joy; a study on the possibilities of happiness and its implications; the weight of completeness and the simplicity of their love. The cosmic joke; while nothing is ever simple for Draco, while everything is a struggle, everything requires hours of careful thought and preparation and pain and agonizing either/or, this is simple.

it is. it is simple.