Memento mori

In the Victorian era, hairwork (jewelry made with human hair) was a popular type of literal memento mori, used to preserve a small token of a loved one who had passed away. (Gordon McDowell / Flickr)

Memento Mori. "Remember that you must die."

I don't wish to send you off into an emotional downward spiral, but the translation of this Latin phrase has spun around my head, waltzed in one ear and out the other over the past few weeks. Besides being a humorous catchphrase on Dear Hank and John, my favorite (and probably the only) "comedy podcast about death," it is a sobering reminder of something we know every day, but choose also - in some ways - not to know.

This is how I treat the reality of mortality, but it is how I treat other realities too. The reality of loss, the reality of failure, the reality of fear. I cross out the remember in "Remember that you must..." and replace it with "Ignore all signs that you must [insert unpleasant thought here]."

But on occasion, willful ignorance is no longer possible. I have to see what's directly in front of me. Quite literally. Because, like so many, I keep relics of the past.

These are actual mementos, not-so-figurative remembrances of those unpleasant thoughts. Things like a college rejection letter, a ring from an ex-boyfriend, a handwritten note in the final days of a sick relative.

Once we have established positive associations with our belongings, it can be difficult to let them go. When we couple those positives with negative associations, however, it becomes downright impossible.

There is something poetic in the notion of bittersweetness, that we cannot think of a word to describe the feeling of simultaneous sadness and happiness, thus we must associate it with a much more palpable sensation: taste. I liken the experience of looking at a deeply meaningful yet tainted object to having a better than average cup of coffee. At first it reels you in with the taste of cream and sugar, that which can render the beverage tolerable. But there's also something soothing in the slow-to-arrive bitterness. It keeps you there, lingering on the flavor. On the duality of the experience.

Tonight I threw away some things because those tastebuds had been used to such great effect that they lost their appeal. Like that fateful day when I went from having Chex Mix every afternoon to having it next to never, I had to come to an unwelcome realization that my needs were changing. I had to give up what was tiring me out.

At what point do we say goodbye to sorrowful memories, and how do we accomplish it? I don't have an answer for this, and I think that is the most human dilemma. We cannot forget. We compare our capacity for memory to other creatures - describing it as gnat-like or using the saying "an elephant never forgets." Like physical mementos, memory can be a blessing and a curse.

As with the realities I choose to ignore, but cannot forget, there are objects in my life I have struggled to let go of, hiding them in plain sight so that I can pretend they aren't there while trusting that they are just the same. On some level, they ground me, reminding me of a tumultuous past. On another, they burden me with a constant hovering dread.

So today I let go. Not fully, that takes time. But in releasing some mementos, I have given myself the permission to feel things independently and without interference. Whether my mind can trash negativity as easily as my hands can, I don't know. I'm searching for that reality most of all.

Truths sometimes universally acknowledged

I am an aesthete. I am someone who loves art, film, television and music simply for their own sake.

Over the past few days, while I was powering through the terrible Political Science readings I've been assigned the past couple of weeks, I managed to finish every last page. But not without having a moment of disbelief when one author tried to explain why Hamlet is better understood on a political rather than an aesthetic level. It was an interesting argument, yet my firm response was No, just no. Let's enjoy Hamlet for how it affects our emotions, how it makes us feel, what we ascertain as the inherent meaning of the story. Not because it relates to the story of King James I.

So why did this occur to me today, when I've set down the Poli Sci and picked up a couple of movies to watch purely for entertainment purposes? Well, because the films confirmed what I will fight forever to prove: That art's true value is in how it treats us to truths that we sometimes forget.

When these truths are spoken aloud to us, they make us feel whole. Like we're being personally reached out to as we proclaim: Yeah, Definitely, Uh-huh, Me too!

Today I watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Though for years I put off seeing these films, I had a sudden desire to screen them. In doing so, I felt as if thoughts that had been meandering through my brain were being somehow removed from my soul and placed onto my screen. Here, I will share a few of those thoughts with you.

You may find them insightful in your own personal ways. These are mine.

"I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between." - Celine (Before Sunrise)

Before I began questioning religion, I had a few long conversations with my father about why he didn't believe in God. He told me about what he perceived as a deity. It wasn't a Christian Lord or a Jewish G-d. It was the love between people. That's exactly how he expressed it to me. The feeling of compassion and love that exists between humans.

At the time that didn't quite resonate, but over the years I've understood more and more what it is that my dad was saying. If there is a God anywhere in this universe, it would have to undoubtedly exist in all that is good. A God would help us toward goodness, and the truest and most honest is goodness is that which we share between our neighbors, friends and family. I don't know what I believe in, and I feel as though my dad's perception of religion has become perhaps even more jaded than mine, but I do know that if there is a God, it would make sense that said deity exists among us in the love we share with others.

"You know what the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you. You know, you'd like to think you're both in all this pain, but they're just like, 'Hey, I'm glad you're gone.'" - Jesse (Before Sunrise)

This is something that has been on my mind quite a bit lately. How is it that once rejected, it is so easy to be forgotten, even when you feel that you were in love with someone?

After having my heart torn out a few months ago, I recently decided to step away from romance for a while. It wasn't so much by choice as by trial and error (I made a few mistakes along the way). By trying to pick up the pieces of a broken heart, I felt even worse. But the root of the problem was that I felt this nagging need to move on and forget the past to, in effect, mirror how he had done those things.

But looking elsewhere doesn't replace the fact that when you are broken up with you are the victim. You are the one who is no longer loved. It comes down to dealing with that fact and becoming happy with yourself, alone or otherwise. I don't need another boy to replace a previous boy, I just need me.

"People have these romantic projections they put on everything. That's not based on any kind of reality." - Jesse (Before Sunrise)

Picking up from the same issue, I feel that part of the reason I let myself fall so victim to the sting of rejection is that in the period following a break-up, I tend to be incredibly nonsensical in my understanding of the ruined relationship. I don't see the faults, I don't think of the ex-boyfriend in a bad light. I just wallow and consider all the lost opportunities.

In a way, the troubled experience becomes a romantic situation in itself. It's like I'm Juliet in Romeo & Juliet, and the destruction of a potential love story becomes a fantastical story of a lost soulmate. Oh, the possibilities. Oh, what could have been. When really, the best way to look at life is, Oh, what's next?

"Memories are wonderful things, if you don't have to deal with the past." - Celine (Before Sunset)

How wonderful would it be to remember people or events without being weighed down by the troubles associated with those things? I feel as though I can only come to a solid explanation of this through an anecdote.

I have so much trouble watching home movies. It's not because they're poorly edited or they're of sad or depressing things. It's because seeing my mom on the other side of them, beautiful and joyous and alive, is like being punched in the stomach. It's a reminder that even though the memories that are depicted in the home movies are wonderful and sweet and fun and reminiscent, they are also burdened by the fact that they deal in the past. They are not the present. They remind us of what was and is no longer. So even though I'm a nostalgic sort of person, I'm also hesitant to dig into my past because the hardest thing is thinking in terms of what you've lost. And that's what the past is. What's gone.

"When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms--I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone. The way he's going to part his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I'll know I'm really in love." - Celine (Before Sunrise)

To end on a slightly lighter note, I truly value this quote from Before Sunrise, which serves as a testament to one of the many merits of love that I have and will always believe in.

There's this, in my opinion, mistaken belief that all love and passion grows stale. That eventually you grow tired of the one you're with and start searching for greener pastures. The grass is always greener on the other side, and all that.

But I have this feeling that when I truly find love - a fine, stout, healthy love (as Jane Austen described it in Pride & Prejudice) - it will be the little things that make the feeling last. After being with someone for a long time, getting to know them and to appreciate them equally for their wonderful qualities and for their faults, I will have truly found love. And if it is a reciprocated feeling, then that will be true love.

I hate to keep going back to Sonnet 116, but as Shakespeare said - "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom."

So, we come full circle to Shakespeare once again. Not to return to the understanding of Hamlet based on historical/political events, but an interpretation of art based on what is internal and personal.

For movies that are almost entirely consumed by dialogue, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset have some of the most profound and unpretentious moments I've ever seen in any work of art. They were films that made me think, but not because they were trying so hard to do so, but because they depicted a gritty reality of love, loss and loneliness. And that's what art is supposed to do, I think. It doesn't have to make you aware of its presence in a historical context, though if it does that's fine. Its actual purpose, however, is to draw you in and to make you feel.

As an aesthete, I feel a lot. If you take away my art, you take away my ability to let those feelings free. Instead, come with me and enjoy the luxuries of universal truths that will make you feel for yourself.

An open letter

I have spent too many days mourning loneliness. Since I turned nine and sat against the portables at my elementary school watching the boy I had a crush on chasing another girl around the playground, it has been all too clear to me that I'd always be a spectator. That girl who sits on the sidelines while other girls are chased, the one who watches movies where heroes find their damsels in distress and lay claim on them, the one who learns from seeing, but not from experiencing.

I grew up awkward, originally it was both physical and social. Eventually it became only the latter. Regardless of the situation, however, it was never in the cards for me to be a heartbreaker. I simply wasn't equipped for that sort of thing.

So it took me a long time to start dating. Almost two decades passed before I finally found a boy who'd be even willing to lay eyes on me. I was ecstatic. Then I learned he didn't actually want to date me.

I waited another half a year. Finally, I'd convinced myself that it wasn't impossible for someone to be romantically interested in me. The confidence boosted my ego enough to make me put myself out on a limb. I ended up winning over the boy I'd secretly fancied for a year. Things went well (on my side) and I set my heart on unreachable goals, getting passion confused with love and feeling the words bubbling up in my throat when I knew they were unwarranted. In time I'd learn he didn't like me all that much, and the "I love you" I felt wasn't real.

From then on I tried to be more casual. I knew that by investing myself in dating, in romance or even in boys in general, I was doing myself a disservice. I took an Economics of Gender class to remind me that a woman could be powerful and run a household. I watched Pride & Prejudice over and over again to see what real men should be like and how a strong woman turns down an unsuitable match. These were my lessons.

The catch was that I didn't seem to learn anything from them.

Even with the casual dating, I still managed to get my feelings all tangled up. And never for the right people, never at the right time. I was always too eager, too imperfect, or I'd learn quickly that I was only a rebound date. Amidst all the confusion, even I was occasionally guilty of playing the rebound card.

It took me a while to realize that even if that "I love you" from before wasn't real, it felt real enough to have distracted me from embracing present experiences.

That all melted away when I thought I'd met the right person once again. I no longer cared about that previous fascination, because I thought I'd found something more pure and more authentic. For a second time, I was run away with my feelings. I couldn't see any fault with the situation, even if it was in fact filled with errors. And I wanted to use those words again.

Through it all, I missed one absolutely unmistakable fact:

Even though those words bubbled on the surface for me, they were never even close to reaching the lips of my counterparts. In the same way I'd pushed for things to work out, I'd pushed for feelings that weren't true.

In the days afterward, it left a hole inside me where I'd always assumed love could exist and thrive.

After a long day of trying to erase the past, to forget the memories and embrace the future, I've settled on a conclusion. No boy is worth a broken heart. And even more than that, no boy is worth crying over. From someone who cries even when she's happy, this is a premise that can be hard to embrace.

An even harder one is that no boy is worth the effort.

When I woke up this morning, I didn't want to leave bed. Somehow staring at the wall and burrowing my face in my pillow felt better than doing anything. Then I talked to a friend of mine and he tried to help me. He told me that if two people really like each other, nothing will stop them from making that known. If the feelings are sincere, then there's no risk that the feelings will go forever unshared.

I didn't believe him. I still don't know if I do. And in my heart of hearts, I continue to think I will never find love because I will always be chasing it and never have it given to me in return. Like a relay race, as soon as I pass it to someone they're quick to move on and find someone else to pass it along to.

Later in the day I talked to another friend of mine, my best friend in the world. She reminded me that whenever you date someone you should always feel like you matter to them. There is no excuse for feeling unwanted. As the quote from Juno goes:

"Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with." - Mac MacGuff

I want to believe my friends. And I want to believe Juno's dad. So I'm leaving myself open to what lies ahead. Because in the bitterest of moments, the easiest solution is to say that I give up and refuse to open myself up to future experiences that could hurt me in the same way.

That would be weak. And to all the boys I've dated, the ones who've broken my heart and the ones where things just weren't right - I am not weak. I can guarantee you that you are not worth my thoughts, my tears or my concern. You never were.

To the ones whom I still believe there is potential with - the truth is finally out - if you want this girl, you're going to have to chase her around the playground. She's done chasing you.

The ghosts of Valentine's past

Let me take you back to a time in my life that was almost as tragic as it was hilarious.

Back in elementary school I was not a catch. I was no one's dream girl. I never had a valentine.

I was that girl who sat in the back of the class chuckling and having slap fights with my best friend. And if she happened to be absent from class for a day, then I was that girl who sat in the back of the class being a nerdy chubster and reading The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes. Life was unkind to me, but it was mostly because I chose to be a happy otherworldly weirdo.

But one day, several years before the intense-level-of-awkward time of my life, I decided I'd try to be a normal girl and flirt with a boy I liked. The truth is I'd had crushes every year since I was a preschooler. To this day I can name off most (if not every single one) of my childhood crushes. So when I was six I thought it would be worthwhile to make it known to my crush that I liked him.

Flirting is not my forte. This is true now and it was true back in first grade. So my version of letting a guy know I liked him was by leaving him a love letter. A probably poorly written love letter with a photo of myself attached.

I never heard back.

At the time I don't remember being incredibly broken up about this. I think I just forgot about him a few weeks later because after I stealthily left my little hand written note in his desk, I cannot recall ever having any other thoughts to him or the status of the letter or the condition of my photo (i.e. whether it had been thrown away or not).

Nearly a decade later and I saw Mr. Neverheardfrom (A name derived from Old English, methinks) again in high school. The adorable seven year old boy with slicked back blonde hair (like his parents wanted him to play one of the T-Birds from Grease or something) had become clinically obese and had the air of a socially awkward misguided frat boy who let himself go. Let's just say I was glad I had gotten over that one back in first grade.

In fourth grade I started to like a brand new boy and I'm pretty sure he was also the boy that every other girl in my class liked (though my perception might have been skewed).

Fast forward a few months into the school year and Valentine's Day is coming up. Our teacher has us decorate bags or boxes at home to have our schoolmates drop our valentines in during our card exchange.

Happy Valentine's Day, Bart Simpson Loser!

That year I bought the most stellar pack of Harry Potter valentines. It was 2002 and The Sorcerer's Stone had just come out the year before so I clearly felt like the coolest kid in class with an almost holographic set of cards featuring Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Since I'd found the best valentines in the store, I realized this was my moment to let my crush know I liked him. But still being my awkward stealth self, I decided to be coy about my feelings for him and hope that he'd understand my implied interest if I gave him the best card in my valentine collection (disregarding the fact that there were at least four or five copies of each card and therefore it was illogical to think he would realize I was singling him out with the best type).

So I wrote his name under "To" and mine under "From," and placed it carefully in his valentine bag, hoping he might get the thickly veiled hint.

Needless to say, he didn't figure it out. And what's worse, my return valentine from this boy - who I believed at the time was the love of my life - was one of the least girly and least heartfelt cards I received that year. Bart Simpson. I love The Simpsons as much as the next person, but when you're a little nine year old hoping that your crush gives you a fantastical valentine that speaks of his undying love for you, you at least hope that it might have Lisa or Maggie or some other cutesy character on it.

A few years down the road I looked up Bart Simpson Loser (his birth name, believe it or not) on Facebook and found out he was dating a girl from my high school who I had taken a few classes with and subsequently discovered was one of the most disturbingly ditzy people I'd ever met. So I guess I just wasn't his type. Luckily I'd already come to terms with that after fourth grade.

So yeah, I lived the first decade or so of my life being the oddball. And yes, I went on through high school without knowing if anyone liked me back because 1. I never made a sincere in-person effort to find out and 2. The one time someone did allegedly like me, the prospect freaked me out. But at least in those early years I tried, however ridiculously, to let the boys I fancied know I was interested.

If I could go back in time and give the little me a high five for putting herself out there, I would do it in a heartbeat. And I'd probably hug her too. Childhood crushes may have been the trials of my past, but in a way they prepared me for the disappointment and, alternatively, the excitement of the future.

Valentine's Day may never turn out the way you expect, but at least in my case it's always interesting.