No regrets. it sounds so good right, to have no regrets. heck, it sounds so good, no regrets is the name of a song, a country band, a movie, any number of books, man there’s even a café in downtown la called the no regrets restaurant. so smart. but what da hell does it mean anyway? look a bit beneath this self-help mantra of positivism and all you get is a shallow call to live life with a seared conscience.

i honestly don’t know anyone who can truthfully say they can live with no regrets. i’ve done a lot of bad shit in my life. i’ve taken advantage of weak-willed people, made fun of those who didn’t fit in, neglected those who were desperate to connect and worst of all, i’ve emotionally hurt many people before. some of them i care really deeply about, and some of them are still hurting right now. i don’t know about your token no regrets disciple down the road but i’ve been a bastard and a half many times over by now and at my worst, i look back at myself with disgust.

so i got regrets, man. lots of it.

how can any jerk have the balls to say they have no regrets. what kind of conscience do they have, that they can look back at their past misdeeds and see no need to have acted differently. sure you can get forgiven for all that you’ve done, it doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to look back and actively want to repair some of those cracks in the rear view. or at least feel that sharp edge of anguish that comes with knowing you can’t do it differently now that it’s done.

anyone hiding behind some smart christian jingle of onward-looking post-salvation clean slate is kidding themselves. the past is real and for the rest of us who are not born-again ten year olds, we’ve committed enough inter-personal crimes to rip apart a few strong hearts. i regret all that man. i rue the day i did the wrong thing. it sucks. i hate that feeling. but it’s there. for a guy like me to say i have no regrets, i must be an absolutely cold-hearted arrogant ass. and for all the wrong i've done, the one credential i refuse to add to my trophy room of people crimes is to be so cocky, i don't even regret the way i've trampled over others.

the bible says that there is no condemnation for those who are in jesus. what i think it means is that if you belong to jesus, nobody can tell you how bad you suck anymore. not even yourself. so no, i’m not advocating some kind of self-dooming brand of personal persecution. i’m talking about a living, breathing, contrite conscience. one that knows when something bad has happened and utterly wants the chance to change it.

i want to change things.
i’ve made mistakes this year and i want to change things.

but maybe i can’t. maybe i can never change them. maybe i’ve to spend the rest of my life looking at 2007 as the year i screwed up on matters a, b and c, and that’s the year i learned a harsh, irretraceable lesson. that if you’re not careful about how you treat another life, the only moral highground you can have one day is the ability to regret not treating it better.

Labels: christianity, defeat

Genusfrog [ 9:03 am ] | 1 comments

Thursday, May 17, 2007

HITCHCOCK'S TICKING BOMB

To illustrate the simplicity of the art of suspense, the great Hitchcock set the scene of two people sitting at a table talking. they talk and talk and talk and then without forewarning, the table explodes and both men are blown to bits. this, Hitchcock taught us, was the first error in creating suspense - the audience only knows as much as the protagonists.

but assuming the two men were talking at a table. and the audience has a glimpse of a bomb beneath the table. they talk. the bomb ticks. they talk. the bomb ticks. and the more they talk, the more the bomb ticks down till that very last transition, the audience is left gasping. the bomb goes off. the two men are blown to bits. and everyone is taken for the ride.

Hitchcock was right. a bit of omniscience can go a long way in making one's climactic moment a lot more savoury. and it's fair to say that pretty much every one will appreciate the fact that the master of suspense knows better to show his audience cutaways of a ticking bomb.

of course, there are exceptions. the jerk at the table, for instance... what does he care if you see the bomb or not? granted your cinematic viewing is enhanced, the guy still gets incinerated without the slightest inkling of his impending comeuppance. that sucks man.

some days, i feel like that jerk.

Labels: arts, defeat

Genusfrog [ 10:32 am ] | 3 comments

Thursday, May 03, 2007

QUE SERA SERA

As you grow up, you learn to make calls. you learn to say i want this, i want that, and this is how it should be. and so you keep growing and growing, and you keep making more calls and more calls. and then somewhere at the start of the middle of your life, you forget how to make calls. all the i want thises and i want thats become i don’t know what i wants. all the this is how it should bes become is this how it should bes. when you grow up, you forget how to make simple calls.

i didn’t say i wanted to have sadness follow me. maybe i wasn’t listening closely. maybe they said something meaningful between the ad breaks when i was chasing commercials somewhere else. i missed the part where they teach you how to make the hard calls.

the jesus and mary chain said in psychocandy that “there’s something dead inside my hole”. i feel like that every day, that in this empty shell, i’ve put to sword the last few shreds of my youthful optimism. maybe it’s the beginning of the end for my brash twentysomething gunghoism. when they told me at new life that the old has gone and the new has come, maybe they didn’t know that the old that went was a cock-eyed optimist with a heart on each sleeve, slain in the name of love and a future. maybe they didn’t know that the new that came was a tired, wounded shadow of his former self, more content conversing with fatalism than jesus christ himself.

he’s come full circle. he’ll go circle again. wait and see.

wait and see the future. the what’s in store for me. pop philosophy has never been shy dealing with the wait and see. i was in a karaoke room two days ago, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling as the cock-eyed optimist got crucified once more, ripped from the middle and left to die staring into a useless pale sky of dim karaoke lights. and while i stared at this ugly ceiling, pop philosophy churned out one of its finest theses yet.

que sera sera. whatever will be will be.

lodged somewhere between the right-most end of predestinative calvinism and the left-most end of meaningless nihilism was this little pop gem: que sera sera.

maybe that’s one way of saying we won’t have rainbows day after day. maybe it’s a rose-tinted way of preaching the gospel according to psychocandy. that when they say whatever will be will be, they’re actually saying that something will die inside my hole.

Labels: defeat, growing old

Genusfrog [ 10:00 pm ] | 0 comments