file name "blog violence"

The conversation was about scary movies: who likes them, who doesn’t. I used to like scary movies, but I watch them less and less. The older I get, the more I catch myself welling up at nonsense commercials and wincing at scenes of graphic violence.

I like scaring myself, though. I used to feel secretive about it—the periodic desire to dwell on dark fantasies—but the older I get, the more I see the possible benefit of it (when done in moderation).

Sometimes I let my thoughts travel very far, through the woods, up the mountain, until they come to a precipice. It is at this edge where the preciousness of life feels so real to me, that I become afraid. So afraid that if I could grow roots and plant myself, I most certainly would. And I would never ever leave, never ever go anywhere, and people could come to me if they wanted, just like the birds go to the branches. My thoughts can go farther now than they could go even as little as a year ago. Reflecting on past excursions leads me to believe that this precipice is a moving line.

I asked myself once, realizing I was in control of all these thoughts: Why do I choose to scare myself sometimes? Why do I bring myself to that place in my mind? Some people jump into the lake at night even though they’re afraid of not knowing where the bottom is. Or slip into lucid dreams to induce the experience of flying—even though one time, a pair of hands came out of the darkness, and they woke up on the verge of being yanked into nothingness. Why do they do it? For me, it’s a strange clarity that hints at an almost unreachable idea of fear being like a friend. Not the kind of fear that conquers you, but the kind that you can simply count on being there. The kind of fear that has a willingness to know who you are that maybe even exceeds your own willingness to know yourself. A bizarre mechanism of self-acceptance, even more bizarrely gift-wrapped in something that scares the living shit out of you.