do you know anything with a happily ever after...?

"And then she woke up..." I suppose there are worse endings...

-from Rose Walker's diary, in Sandman #16: "Lost Hearts"

a good rain knows... or if this is my lie...

None of this is real, if it makes you feel any better. This tale was in no way true, but based on just a fiction... aren't they all? I was not here, nor there, and I have never really been anywhere before... Life has a way of underwhelming you that way... These have been nothing more than a collection of blurred photographs and borrowed words, for lack of my own. About everything we've forgotten to remember or cannot help but forget... But one should never trust the story-teller - only trust the story... For we all wear masks, and we all have tales... and we all must remain on this journey, still searching for a destination... But a good rain knows when to fall... all good things must come to an end, and all truths must be revealed, in time... For the first time in a long time, I can honestly say I have no regrets... for along the way, I discovered a world I knew nothing about... and it's a fabulous world after all...

I have heard it said that we are all, in reality, artists and liars. And that when we lie, we are in some ways revealing more of ourselves than we care to realise. For in those lies, we must create an entire world of our own devising. A world that in turn becomes wholey real in the telling. Wherein rest truths that we sometimes fail to recognise or do not wish to admit to ourselves...
Tell me your lie and I will tell you who you are...
If this is my lie, then who, in fact, am I...?

memory is an unreliable thing...

"Goodbye doesn't always mean the end. Sometimes, it means a new beginning, even though we may not know it at the time..."

"Looking back, I'm not sure if this is exactly the way it all happened... but it's definitely the way I want to remember..."

-from Wong Kar Wai's "Blueberry Nights"

I believe it was John Ed Pierce who said: "home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to...."

"These then, are my last words to you - believe that life is worth living, and that belief will help create the fact..."

hellos and goodbyes...

"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm Happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right...?"

"Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves and then we have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos..."

-Snoopy

I love mankind, it's people I can't stand...

-Linus Van Pelt

I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong...

-Lucy Van Pelt

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia..."

-from "Peanuts"

something lost along the way...

Jet Black: When you and I first met, you told me something. You said that you had died once, that you had seen death. Why can't you just let it go? Forget the past.
Spike Spiegel: There was a woman, first time I'd found someone who was truly alive. At least, that's what I thought. She was... the part of me I'd lost somewhere along the way, the part that was missing, that I'd been longing for...

Julia: It's all... a dream...
Spike Spiegel: Yeah... just a dream...

Jet Black: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye Valentine: Ordinary. The kind of dangerous, beautiful ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet Black: I see.
Faye Valentine: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from paradise...

Vicious: There's nothing in this world to believe in...

-from "Cowboy Bebop"(カウボーイビバップ) by Watanabe Shin'ichirō (渡辺 信一郎)

wor(l)d's end...

"When a world ends, there's always something left over. A story, perhaps, or a vision, or a hope. This inn is a refuge, after the lights go out. For a while..."

-The innkeeper, in Sandman #56: "World's End"


"So, like everyone else, I was staring out of one of the windows of the inn at the end of the words..."
"Worlds. I meant worlds..."

-Brant Tucker, in Sandman #56: "World's End"

"Hey. Thanks for listening. I suppose you must think I'm crazy."
"No. I don't. Maybe I ought to. But I don't. You hear a lot of weird stories behind a bar..."

-Brant Tucker and the bartender, in Sandman #56: "World's End"

endings are mixed blessings...

mistakes... or final days...

"I doubt I'm any wiser than I was five hundred years back. I'm older. I've been up, and been down, and been up again. Have I learned aught? I've learned from my mistakes, but I've had more time to commit more mistakes..."

-Hob Gadling, in Sandman #13: "Men of Good Fortune"

"Death is a mug's game..."

-Hob Gadling, in "The Doll's House"

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due..."

-Hob Gadling, in "Season of Mists"

"We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world..."

-the film director, in "Signal To Noise"

my so-called life... or a doll's house

"The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version of my life. Have you ever had that dream?"
"Doesn't everyone?"
"I don't."

-Superman, Batman, and Martian Manhunter, in Sandman #71, part two of "The Wake"

"It means that we're just dolls. We don't have a clue what's really going down, we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored..."

-Rose Walker, in "The Doll's House"

"I think life should be more like TV. I think all of life's problems ought to be solved in 30 minutes with simple homilies, don't you? I think weight and oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear fashionable clothes, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don't you think...?"

"Why isn't my life like a situation comedy? Why don't I have a bunch of friends with nothing better to do but drop by and instigate wacky adventures? Why aren't my conversations peppered with spontaneous witticisms? Why don't my friends demonstrate heartfelt concern for my well being when I have problems? ...I gotta get my life some writers..."

-Calvin & Hobbes

rooms that are no longer there...

"It is a fearful thing to be haunted by those who loved us once. It is a fearful thing to haunt those one loves..."

-Destruction orates about death, in Sandman #55: "Cerements"

"I mean, does this always happen when a girlfriend walks out on him?"
"Not at all. For example, after the Nada affair he razed the Dreaming. It was a bleak, lonely desert for centures. I remember the first flower that grew. The first time he smiled again...

-Matthew and Lucien, in Sandman #42: "Brief Lives:2"

"I remember waiting for his return. I remember the strange strained grey days that stretched into years and into decades. The slow crumbling of walls... the rooms that were no longer there..."

-The Corinthian remembers Dream's absence, in Sandman #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

changeless... or sometimes i forget...

"Some things are changeless. People love, and die, they dream, destroy, despair, go mad. They fulfill their destinies, live out the course of their lives. We fulfill our function, as they fulfill theirs... That will not change..."

"You think not...?"

-Despair and Destruction, in Sandman #41: "Brief Lives:1"

"Lucien? Were you ever alive?"
"I don't think so, no."
"You don't think so?"
"I can remember the title, author, and location of every book in this library, Matthew. Every book that's ever been dreamed. Every book that's ever been imagined. Every book that's ever been lost. Millions upon millions of them. That's what I remember. It's my job. Other things... I forget sometimes..."

-Matthew and Lucien, in Sandman #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

i never thought it would end like this...

Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending any time. You know where you are with an ending...

-The eldest of the three Fates, in Sandman #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

"It's never what they want, and if we give them what they think they want, they like it less than ever. "I never thought it would be like this." "Why can't it be like the one I had before?" I don't know why we bother..."
"We bother because we have no choice. Because that is what we are, in this aspect..."

-The eldest and youngest of the three Fates, in Sandman #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

"What did we make? What was it, in the end?"
"What it always is. A handful of yarn; a little weaving and stitching; some embroidering perhaps. A few loose ends, but that's only to be expected..."

-The Fates, in Sandman #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

everyday miracles...

Dr. Manhattan: I don’t think your life’s meaningless.
Silk Spectre: Oh no, well, obviously that’s what you’re going to say because anything I’m stupid enough to believe is true, you just disagree with it and…uh… You don’t?
Dr. Manhattan: No.
Silk Spectre: But…listen, you’ve just been saying life is meaningless, so how can…?
Dr. Manhattan: I changed my mind.
Silk Spectre: But…why?
Dr. Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles…events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter… Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.”
Silk Spectre: But…if me, my birth, if that’s a thermodynamic miracle… I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!
Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world. …But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace, and we forget… I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. Come…dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes…and let’s go home…

-Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre in "Watchmen"

Ozymandias: I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.
Dr. Manhattan: "In the end?" Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends...

-Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan in "Watchmen"

"It would be a stronger world. A stronger, more loving world... to die in..."

when we fall...

“People look to you to save them – probably most of the time – from their own mistakes. They do things – knowingly – wrong. And they look to you afterward to make them right. Why do you bother?”
"Because I Can..."

"Then why are we here?"
"To catch them if they fall..."

-Father Daniel and Superman in "For Tomorrow"

"You asked for my help. That's all that matters..."

"I'm someone who does what he can. Aren't we all...?"

-Clark Kent or Kal-El or Superman

"No. A finer world is small thing to ask for..."

-The Midnighter from "The Authority"

"You act like you think there's always hope..."
"Well... there is."

-Winged Victory and Samaritan from Kurt Busiek's "Astro City"

"Everyone's worth it..."

fear of flying...

"Birds of a thousand colours danced in the sky when I was a boy. They brightened the day with their intricate songs. "We are who we choose to be," sang the goldfinch, when the sun was high. "I dream about dreams about dreams," sang the nightingale, under the pale moon..."

-Master Li, in Sandman #74, "The Exile"

"Nothing to fear? I thought I heard the beating of mighty wings, as in a nightmare that rode me when I was a boy..."
"You do. But have no fear of them..."

-Shakespeare and Dream, in Sandman #75, "The Tempest"

"Only the phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost..."

-The true end of the series, in Sandman #74, "The Exile"

a million lives...

"Once, there was a tiger striped cat. This cat, died a million deaths, revived and lived a million lives. And he had various owners that he didn't really care about, the cat wasn't afraid to die. Then ONE day, he met a white female cat, the two of them fell in love and lived together happily. Well, the year's went by and the white female cat got old and passed away. The Tiger Striped cat cried a million times, then he also died. But this time.....he didn't come back..."

Jet: That's a good story
Spike: I hate that story
Jet: Why?
Spike: I hate cats...

-Spike Spiegel and Jet Black from "Cowboy Bebop"
(カウボーイビバップ) by Watanabe Shin'ichirō (渡辺 信一郎)

certainty...

"The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and myths that break upon the shores of our minds. Atlantis is the shadow-land, the birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the west that is lost to us, but remains forever, true birthplace and true goal..."

-The Atlantean sorceror, in Books Of Magic #1

"The past is always knocking at the door, trying to break through into today..."

-Dr Occult, in Books Of Magic #1

"All we know for sure is that we don't know anything for sure."
"That is a particularly foolish thing to say, John Constantine. Light and darkness, life and death. These things are eternally certain..."

-John Constantine and Dr Occult, in Books Of Magic #1

sometimes... i remember how to fly...

"When I dream, sometimes I remember how to fly...
You just lift one leg, then you lift the other leg, and you're not standing on anything, and you can fly... So what I want to know is, when I'm asleep, do I really remember how to fly? And forget how when I wake up? Or am I just dreaming I can fly?"

"When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget."

"But that's not fair..."

"No."

-Chloe Russell and Dream, in Sandman #43: "Brief Lives:3"

selective reality... or forever...

"I'm not in denial, I'm just selective about the reality I choose to accept..."

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere is the fact that none of it has tried to contact us..."

"I hate to think that all my current experiences will someday become stories with no point..."

"There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want..."

"We're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are..."

"Childhood is short, maturity is forever..."

- Calvin & Hobbes

awake...

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Why me?', then a voice answers 'Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up...'"

"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night...' "

"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love..."

-Charlie Brown

"I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it..."

-Sally Brown

一年ののち... in a month, in a year...

「いつか貴方は　あの男を愛さなくなるだろう」　と　ベルナールは静かに言った。
「そして　いつか僕もまた　貴方を愛さなくなるだろう。」
「我々は　またもや孤独になる　それでも同じことなのだ。」
「其処に　また流れ去った　一年の月日があるだけなのだ。。。」

-F.サガン　「一年ののち　と　すばらしい雲」

"One day you will not love him anymore..." Bernard said softly.
"And one day, doubtless, I will not love you anymore, either..."
"And we will be alone once more, and in that be alike..."
"And another year will have gone by..."

-Francoise Sagan, "In a month, in a year" (Dans un mois, dans un an) and "Wonderful Clouds" (Le merveilleux nuages)

before sunset... or things left unspoken...

"We were never loves, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old..."

-Lady Bast, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

I cared for him, very much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him. He was a creature of hope, for dreams are hopes, and echoes of hopes, and I am a creature of despair...

-Despair, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

I think of the first Despair sometimes, said Despair. It must be over a hundred thousand years since anyone thought of her but me. An eyeblink, and she is forgotten. And you will forget: death or life will take him from your minds. I know, whispered Despair, in her distant, empty voice. But I shall remember him...

-Despair, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

dusk... or this is not the way the world ends...

"I've spent the weekend walking around in a daze wondering, what has happened to the great men and women that helped define the legacy of this place? And then last night I figured it out...you've grown old. Here, at the end of human history, we sit on the verge of a transformative time. Never have we lived longer, eaten better, worked less or possessed more things. We are more advanced than any species that has ever walked the earth, and now, with our promethean urge truly unleashed, we stand on the precipice of scientific marvels that will catapult us into the next millennium. Despite all this, evidence presented here suggests that most of you have never been more pessimistic for our future. You fear tomorrow. Throughout the day, the shock of this mindset has turned to disappointment and finally now to anger...the future of man is not one billion of us fighting over limited resources on a soon-to-be-dead planet, but one trillion human beings spanning an entire galaxy. The future of man is not here...it is out there...

-Reed Richards, in Fantastic Four #579

a long, long road...

"It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it. And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one simply assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best..."

-Destruction, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

Something Dian used to say to me. She'd say, "Wes, don't say anything unless you've got something to say." Advice I took to heart. She would also say, "It's a long, long trail that has no turning." And how right she was...

-Wesley Dodds, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

places...

"If you bring me back to life, my death will have no meaning. I had a fine existence. I was a good place. I spent a little time in the waking world. I even fell in love, once, a little. I lived a good life and it ended. Would you take that away from me...?"

-Fiddler's Green, in Sandman #70, part one of "The Wake"

"Sometimes a really good friend can be a where instead of a who..."

self-deceptions...

"The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has "meaning" and that each of us is "unique". One can see that evolving a built in obscuring mechanism, for those depressing and inevitable insights might be of practical use..."

-Talking Heads frontman David Byrne in "Bicycle Diaries"

"We are not meant to pursue happiness..."

destiny's garden...

"The garden of Destiny. You would know it if you saw it. After all, you will wander it until you die. Or beyond. For the paths are long, and even in death there is no ending to them..."

"The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness..."

-from Neil Gaiman's Sandman: "Season of Mists", episode 0

dreams do not come true...

어느 깊은 가을밤, 잠에서 개어난 제자가 울고 있었다.
그 모습을 본 스승이 기이하게 여겨 제자에게 물었다,
"무서운 꿈을 꾸었느냐?"
"아닙니다."
"슬픈 꿈을 꾸었느냐?"
"아닙니다, 달콤한 꿈을 꾸었습니다."
"그런데 왜 그리 슬피 우느냐?"
제자는 흐르는 눈물을 닦아내며 나지막이 말했다,
"그 꿈은 이루어질 수 없기 때문 입니다..."

One late autumn night, the disciple woke up crying.
So the master asked the disciple,
"Did you have a nightmare?"
"No."
"Did you have a sad dream?"
"No," said the disciple, "I had a sweet dream."
"Then why are you crying so sadly?"
The disciple answered quietly while wiping his tears,
"Because the dream I had can't come true..."

-from "A Bittersweet Life" (달콤한 인생)

탈콤한 인생... or a bittersweet life...

어느 맑음 봄날 바람에 이리저리 휘날리는 나뭇가지를 바라보며 제자가 물었다,
"스승님, 저것은 나뭇가지가 움직이는 겁니까?"
스승은 제자가 가리키는 곳은 보지도 않은 채 웃으면 말했다,
"무릇, 움직이는 것은 나뭇가지도 아니고 바람도 아니몌 네 마음 뿐이다..."


One fine spring day... a disciple looked at some branches blowing in the wind. He asked his master...
"Master, are the branches moving or is it the wind?"
Not even glancing to where his pupil was pointing... the master smiled and said...
"That which moves is neither the branches nor the wind... it is your heart and mind..."

-from "A Bittersweet Life" (달콤한 인생)