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theatrical_muse] 264 - "The past is never dead. It's not even
Jan. 12th, 2009 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prodigalwatcher264 - "The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun.
When one deals with beings possessed of such long lives as vampires and demons, then one develops a different kind of respect for the past, as it comes back to haunt people in much more direct and deadly ways. A person's past is a part of them, impossible to be freed from, like one's own shadow.
There are personal ways in which the past returns, and often those are the most profound and most painful. For individuals such as Angel and Spike, both men fighting on the side of good in this day and age, but who led lives of much darker and sinister bent, have had their pasts resurface in ways they could never have imagined.
Angel, of course, has had to deal with Angelus twice, and has even been confronted with past actions in the form of vampire protégés and the Hyperion Hotel itself. While still in Sunnydale, Spike was nearly destroyed by an ally who revealed himself to be the son of one of his victims.
Naturally, those of us with mortal life spans are no strangers to our pasts becoming present. Gunn has had to come to grips with the rough and disenchanted life he led in his old neighborhood, Lorne with the family he left behind in Pylea, and I have had my own troubles.
And then the distant past, completely unconnected to any of us, has managed to reach into the here and now and make its mark, slaying Fred and taking her place as Illyria.
It seems foolish, doesn't it, to believe that the things that have come before us can be relegated to books and journals and be reduced down to mere facts and figures, or worse can be forgotten altogether to one day be so irretrievably obscure as to be forgotten? We seem to spend so much time endeavouring to be rid of it, or to bury it, or to obfuscate it beyond the recognition of other people. But we can't forget it ourselves, no matter how we might deny, and we most certainly cannot shake off its effects, not when they are ingrained irrevocably into ourselves.
No, the past rarely, if ever, stays in the past. And it is a test of our convictions and steel in how we deal with it.
(382)
When one deals with beings possessed of such long lives as vampires and demons, then one develops a different kind of respect for the past, as it comes back to haunt people in much more direct and deadly ways. A person's past is a part of them, impossible to be freed from, like one's own shadow.
There are personal ways in which the past returns, and often those are the most profound and most painful. For individuals such as Angel and Spike, both men fighting on the side of good in this day and age, but who led lives of much darker and sinister bent, have had their pasts resurface in ways they could never have imagined.
Angel, of course, has had to deal with Angelus twice, and has even been confronted with past actions in the form of vampire protégés and the Hyperion Hotel itself. While still in Sunnydale, Spike was nearly destroyed by an ally who revealed himself to be the son of one of his victims.
Naturally, those of us with mortal life spans are no strangers to our pasts becoming present. Gunn has had to come to grips with the rough and disenchanted life he led in his old neighborhood, Lorne with the family he left behind in Pylea, and I have had my own troubles.
And then the distant past, completely unconnected to any of us, has managed to reach into the here and now and make its mark, slaying Fred and taking her place as Illyria.
It seems foolish, doesn't it, to believe that the things that have come before us can be relegated to books and journals and be reduced down to mere facts and figures, or worse can be forgotten altogether to one day be so irretrievably obscure as to be forgotten? We seem to spend so much time endeavouring to be rid of it, or to bury it, or to obfuscate it beyond the recognition of other people. But we can't forget it ourselves, no matter how we might deny, and we most certainly cannot shake off its effects, not when they are ingrained irrevocably into ourselves.
No, the past rarely, if ever, stays in the past. And it is a test of our convictions and steel in how we deal with it.
(382)
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Date: 2009-01-12 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:37 pm (UTC)