Thursday 20 January 2005

Pic of the day: Being accepted as you are - the divine experience. Screenshot from the anime Ah! My Goddess.

Oh my [deity]!

Each day, several times a day, I check AnimeSuki.com to see whether the third episode of Ah! My Goddess! is out yet. The two first episodes were fansubbed pretty quickly by Solar, so it would not be unreasonable. But even so, I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing.

Like the Keeper of Time from W Wish (pictured in my Jan 15 entry) I tend to think: "I definitely don't have any dreams" and feel detached. Oh, I enjoy good things when they happen: A good meal, a weekend after a long work week, stuff like that. But I don't look forward to them. Or other things. I don't plan vacations. I don't ask anyone out. I don't call my relatives. I don't mail my friends. (Although I do comment on LiveJournals, but that's a reaction, not an action). And I definitely don't refresh web pages waiting for something. Until now.

***

Yes, the anime is that good. But there is more to it than that. There are lots of good anime, cool anime and cute anime. But there isn't lots of anime that touch me like that. Because ... because of what happened in the first episode. When this young man Keiichi was visited by a goddess granting him one wish to change his sad life. And after talking with her a little while, his wish was: "I wish that a goddess such as you could be always by my side."

That's audacious even when talking to a human. And he had already seen her appear out of a mirror, he had seen her hover and glow and activate appliances without touching them. He did not doubt that she was indeed a goddess (whatever that means in Japanese worldview). And still, this need overruled everything else.

I have no count of the times I have pointed out to y'all how love songs can be indistinguishable from religious hymns (and sometimes the other way around, I guess). Normally this is just an illusion, but it probably feels real to some people because they identify the woman they love with the Anima, the archetype of the female. (I think women are less plagued by this, but I may be wrong. Certainly Alanis Morissette in her song "Everything" goes further in her worship than most organized religions.) Archetypes like that are kinda experienced as enormous forces invading the soul, you know.

But I don't have any hole in my soul that a woman can fill, no matter that yes I do like women, and usually one of them more than the rest at any one time. But the emptiness within is already filled by that other Presence. Because if I had to put it in words, I would: "I wish that a God such as you could be always by my side." Because no matter how unreasonable it is, how outrageous it is, how unfitting it is, no matter that it seems out and out blasphemous to even think it, it is the only thing that matters in the end and it cannot be denied.

So I guess that's why I keep checking, why I am suddenly looking forward to something again. Because I want to know if there is possibly someone else who knows what I feel ... or whether it is just like those love songs, just a metaphor. Probably. Almost certainly. And yet ...

***

In the TV series, it is implied that Keiichi is not driven to his bold wish by a need for female company – thinking of her as a woman embarrasses him if anything – but by her personality. Despite being a goddess, she treats him with the utmost respect and accepts him as a valuable person despite his shortcomings in the eyes of other men (and women, not least).

I guess similar needs can make people date another mortal as well if they meet someone who accepts them as they are. If we can act in this manner like small gods and goddesses for each other, I am all for it. But the fact that dating is almost entirely cross-gender except for the few who also prefer physical intimacy with their own sort, I think that gives a lot of credence to the opposing theory: That it's our mammal nature that draws us together normally. Not some deep spiritual need, although some have that too. But it's OK. We were made with this too.

A woman cannot substitute for my Savior, but let's be honest, He can't substitute for a woman either and I certainly wouldn't ask Him to! -_-* I guess for some people there really is some kind of overlap, but in the end I think things will sort out. And I look forward to seeing which way it goes in this fictional account. Because it is closer than anything else I have seen of that sort till now.

That's not to say that I won't write my own goddess fiction the way I think it should be done... But it won't be autobiographic. Because some things are just too personal. I think I've said as much as I can. Besides, people who read will always add something of their own.