I came upon a child of God He was walking along the road And I asked him, "Where are you going?" And this he told me

"I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm I'm gonna join in a rock 'n' roll band I'm gonna camp out on the land I'm gonna try an' get my soul free"

We are stardust We are golden And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden

"Then can I walk beside you? I have come here to lose the smog And I feel to be a cog in something turning"

"Well, maybe it is just the time of year Or maybe it's the time of man I don't know who l am But you know, life is for learning"

We are stardust We are golden And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock We were half a million strong And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers Riding shotgun in the sky And they were turning into butterflies Above our nation

We are stardust Billion-year-old carbon We are golden Caught in the devil's bargain And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden

Woodstock. by Joni Mitchell.

I can never totally understand you and myself. I can never stop hurting you and myself. But at least I can walk beside you, and myself.

"But right now I just want you to know I love you I think you are so beautiful." (Claire Fisher, S02 E11)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2i-2EZQXc

Finishing the second season in one day, eating ice creams until brain freeze kicked in. Then I took ibuprofen and continued watching. It is a very depressing show, mostly because it is brutally honest. This season is even more honest than the first one in that as we get to know the characters, their demons from the past start raging and screaming. Everyone has their demons lurking somewhere, ready to jump into the present whenever we let our guards down. None of us quite understand it and most of the time, we are slaves of our desires, habits, and memories.

The fear and love we experienced never leave us. With no mighty power above us, we are all groping our way forward. We do things we don't understand, and we run away from the consequences because somehow we don't even know how to blame ourselves. We try to cope with violence, drugs, or alcohol and we're worried that perhaps we're inherently evil and beyond salvation. We yearn to be loved and cared, and yet we often push intimacy away when it reaches our inner shell. We don't know how to give ourselves to another human being because we're so afraid of getting hurt or hurting ones we love.

To sum up, life is so often fucked up. But everyone is trying to pretend a perfection which is propagated by the social values and fashion ideas. A family should be loving and nurturing. A teenager should be working hard and getting into top colleges. A man should be charming and responsible while a woman should be caring and warm. Bullshitting stereotypes that lock people in. We envy perfect neighbors while moaning about our own messy lives while the neighbors are doing the exact same thing. We're dishonest. The society is encouraging us to be dishonest.

But life is messy for everyone. This is the hard truth. And the characters in this season are leading such comprehensive struggles and inner battles that as a foreign viewer growing up in a completely different culture, I'm very convinced and can identify with countless psychological torments suffered by the characters. It is this brutal honesty about life that makes these people vivid and real. You can berate them for foolishness and misconduct, but you can also appreciate the vulnerability and kindness within.

Given that we're all vulnerable and foolish in the face of this messy life, what indeed, is an ideal life? I've fantasized about my version of an ideal life in which I'm living with books and am free to run and travel whenever I want. No torments, of course. But this is more like pure fantasy. I guess more realistically, an ideal life which is still full of our demons and where people hurt and love each other at the same time, as long as you keep trying and going, it is an ideal life. You try to keep your shit together and when you can't, you take a break and come back, and face the responsibilities you have to shoulder. You just have to try and trick yourself into believing that it gets better.

Try to live an honest life as much as we can. Be honest with ourselves and the people around us. Bad things will happen and our demons will still haunt us. But we have to learn to face it and try to understand it. And when life is indeed so overwhelming and cruel, we have the right to stop for a while or even to quit. To me, this is the ideal life and the Fisher's are still trying.