Paddy wrote:Mea culpa. I often get poetic in my language without being precise.
Your explanations do help me understand better where you come from, but they don't actually get me any closer to what it is you're ultimately talking about. It's not your fault; and it's not just you. I live among Roman Catholics, and nobody so far has been able to explain what "God" means. I can attach several meanings to the term, but they're all ultimately little more than parodies of what believers
actually believe.
Not all atheists are like me. There are converts (ex-Catholics, for example). They
did believe, so they know what it is that they don't believe in. I'm as different from them as I am from theists. I'm just not part of the club.
I think that is what I mean. When all else fails... God.
I get that. But if "God" is a meaningless syllable to you, then you end up with: "When all else failes... then what?"
Do atheists ever get that feeling of hope which comes when no one and nothing else can or will help them?
I can't speak for all atheists. That's because "atheism" isn't a set of believes. It's a way to be different from a dominant type of belief. Atheists believe things, too. But a secular Humanist, a materialist, or a nihilist believe very different things from each other. And then there are people like me who don't bother to codify their believes in a short hand (and prefer not to join any club).
For me it's like this: sometimes life sucks, sometimes it's great, but mostly it's just life. I personally don't experience that sort of hope, but I've also never really thought "no one and nothing can and will help me". It's more like "Gah, I wish this were over already!" It's my experience that everything ends: good things, bad things, thing things. Everything. It sort of balances out.
That's the point of my story, man.
I think you misunderstand my point, here. Maybe not, but if you do get what I was saying, your response puzzles me:
A lot of people don't get this. Thus we have binge drinkers, and those sad lot that do try to drink to forget their problems. And of course naive kids like meself who think drinking makes you happy. This would have been at a time when Lilly and Hisao were very naive about the nature of drinking, and just knew they liked alcohol and it made them feel good. (So, probably very early.)
In your story alcohol actually
does make them feel good, but the trade off is "alcohol poisoning":
story wrote:I saw a bottle of wine sitting on the kitchen counter. I had an "aha!" moment. I grabbed the bottle, a couple glasses, and a corkscrew.
Lilly came to the counter and sat down with me when I popped the cork. I poured us both a glass.
"Ah..." she sighed relievedly to herself after she threw it back.
...
"Mmmyyy... Gggguuuaadd... eeeiIII ppphhhhffeeeell great," I slurred while I clung to her shoulder, resting my lead-filled head next to her block.
"SSssssshhsso ddddoo eeiiIIIaai, Hhhhiieessaaooo..." she slurred. We could barely understand each other.
Well, my experience from watching people drink is... different. You do get that effect with alcohol, when you want to forget inconvenient things.
Imagine you want to play a new game you bought, but you have to do homework. Drink will let you forget about the homework and just play. But it's not about what you "want" - it's about what takes priority in your mind. In the case of game vs. homework, game wins - not because it's what you want, but because it's "acute". Because it's here, right in front of you. Homework is something you have to remember.
In the case of your story, "Akira's accident" is the equivalent of the game, not of the homework. One effect alcohol might have is to turn what might have been a worry into an imagined certainty. "What if she dies," becomes "She'll die, whatever will we do?" Rather than feeling good, the dispair will explode. You'll feel it way more keenly. I've seen this effect often enough; it's not pretty. That's not the only way it can go. But one thing I'm almost certain of is this: alcohol won't make them stop thinking about Akira.
If they react that way to alcohol, the conclusion I'd have to draw is that they don't actually care about Akira. Akira's accident is merely annoying them - it's interrupting their good times. It's quite obvious from other sections in your story, that this is
not your intention.
So when I'm talking about how your story deletes Akira, I'm talking about that, too. You're sacrificing realism to a symbolic cautionary tale, but not in a witty way that makes me willing to suspend disbilief. Your story just falls apart.
Try another version of events: they can't rush to the hospital for some reason (insufficient information, whatever). They'll have to fill the time while they're waiting. They turn to drink, hoping it will relief the tension. It heightens it instead. When the call comes, they're not coherent enough to understand it. They start accusing each other for the failure... (Yikes, don't make me write a version. It's going to turn into horror.)
Your story is the care-bear version of what might have really happened. It's both sanitised and moralised, and that's what turns me off. It's not the point you're making. I'm going to shut up, now, because I don't really enjoy telling people I don't like their stories. Your first story makes me see what your characters feel, so I know you can do it. Why doesn't it work (for me) here? There's a difference, and I think it's experience.
Well, I would be lying if I said I was not inspired by GK Chesterton's chapter "
Omar and the Sacred Vine" from his book
Heretics. Like me, he's not a teetotaler, but he strongly advises - and if I'm to take your posts as true, rightly so - not to treat alcohol like a medicine used to achieve happiness. Alcohol's primary function is not a medicine to make life bearable, says he, but to make the happy times even happier. As you say yourself, it's a mood enhancer, not a miracle cure for depression.
And as Chesterton says:
[quote="Chesterton, in "Omar and the Sacred Vine","]The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other sound rules--a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.
[/quote]
Chesterton is a great writer with an appealing streak of mischief; I've read him far too little. In that particular piece, I'm pretty much with him when he's affirming life, but I sort of tune out when talks about the eternal. I see a little better what you meant to do, now, but I still can't get that from the story.
, when he is at the border of death, only to be snatched away and brought back to life and health, one might understand he is blessed - perhaps even loved and protected - by some more powerful compassionate force beyond himself, which he will have more than a little trouble explaining. He may never become a Christian - maybe not even a theist - but what happened was certainly real. It should not have been. But it was.
We've got a lot of good ideas, here, but none of the really "speak" to me. 
