A Reaper Rising

A Reaper Rising…

I don’t know why I needed to have; I just knew I needed to have it.  I was looking for a Black Reaper Funko Pop doll and when I saw the Black Reaper’s Mask, I knew I needed it.  Ever since I first watched “Darker Than Black” I have felt strangely attached to the Black Reaper.  Not in the, I am going to put the mask on get my Katana Sword off the wall and go deal out justice type of way.  I just find him, well, just so fucking cool.  He isn’t my usual hero type either.  He isn’t the anti-hero.  He isn’t Eddie Dean, Jamie Lannister, or Matrim Cauthon type who doesn’t want to be there but ends up having to be heroic despite his demons.  He certainly isn’t Jon Snow born and destined to be noble, but at the same time overlook by everyone because of his perceived low birth status.  The Black Reaper is more like Spooky Mulder I guess, in a way just trying to figure out what happened to his sister and the girl he loved. 

The Black Reaper has always symbolized to me someone who does the right thing at his own expense.  He is conflicted though between wanting that “normal life” and finishing his mission or missions.  There is a strange blend of innocence and malice in the character.   Now grant it I have only watched the first series of “Darker Than Black” and in a lot of ways I feel like that is all I need to watch to really understand him.  Eventually I will watch the “Gemini of the Meteor” episodes but I am in no hurry.   However, like most art this is what it means to me and is my interpretation.  To me the Black Reaper is a hero and one of my top 5 characters ever.  No order here but Eddie Dean, Jon Snow, Jamie Lannister, The Black Reaper, and Matrim Cauthon.    Hmm… where does that leave El Joker?  Not the time for the now Mr. J, not that time for that now. 

The Black Reaper is special and I can’t quite pinpoint why.  I know that when I imagine myself transforming into the Triathlete I know I am, it is not the Billy b or the Black Fish I see, but it is always the Black Reaper.  The Black Reaper rising out of the ashes of a broken life to be something more than what anyone ever thought he could be.  Anyone?  Is that right?  No, I guess the true sentence should be: The Black Reaper rising out of the ashes of a broken life to be something more than I thought I could be.  In these fantasies I make enough money to buy out the Darker Than Black rights so that I can play with the universe that is created.  I also always have the Black Reaper tattooed right on the back of my left shoulder.  I also have a bike helmet that is the Black Reaper’s mask.    Why is this part of the fantasy I don’t know?  Perhaps it is because I feel like my weight is as mask and right underneath it is this man waiting and desperately fighting to come out from underneath it all.  Shit I don’t know. 

You need to understand The Black Reapers world.  It is a world of super powers and battles of good vs. evil.  The powers are very similar to that of many X-men I guess.  Weather control, mind control, high pitched sonic blasts; you know it the Darker Than Black universe has it.  However, the powers don’t come free and I am sure if you read between the lines in many comic books you also realize powers don’t come free, but sometimes it looks that way.  Each power in the Darker Than Black universe comes with a price.  Some people have eat packs of cigarettes, others have to get drunk, some have to eat till they make themselves sick, drinking hot milk, or even ripping your own hair out.  After all with the powers they much "pay the price” of their contract.  Now isn’t that so much cooler than just being able to shape shift, or shoot lasers form your eyes.  If you do it for good or bad, you do it and then you punish yourself, to me that is pretty epic.  Some time I will write a story like this and people will say you took ideas from Darker Than Black and I will say your goddamned right I did.  It is a huge influence on my fiction. 

I hold the Mask of the Reaper in my hands and I look down at it.  I look at it and think I had to order this for myself.  However, if there was one person, just one out there that truly knew me and understood me and all of this, they would have ordered it for me and given it to me.  Sometimes that makes me very, very sad.  To feel alone in the world and feel like no one understands you, or what you do, or what you have been through.  These thoughts are fleeting.  They don’t stay long and they are forgotten.  They are forgotten because I choose not to think of them.  I choose to happiness.  I choose to focus my life force in a new way and a new direction.  A force that is powerful and can override that of the fleeting sadness or the obsessions that lurk in the dark corners of my mind.   

I lay in bed last night.  Kona snug as a bug in a rug in her crate.  I could hear her snores.  For a little girl she snores a lot.  As lay there and closed my eyes to drift off into dreamland.  I thought about the last few weeks.  Living sugar and fast food free has been good to me.  Sure the scale is moving slower than expected.  Doesn’t matter because I feel good and I lay there last night in bed and I was happy.  Really happy and I knew that I was on my path.  It has been a long deviation from being on the path, but I know that I am on it.  I am not trying to be perfect, I am not trying to be a super hero, and I am just trying to be me, and taking things one meal at a time, one day at time. 

This morning I had energy.  I chased Kona around the living room for like three minutes.  I would do a fast walk waddle behind her trying to take her toy.  She would run circles around the room.  It was fun.  I have more and more energy for little shit like that every day.  It is these small little victories that give me hope.  That show me I am walking the walk.  I have closed all three rings for 23 days in a row now.  The movement is there.  I started a bocce ball league at work.   37 people have signed up so far.  I really have my work cut out for me.  However, I have the energy to do this now.  That is great!