About Tears

Tears are of an international language. They mean the same thing, whether they are streaming down the faces of Africa, pit-patting on the porches of America, or saturating the tissues of Europe. It’s a funny thing.

I used to ask myself why, but now I understand. It is so unbearably simple, too—this answer, as it sits in front of your face, like a scratch in your glasses that has been there for years, but which you have only just noticed. It is so the whole world may know my sorrow—that is why.
As these hot droplets now leave salty, wavering trails down my face, it is this epiphany which comes to mind, and with this thought, I realize another—the world that knows my sorrow is not one that cares.

***
A forearm is the best tissue. A quick swipe over your eyes and you can go on with your day. No disposal necessary. A sleeve is preferred, but by no means mandatory. One fluid motion and you can fake a complacent smile, keep your woe out of sight, and saunter away with feigned confidence.

***
I look at you through what seems like a blurry lens upon another blurry lens. You can’t stand it, I know. Your vision flickers around, as if there were something more pertinent to look at in this room than the person before you. When our eyes meet, you cringe. You try not to focus on the salty pools, the swollen, inflamed, redness surrounding them, and the rivers, streams and tributaries of flowing lament that sculpt the geography of my face, and as you struggle with the dichotomy of whether to appear polite and decent by looking into my face straightforwardly or to cast your fleeting eyes in a direction other than my own, I can see a bit of water in your eyes, too. My melancholy visage disturbs you more than it does me.

“Why do they bother you?” I ask.

“What?” You say.

“The tears.”

“What? Why would tears bother me? I’ve seen them all my life.”

“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the one withering away at the sight of them.”

“Are you okay?” You ask, using mock concern to divert from the topic which troubles you so deeply.

“I’m fine compared to you, but I’m trying to discover why you are not okay. I have the tears, but it is you who has the plastered look of sheer terror.”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re getting at. I don’t have a problem with it at all.”

“I’m afraid I don’t fare well with lying.”

“I told you, I’m not—”

“You said that you’ve seen tears all your life. Is that it? Have you seen too many?

“Well… Not really. I mean any tears are too many, but—”

“Why is that?” I strike a chord.

“I mean, they’re an expression of sorrow. Nobody needs that.”

“We all have to release our sorrow somehow. We would be worse off without them.”

“Yes, I realize that. I guess—I guess that it’s not the actual sadness of tears that makes them so… unsettling. It’s that they flow completely independent of you.”

“What do you mean?”
“They just flow. There’s never a distinction. You don’t say, ‘Okay, I’m not going to allow myself to be overcome with tears at this moment,’ and have them simply obey you.”

“I’m not following.”

“Tears are an illustration of our complete helplessness. You may be sad and want to cry, and that is fine, but it’s those moments—those moments when you’re swelled up with emotion, and there’s no stopping them. We can have the voice of reason ring clear in our mind, telling us that this is simply not a time for tears—we can have pure, lucid sanity scream throughout our entire being—and it will not stop them. They will come, they will flow, and you will be helpless,” you say these words with a rhythm that is matched only by the droplets now rolling down your cheek, “You will realize that as long as you are human, you will have no true control over yourself—no security. Tears show you that you can do something while you will the exact opposite. Tears can tear you in two, against yourself.
“They are a reminder of our permanent shortcomings. We are human. We will know no escape from our emotions, because even if we make that distinction, there will forever be times when we cannot act separate from them, no matter how much our intelligence wills it. As long as we have tears, we will have war, we will have shameful lives, we will have unheard pleas, we will have no grasp on the world as we know it,” you shake violently in spite of yourself as your face grows flush red and lets those proverbial tears flow. Your distressed state of mind only proves your point.

“Yes, you are right,” I say, “but how can you forget? Yes, we will have war, but we will also have peace. Yes, we will have shameful lives, but we will also have proud, fulfilling lives. We will not only have unheard pleas, but glorious cheers. We will have tears in spite of ourselves, but we also have eager smiles which we never willed or planned. We will view the dusk and the dawn in the same day. Do not fear our tears, or our emotions. You are exactly correct, they are our shortcomings, but they are also every success of which we can know. Can you not see this?”

“Yes. I can.”

We both look at each other through countless blurry lenses now as we see things clearly for the first time. Tears well in both sets of eyes that now stare directly into one another with a gaze so fixated—so static—that no fleeting whim in our minds could have broken it. Our smiling lips only ever curl upward as they taste the genuine sweetness of tears of joy.

I'm not really sure of how good of a review this will be simply because I have no idea what to make of this piece. I think the it started off really well, it captured my attention and made me want to keep reading.

Tears are of an international language. They mean the same thing, whether they are streaming down the faces of Africa, pit-patting on the porches of America, or saturating the tissues of Europe. It’s a funny thing.

The last sentence here doesn't seem to really fit and is kind of confusing. What's a funny thing?

Then the dialogue kind of unsettled me. It seemed to come out of nowhere. The beginning felt like insightful musing in paragraph form. The all of a sudden there is two people talking, carrying on the musing with a conversation. I think the content was really good and interesting to read but the way it's presented is off.

Would it make a bit more sense to you if I told you that they were 3 separate vignettes? The dialogue is not necessarily related to the other two parts. And about the "It's a funny thing." I can see how that could be excluded to declutter things, but to answer you question, the "funny thing" was the fact that tears are internationally understood.

Thank you very much for your critique.

That does help! I thought that it might be that way at first but I wasn't sure.

Hi.

Okay, so first of all, I applaud your incredible depiction of emotions (through the dialouge as well as the story) and the powerful impact your descriptions had. I was very caught up in the message your characters were trying to convey.

The one thing that I found a little confusing is that both of the characters speaking in this story have similar dialouge patterns, I got a little lost : S

The long interpretation of how tears relate to helplessness I LOVED. There are so many connections I can relate to and agree with. I also liked the first-person response to her repulsion of that display of emotion, it left an optimistic feeling to conclude the story.

Overall, great job.

hey there! i'm sorry if my critique sucks... i haven't done this in awhile. =x but i'll try my best!

you certainly have a knack for describing things through metaphor and similes. i really liked the first one about the scratch on the glasses- good image. =) i really liked them throughout the story. you're pretty good at comparative imagery!

though you say that these are three separate vignettes, i feel like the second one doesn't fit in with the rest of them.

for the dialogue passage, the use of "you" seemed a bit odd. you never described who "you" was, and i suppose it was meant to be mysterious or open-ended for interpretation, but i feel like it would have been better if you actually established the relationship between the narrator and "you." it would come across more powerful and meaningful if we knew why "you" is so protective of himself or herself.

that said, the dialogue between the "you" and the narrator i thought was insightful, but at times clunky. like here:

"We will know no escape from our emotions, because even if we make that distinction, there will forever be times when we cannot act separate from them, no matter how much our intelligence wills it."
^kind of confusing, took me a couple reads to understand what you were trying to come across.

"You are exactly correct, they are our shortcomings, but they are also every success of which we can know. "
^the "exactly correct" really bugs me for some reason... it sounds so unnatural. it makes the narrator sound like he is some old, wise man.

anyway, i do like the concept. however, i feel like if you weren't quite as abstract, that this could have been more powerful. your perspective on tears is interesting and i really like your imagery. you definitely have a lot of potential. hope this has helped! =)

I thank both of you for your critiques. I've always felt a little weak on writing dialogue, but you two really shed some light on where it could be improved. Thanks for the suggestions on dialogue, and, of course, everything else that you pointed out in your critiques!

Jester, this is so deep. The opening statement

Tears are of an international language

could have never been so true. You challenge how simple and uncomplicated they can be then through that it rises into an expression of how truly complex and human they are.

The dialogue was a brilliant way of expressing the struggle of this subject. For that I highly praise! It was a beautiful exploration of the fragile human condition that effects each and everyone of us. but it also reminds us that we are human and will we ever really be able to over come our emotions that make us who we are. Will we be ever able to see through our

blurry lenses

and let our emotions be?

The ending was beautiful as well, through our greatest sorrows come our greatest joys. The act of our emotions, the tears are not only for sorrow but for joy. We should never deny our expression of emotion.

Yes, I did get all of that out of your story, thank-you!

Awake

I thought this was a very nice piece. You have lovely powers of description, and your insight into the human condition is both thought-provoking and beautiful.

Your personification (I'm not sure if that's exactly what I'm looking for but you get what I mean) of tears in this sentence is just great:
"They mean the same thing, whether they are streaming down the faces of Africa, pit-patting on the porches of America, or saturating the tissues of Europe."

If I were to have any criticisms, they would be as follows. First, although the first two parts are wonderfully written, they feel rather disconnected from the third and from each other. I very much like them, but I wish I better understood why they were included. Perhaps you should try to make that connection better?

Secondly, (and I know this has been said before) your dialogue feels awkward at times.
for example:

“Why do they bother you?” I ask.
“What?” You say.
“The tears.”
“What? Why would tears bother me? I’ve seen them all my life.”
“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the one withering away at the sight of them.”

I would probably rewrite this as:
"Why does it bother you?"
"What?"
"That I'm crying."
"What? Why would it bother me? It's not like I haven't seen it happen all my life."
"I don't know, you tell me. You're the one who's upset about it."

Of course, how you write dialogue can vary a lot with who's talking, so it's important to keep that in mind. From my sense of the story, your two speakers are teenagers/young people, and so it was a little hard to envision them using eloquent/even lyrical speech such as "withering away at the sight of them". But if they're literature professors or something, that might make sense.

If, as you say, dialogue is not your strong suit, perhaps try reading it aloud to get the flow of the characters' speech. People might look at you as if you're crazy, but, trust me, it helps a lot =)

Lastly (and this is more a matter of personal curiousity than anything else) I would have liked to know more about why the narrator was crying in the first place. I know it's not terribly central to your point or anything, but it would have been nice to know a bit more context.

Otherwise, this was a very nice job. I look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

~Pan

This critique will most likely seem very contradictory, mainly because that’s how I think of this piece. It’s very profound. You look at tears very logically and can see the truth behind them, and that makes this piece good. But it needs improving.

I’ll be honest – I didn’t know what a vingette was before, so I had to look it up. You seem to have nailed it, but they don’t mesh together. There has to be some rhyme or reason to why you chose to put these three pieces together.

My suggestion? Turn this into a real story and put connections between the three parts. Or even turn it into three different stories. You have great starts here, but it looks like just that – three starts in one.
The other thing you need to work on is your dialogue. Yes, it could be realistic, but not in this setting. Put yourself in the characters’ shoes. The girl is extremely upset – why? The boy is uncomfortable – why? You tell us both of these things, but you hardly even hint as to why they are. Give us reasons for their behaviors and you will turn them from 2-D characters that we don’t care about to 3-D characters we cry with.

Also, work on their actions a little bit more. You have a really different view on life, but your focusing so much on showing that that you forget the story you’re telling us. Don’t let us forget that the girl is upset. Don’t let us wonder if they’re inside or outside. Expand on this. With strong emotions comes heightened senses, so let us experience these senses.

A great way to work on dialogue, emotions, actions, and all of that is to act! Make sure you’re in a room on your own, then take the role of one of the characters. Let it flow out – what do you say? Why are you upset? How do you move – are you clutching your stomach? Slouching? Standing up proud? Let the emotions overwhelm you and become immersed in the scene. It helps, I promise. =]

PM me if you need anything.

~JFW1415