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nichts bleibt für die Ewigkeit
I’m feeling alienated now. Not lonely, although that may be a part. Lonely doesn’t particularly bother me, because it’s easy enough to fix. The world is filled with warm bodies, and unless you’re particularly ugly/communicable/obnoxious, chances are you can find another person to hang out with you. But alienation – that’s another thing entirely. I sometimes wonder if pursuing my interests is going to lead me to a point of no return. I don’t think my parents really like talking to me anymore. Of course, I can’t say with any degree of certainty that they ever really liked talking to me before, but it didn’t have that undertone of indifference that makes it particularly difficult. The fact of the matter is that I’m a little too far out there for what people would consider amusing, if also irrelevant, conversation. This is the realm of the analytical philosopher – people will sort of absent-mindedly over dinner ponder whether or not it’s ethical to test shampoo on animals, then shrug and order the lobster. Convincing them that they’ve mostly made up the idea of meaning is going to take at least until dessert. Most people don’t believe in the things I believe in anymore. I wonder if I’ve gone too far. I wonder if I’ve not gone far enough. I hope the damage is reversible. There’s an idea called a ‘lethal text’, which, upon being read, lays bare in the mind of the reader the paradoxes of language and of meaning and makes you go crazy – a little bit like glimpsing the Real. I wonder if somewhere along the lines I encountered a fatal text. I wish I knew who it was, so I could write the publisher a letter and say “Stop! This book will destroy everything you believe in!” Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good title for a book in and of itself – maybe I’ll use that.
I deleted one of the posts I made on here recently, because it was mostly redundant and mostly unimportant, and most siginficantly, it was expressing, at its core, a sentiment that I wasn’t (and probably still am not) entirely up to dealing with – not quite regret, although I certainly have a deep-seated fear of regrets, but rather one of powerlessness. I suppose that’s not quite the right term – being afraid of being powerless makes me sound like either a third world dictator or a prime candidate for domestic abuse, and that’s not quite what I’m looking for. Adrift, maybe. That’s what I’m afraid of – being a passenger in my own life, although not explicitly a passenger: better, a driver without brakes. The role of agency is important here – the decisions I’m making, the interests I pursue and values I espouse, the friends I keep and the ones I let slip by, all these things are to be certain within my control, but seem to be tracing out a certain inexorable path.
I sometimes re-read this blog and wonder if I’m arrogant. The question is never really one of arrogance (although this probably depends on one’s working definition of arrogance; if it entails a high assessment of skills, perhaps, but if it’s a matter of overestimating capacities, it also strikes me as slightly silly to think that one could assess one’s own competency in various areas; that in itself smacks of a much greater degree of hubris), but instead one of conflicting aims. My last post was about the fascist within, whatever it is that lends priority to various values and emerges as a consistent self. I may have erred here, because such a statement implies a consistent reign; such is not the case, various libidinal ‘rulers’ emerge at different times, each with their own agendas, goals, estimations of value. Some days I want to be a professor. Some days I want to be famous. Some days I want to be needed. These desires are all well and good, and I’m certain they would make a compelling picture book, but they fail to hit upon the real crux of the matter: I want to have choices. Not opportunities, because it’s not a matter of seizing the right thing at the right time, but the ability to never go down a path that I can’t come back up. This is a bit of a paradox, as I think further about it. When I demand a plurality of choices, I’m not actually asking for a choice at all – I’m asking for an element of non-choice, a parallel existence where being an astronaut doesn’t preclude me from being a porn star nor a physician. I wish that I had lived in the age of the polymath, where you could know everything about everything. I wish that I spoke seven languages. I wish I understood physics. All of these things require a certain investment, a passage of time that simply isn’t reclaimable. This may be my greatest reluctance to getting a job – I’m 20 years old, I cant be employed doing anything that I like. This is lack. Working is lack – we give up choices to engage further in a now limited number of choices, most of which reside in brain-real estate that’s bought and sold on television commercials and interestate billboards. There seems to be something intrinsically wrong with that sort of a system. People go to work to make money to do what they want in the meager amount of free time they’re allotted. But it’s not really free time anyway, because if not the place you work for, the place someone else works for has a vested interest in convincing you that whatever choices you have remaining are already determined – you just don’t know it.
This post is shit. I’m drunk. I was hoping that I would get really fucked up and write something brilliant, but it’s just coming out garbage. Sometimes I re-read my older posts to assess the rate at which my intelligence is decreasing. I think I used to be smarter than I am now. I wonder if alcohol had something to do with it. I wonder if that’s a good trade off.
I notice that I used to believe in things. I don’t, particularly, anymore. Maybe I’m suppressing it. Maybe gleichgueltig is the new black. Maybe this is all a phase. I sure hope so. Someone asked me on the internet today if I thought that being immortal would be worse than dying. I sure hope not, but I think he’s right. I wonder if I have any passions. I hope that I find out about them before it’s too late. I wonder if I’m in love. I think so. I wonder if James Joyce wrote like that on purpose or if it just came out that way. If it just came out that way, why didn’t he decide not to change it? I hope I recognize genius if I ever produce it. I hope I don’t die before I’m ready, but I hope I don’t live longer than I need to.
I hope I’m happy.
