Writing this on the train. Such a cold wistful rainy day. Makes me nostalgic, contemplative, reflective. I think about how far I’ve come, how much things have remained the same, and how ultimately nothing matters.
I’m reminded of the rainy days when I was a primary school kid, when I would get into a school bus in the morning when it was stil dark. I would shower in the bathroom that I shared with my parents, standing in the bathtub and using the rather ornate nozzle-thing. Then I’d get dressed for school, I think I’d have a milo before getting on the bus. I had school-bus friends that I’d play power-rangers with. I wonder how those guys are doing. I don’t remember their names. I rememer sharing a pencil with some kid in kindergarten. I remember colouring time, I remember drawing rockets, sharing crayons. I seem to remember this kid who was good at drawing castles. I remember being a little uncertain about which hand was left and which was right. I remember all the little Bible parables they’d tell us in kindergarten, and I remember all the prayer in primary school- and I think it’s interesting how little people who experience that as outsiders seem to talk about it. It’s like we all collectively agreed that it’s just something we’re not going to talk about.
I think about the rainy days when I was in the army- there was one particular day when I was doing my Basic training recourse, when it was raining super heavily, most of the course was over. We slept with such glee and joy. I enjoyed those cigarettes that I smoked then. Nostaligic moments like these almost make me want to pick up smoking again but I know that I have to put my foot down about that. Perhaps forever. At least until I do things that I surprise and impress my subconscious audience with. The main, most important thing is that I earn the begrudging respect of my own subconscious. Because the people in there are really hard to please. Sometimes really mean, hurtful, spiteful, all sorts of nasty shit. But good stuff too. I don’t really want to get into that.
Life is so fucking absurd. It’s really the most absurd thing there is. I don’t understand how people are able to go about their digital marketing jobs everyday and not talk about all this crazy absurdity. I suppose I should assume that everybody is wiser than I am, and that the inevitability of the heat death of the universe simply means that we amuse ourselves and we do what work requires of us and we just play along, follow along, don’t think too much, don’t rock the boat, don’t-
what the fuck is this self-pitying bullshit that I’m writing? I’m very, very tired of this. It’s seriously not interesting. We already know the hand that we’re dealt. We already know that the house is rigged, that we inevitably lose. Then what? What are we going to do? What is left to be said? What of music, what of poetry? What is this entire train of thought a symptom of, anyway? All of this is really, I think, an elaborate form of self-flagellation maybe. A coping mechanism, definitely. A kind of cigarette-in-pixels/ink. Well, i’m smoking this bitch, at least, for now, at least. It makes me feel better so fuck it. It makes me feel better so fuck it. I’m not hurting anybody.
I’ll do better. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe someday. I don’t know. I won’t give up. I’m tired. I won’t give up.
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Everything that “matters” only matters within some closed or bounded system. Things only matter contextually. And we get to choose our contexts, so we get to decide if we want to feel that something matters.
When you experiment with contexts enough though (conceptually, as a thought experiment, or by literally moving and changing your physical contexts- which I think is dramatically underrated), I think the inevitable demise of the Universe as we know it starts to weigh down on you. Well, it did for me anyway. After a while it’s just the elephant in the room. Hey, we’re all going to die, as will everything in existence as we know it. Everything will just decay to a lukewarm nothingness.
Nothing much we can do about that right now. So we might as well focus on something else for a while. I think I established in an earlier vomit that the only thing we actually have is each moment, each day, up till the end of our lives… and that’s it. That’s all the experience that we can optimize for. It might make us feel good to do things that live on after we’re gone- but that’s an evolutionary byproduct more than anything else, isn’t it? We were social creatures before we were individuals. So this is an inescapable facet of our existence, of our reality- until/unless we can outright rewire our brains. People who get hit really hard in the head become completely different people. Drug addiction makes you a completely different person. Having children changes you. There is no real you independent of contexts. There was some guy who was living in isolation for years in forests- and when they finally got to speak to him and ask him about his experience, he described how when he was alone he often ceased to realize that he existed. When there’s nobody to perform your identity to, there’s no identity at all. Identities are narratives we construct to try and craft some consistency, some semblance of predictability- it’s for the convenience of others.
That makes me think about all the “be true to yourself” type of advice. I’m still in two minds about it. On one hand, there does seem to be a likely chance that most of us have predispositions to prefer some activities to others, some contexts to others, and so on. On the other- anything we describe as our “selves” probably has some contextual origin. I like English because I was born and raised reading and writing in it. Now I think in it. Blah blah blah. I’m not sure that this is something really worth pursuing- there are countless thinkers and writers and actors and artists who’ve spent their entire lives exploring. This isn’t going anywhere- I might dig deeper next time but I’m really quite okay with leaving this train of thought here. I think it’s a distraction from figuring out the answers to more Important question