Posts tagged "bhj"
Why do we remember what we remember? When most of it’s forgot, then why just THIS warehouse of just THESE things? Maybe the memories that stick around want something from us. Or maybe, more than just something, they actually want us. What I mean is that the stuff of memory competes for us, claims us, takes us away from what is present. And yet we’re present in the memory. Who are we now when we’re present then? I’ve been wondering lately, when I’m staring at the walls, if the stuff of memory isn’t made of the same stuff of dreams.
The documented quality of life during the old age and death of a culture is grim. So we do what we can. Eat pills and cake. Drink bourbon. Cling to lighthearted philosophies that don’t think too much. Be nicer. Try harder. But the writing’s on the wall. Read it or not, here we come.
Go do something good. Go do something evil … Go do these things and tell no one. Let them quicken the throb of your heart and the pace of your blood and, as you become your own poem, watch who you become. People will see it in your eyes—not the content of your secrets—but the fact that you have secrets, that you know and have seen secret things.
Because the way things are, what things are, is a social construction that has a beginning and an end. They—the things—used to be something else and they’re going to change; it never stops. In fact, it’s always something else and, if you sit still and get quiet enough, you can dwell in a place that isn’t, an is that currently isn’t but always lurks in words like “Or” and “Maybe”.
I try to remember—it’s hard to remember—that we are not distinct individuals with our own separate problems. The vast interconnection of all phenomena is not a theory. All things constantly rise and fall together like it’s all holding hands. This leads to the conclusion that your feelings are not merely your feelings. If you don’t feel well, it’s probably because—well—nothing’s well.
Or maybe the person I thought I was, one of them, is dying. And my selves never die quietly—not without a lot of cussing and rage while the rest of us mourn and look away. Or maybe some new me is screaming into being and birth is hard and bloody, the sister of death […] Stranger things have happened.
People will tell you a bunch of shit about living every single day like you might die tomorrow. But nobody does. And, anyway, the advice misses the mark. Don’t worry about being dead tomorrow. Live your life like you’re dead right now.
Never. It wasn’t a vacation, a break, or a brief hiatus. It was over. And when your mind tries to swallow and digest that definitive word, to grapple with it and find closure with what it signifies, to really wrap itself around never in a complete way, to fully come to terms with what it means and to seal it off in a place that understands, it just doesn’t fucking work. I mean. What the fuck can never possibly mean? Steve Jobs will never take another shower. He’ll never send another text message. He’ll never have another startling insight into the future of technology or scratch his balls ever again. Steve Jobs is done brushing his teeth and pointing at things that capture his attention. He’ll never again be thirsty and quench his thirst with a big glass of cold water and a slice of lime. Steve Jobs won’t eat or breathe or think or wonder or dream ever again in his life because Steve Jobs is dead, man. There’s a way we can understand these things that makes them seem obvious. But it’s not very thoughtful. I mean. When’s the last time you sat down and wondered in a sincere way about the day you take your last shower, never to shower again? It simply can’t be done. It can’t be thought. Because the moment you begin to think about never being again, you’re unavoidably thinking with concepts that presuppose being to make sense of not being. The notion of not being is all bound up with its contradictory relation to being itself and, I confess, this makes me feel really fucking goofy. Never can only exist on the other side of time, a place not readily available for exploration by the chronological processes of thought. Look. I can never not possibly be. Until I don’t. And then imagine how happy the rain will be when it pours once again into the joyous ocean.
