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Existential Musings

“There was a time I went to a church day after day because a girl I had fallen in love with would pray there, kneeling for half an hour every evening, when I could watch her in peace and quiet.”

Ah, Kafka.  Ah, humanity!

You know, there was a time when I went to the UW where every Asian that crossed my path was female and wore a ‘North Face’ fleece jacket (affordably ranging from $60-$299.) That was today, actually. And the view that I have from my dusty, scholarly desk is a view of a blank white wall, on which I project the musings of my mind’s eye. Sometimes there are shadows of my head and of random things placed on my desk, at night, on the wall, when it gets dark. They never get in the way of what I am thinking. That is, the shadows on my wall never deter or distract my thoughts. I am being overtly observant, like some faggy poet, eh?

You know, 95% of what we do is done without consciousness. We breathe, drive, open caps on bottles, and walk. I never have to think or assess how I’m going to blink my eyes. It is curious how much of life is spent actually thinking. When you are an infant, it takes thought and sincerity to develop motor skills. At what age do we stop thinking? There is a time when our brain develops completely, and then it seems that our intellectual growth is stunted and deteriorates. People confuse thinking with the imitation of others’ behavior. When a car cuts me off, I do what I have seen others do, and what others have told me to do, and hit the brakes. When I cheat on my boyfriend, I do what I have heard and seen others do. Sometimes I am unsure, or confused, and have to weigh one decision against another—but both decisions are pre-packaged and have been executed centuries before, and although the context of my situation may be “unique,” it is not.  Everything I know, someone else knows and thought of first. There is nothing that I have to think about because I have the resources to think for me. Everything I know is because I have absorbed it, not because I have thought it up. We are merely human computers, processing images and actions, lacing them together, and executing them under illusions of “choice” and “purpose.”

A solution to this quandary is to not think about it. Ignorance diminishes the existence of abstract ideas. It has been scientifically proven that if there is no word for an abstract concept in our language, it does not exist for us. But this is really just as interesting as birds chirping themselves to death. It’s hot air to distract myself from the lack of initiative in solving or satisfying the real churnings of my debilitated soul.

I have faith in the future and the past has proved for this act to be worthwhile. I love my life, not because it is good, but because it is and I know it. I love talking and being a hypocrite too. I like how the human body is constructed too, although it can be quite frightening. I love “All Mixed Up” by The Cars, because it tends to get quite psychedelic toward the end. In fact, I blame my blog on them. I like feeling hopeful probably more than being ecstatic with joy, because things that evoke joyousness are most likely ephemeral in nature, or lacking validity according to what I believe is worthwhile which (as my beloved Kat once said) attests the very inklings of my soul.

I don’t believe in love, but I believe in Rush, and Rush believes that there’s  “a ghost of a chance, to find someone to love and make it last” and if I believe in mathematics, then I believe in the transitive property of equality, which means if I believe in Rush, and Rush believes in love, then I believe in love.

That’s how my proud mind puts it.
1/17/2008

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