an elegant and heartless machine

01/17/2006 6:43 AM-7:06 AM

Existence exists without your permission. When you die, the world and all the stars will keep going. You will be forgotten. This is the nature of the thing. We may wish that we were a part of all things and that all things were a part of us, but we exist as we are. We grow and shed the smaller shell, but there always remains a shell.

The ego does not dissolve when consumed. It merely stops screaming and forgets the weight it carries. The hero is the ego. It can be no other way. We create so that we can have something to discuss with other egos. Why? Why should that matter? Don’t know. But then, don’t know anything. No truth, only justified belief, and, in some cases, only belief. You just want to love your work and love you wife. You just want to eat and drink and enjoy your existence. When you stare into the deep dark at the heart there is great fear and the fear clings when the memory of the dark fades. So be it. There is always that answer. So be it. Catch and release the thought. The sticky slime that protects the fish from the smaller creatures that inhabit it’s plane of existence stick to your hands, but the fish is gone and, in time, the slime and the smell will fade as well.

Where were you when the foundations of existence were laid? For a few moments, don’t see it as rhetoric and see it as an actual question. I was here, at right this second in right this place. But perhaps I was somewhere else at right this second. Perhaps I wasn’t at all. When you’ve met the requirements of honest speculation and gone down to the bottom of the well, are you allowed to forget it? Can I come back and think of comics and movies and naked girls? Should the Cloud of Unknowing never let me go? My point in going was proactive, not just idle speculation. Not that there’s anything wrong with idle speculation. Where else would the best-wrought lies come from? Like Narnia. Pick up and start again. The cyclical nature of the beast is not indicative of the whole, but it is the beast that creates the whole. To perceive is to create. Except, of course, that existence doesn’t ask your permission. It just keeps rolling and rolling along, mindless of what falls behind. Such an elegant and heartless machine. Time, chance, and effort. We pick up and go on. The lights are strung from the trees. The cars are going by. I’ll smoke and drink coffee. I’ll try to count my breaths for a whole fifteen minutes. We’ll see what happens and try to force enjoyment on my pessimistic soul. So be it.