Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Cliffs of Rye

There was no one to catch me when I was at the edge of the cliffs of rye. Maybe they were there but they chose not to. At this point it doesn’t really matter does it? I fell. No. I jumped. I wanted to see what was at the bottom. But the more I see, the less I want to know. The bible says “it is to those who are childlike that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs." What I wouldn’t give to be a child again. But I always felt my childhood was a joke, I knew somewhere that it wasn’t real and it propelled me to seek out the world of reason. Yet here I am and it’s a shithole. We spend lifetimes waiting for moments that in the end were as fleeting as every minute that came in between

“You’ll be free child once you have died, from the shackles of language and measurable time” And I believe Conor Oberst when he sings that. Its how I understand this journey towards the end. Freedom. I used to not believe in fashion, I called it a lie. I believed it was too crude of an art form to capture any essence of humanity. But I realize now that all forms of art are too crude. We are shackled by language and these squiggles can’t accurately represent emotions either. My writing is as crude as the fashionistas’ designs, cruder perhaps. And our symbolic interactions will never be as deep or profound as we want them to be. So we settle, or we refuse to settle and then after we realize we have no choice, we settle.

I don’t love philosophy anymore. Maybe I caught up with Max Bemis. I could never understand his lines until I felt them. “God and Death are none of my concern, I’m no philosopher” he sings. And now I agree with him. I used to argue for atheism. And when my cousin said he had converted from that and had fallen into the never-ending hole of agnosticism I thought I would never be there. But here I am. No, apatheism right? That’s what I call it. Because I don’t care. Sometimes I do. The truth is I don’t want to know. The thought of never ending life scares the shit out of me. Just give me a few good years; that’s all I want. And my Jehovah’s Witness friend shows me Ecclesiastes 9:5 and it says “But the dead do not know anything” And he asks me “Where is the hope?” and I say right there. I don’t care if there’s a heaven for the people who want that but I am hoping there’s no hell. Maybe prose doesn’t do it. Maybe just mine doesn’t. I envy Voltaire but he is as pessimistic as me I think. Maybe I do love philosophy, just not it’s results. I don’t even know if I want answers.