none of the people down there care
so anyway
All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away
sometimes i sit in the schoolyard and i wish i could speak to the people who are sitting inside the shells that they think are the people they are.
other times, i cannot stop thinking we are bundles of nothing, and what's the point, but the point is, we are bundles of nothing in a world that confuses and mystifies us because sometimes we feel that we are disconnected from it.
from time to time, i realise that i will die, that there is no hope whatsoever of anything continuing, because i am not real, and a switch will be turned off and that will be all there was.
i started feeling like that when i turned *mumbles* because i started to realise that i could die. i find the feeling elementally terrifying. i feel though that i could almost step across the line, and find it thrilling. sometimes i realise that the reason i will not is that it would give me licence to destroy myself in one way or another.
sometimes i want to touch the world, and sometimes i do not want the world to touch me.
***
today in the broadway mall on queen st, i was looking at a woman, she was wearing oldfashioned clothes but she couldn't have been thirty and was probably a lot younger. i don't just mean she was wearing a dress, or wasn't in anything funky or cool. i mean she was in clothes even your granny would think twice about. her hair was carefully brushed, with an enormous part. i imagined she would love books and the arts. she was eating a salad.
yesterday, we went to new farm park. my parents and i walked down to the riverside to get coffee from a bar there. the bar was quite busy. this is near to the powerhouse, so the crowd was the same crowd you would see in a theatre: nice, middle-class people mostly.
a woman sat with a friend looked the spit of s. i was quite taken aback at first. i mean, i've never met s, but this woman looked like a 3d version of the 2d s, or at least of the pictures that s claimed were her.
do you think it is terrible or wonderful to know people who you could not trust to send a real photo of themselves?
i am smiling as i write it, because i think it is both terrible and wonderful at the same time, and of course, i would never do that myself simply because it would not occur to me to. if i didn't want you to see my picture, you just wouldn't. if you bothered me for one, i'd just say no, and if you didn't stop, i'd realise that you weren't someone i wanted to remain friendly with.
i wanted to talk to the woman, but a/ i do not speak to strangers if i can help it because, well, i have no idea why actually, and one of these days i am going simply to say fuck it, and start doing it, because i am an acquired taste maybe but you can't acquire me if you're never given the chance, hey? and b/ i had no idea what i could say that wouldn't sound, you know, cuckoo. hello, you look enough like someone i sort of know that i want to sleep with you, but i probably couldn't explain exactly why, but part of it is that you look lonely in the same way she is, and i feel that you would enjoy it even though to look at me, at first glance, you mightn't think so, because i am not like the other men here, not quite, well not at all, because they are privileged guys who have never really thought about what they consist of and what they can do for you, but i have, and that is worth a lot more than you'd think.
the woman in the mall was looking around, as i do sometimes when i'm on my own. she sighed once or twice. i thought for a moment that perhaps she had seen me and recognised a kindred soul, and wished she could come and talk to me. i've felt like that, but who is kindred to me, really? wouldn't she realise soon enough that she had made a terrible mistake?
***
i hate it when people judge that knowing me was a mistake. yeah, they're probably right but i hate it all the same. i just never feel like that. i can be negative about you, but i will allow you to redeem yourself, and i won't stop giving you chances to do that. and once you have, once i feel you are good, i will never stop thinking that you are.
i miss people who disappear. i sometimes feel that they are unfinished stories, and i've never become used to that.
the other day, a, a friend from uni, came to visit. we never quite got it on when we were younger, although we could have done, and i was always into her. she is in great shape now, much better than ever before. she has been spending time in the gym and age has done her a favour or two, as it does some women, even though they think it won't.
she had her husband with her, a sour, dour type, whom i could only think she had married for the money. and of course mrs z was there too. life is like that. i will never have an hour alone with a, unless i pursued it strongly, and i won't.
i don't know whether you'd consider that a good or a bad thing. sometimes i feel that i am afraid of dying only because of an inability to judge, and beyond that, a fear that i will suddenly discover how to judge, and be horrified by the judgement.
posted by Dr Zen @ 5:08 pm
21 Comments:
I talk to strangers all the time, uninvited. Sometimes I annoy them a little, because they would be left alone if I hadn't come along. Sometimes it's just a break in the day and quickly forgotten. And sometimes we have a brief conversation and make a little connection, a thought that 'here is a person I could know and like were life to drive us together somewhere.'
That's enough for me. It makes me feel that wherever I go there will always be a person or two to connect with on some level. And I naively hope to pass that on to whomever I'm gently pestering. I guess I don't, but maybe just once or twice before I die I will... or have.
That would be whipped cream on the pie...
we are bundles of nothing in a world that confuses and mystifies us because sometimes we feel that we are disconnected from it.
Disconnected? From nothing?
Or nothing, and disconnected from
the world?
Odd I was discussing this with her
this evening. She told me she
couldn't do anything for my
loneliness. No one you currently know.
But it isn't loneliness. It's that
nothing to which you point.
The nothing from which the
loneliness came. Loneliness is a
reward, loneliness is a feeling.
Nothing is different. It surpasses
loneliness, solitude, serenity, and
the rest.
It's that nothing where I've come
to. I'm not afraid of it.
Anyway, then she asked me if I
loved her. Of course I do.
I often wish I could talk to strangers, and I have pushed myself to do just that a time or two. It is always rewarding, in the same way as jumping off the roof and not breaking a leg.
i hate it when people judge that knowing me was a mistake
Has anyone done that who really knows you?
"Has anyone done that who really knows you?"
Who really knows me?
Who really knows me?
You know what he means.
Yes, but clearly you don't know what I mean.
You have no way of knowing what I do or do not know.
I have deduction. What do you have?
The ability to respond to questions with straightforward answers.
And a complete inability to think unless you're spoonfed?
This is about you dear, not me. Don asked you a question. You evaded it.
Oh god yes.
I've always said knowing
Dr Zen was a mistake.
Too late now. I know him
too well.
heh.
fuckers.
- -
Okay,
Father Luke
boots sez:
"i started feeling like that when i turned *mumbles* because i started to realise that i could die. i find the feeling elementally terrifying. i feel though that i could almost step across the line, and find it thrilling. sometimes i realise that the reason i will not is that it would give me licence to destroy myself in one way or another."
The thing of it is Zen, you are destroying yourself now because you find your mortality elementally terrifying.
Death is an occurrence, and as such it follows the methods of occurrence. The probability of death on any toss is 1/2, yet you have been living for quite some time and death has not occurred, ya tosser. <g>
iked your last paragraph Zen. I often feel the same way "Judge and be prepared to be judged"
But it's hard to get it right.
Who really knows me?
Obviously I can't know, and my question wasn't predicated on my knowing.
If you mean no one really knows you, then the answer to my question is, No.
If someone does, then the answer is that you don't feel like answering.
Either way is cool with me. I'm really just questioning your hopelessness. (This does not of course mean I don't have hopelessness of my own.)
boots, i am only terrified of dying because life is bad. it makes sense when you think it through. when life becomes good, i will stop being afraid, and become like epicurus once more.
ruth, i've always felt that god would be more generous in judging me than i am myself, and if he isn't, then he's not worth believing in.
don, i mean the former. i don't know what there is to know myself, which makes it a more complicated question imv.
arleen, i only appear to you to have "evaded" the question because you are too dim to understand the answer.
Here it is in simple terms: how can i know who that really knows me has done it if i don't know who really knows me, and how can i know who really knows me if i'm not sure what there is to know.
father luke, i think you have it the wrong way round. it cannot be a mistake to know me in the first instance, but it may in retrospect become one.
In retrospect I will never regret
having gotten to know you.
But thanks. That needed
clarification. So, I owe you.
- -
Okay,
Father Luke
not dim. just tired of making too much of things that should be simple.
Well, maybe we are or should be so simple that we can be known very easily, but I think we should be forgiven for not thinking we are.
when life becomes good, i will stop being afraid, and become like epicurus once more
Hold not your breath, with your attitude. Epicurus, though: He da man. He was right: There is nothing in death, hence nothing in death to fear. It's tempting to fear leaving things less than properly settled for my left-behinds, but since I won't exist anymore, it's a phantom fear and besides, they will deal well enough.
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