Some Form of Metaphysics in Two Parts

Eins
I think I like the idea of permanence, mostly because I am afraid. Afraid that tomorrow, I will feel much less likely to believe in the things I did today. Afraid that it will change everything - beyond reparation - and the very next day, I will se how wrong I was.

I think my emotions are like a sandy desert: rising here and falling there, but tomorrow it will be utterly different. Or, it could be very much the same. Only the wind tells. I think I’m afraid of that part of me, don't know how to come to good terms with it, don't know how to make it function. And so, in reaction, I like to tell myself how solid and permanent everything else is.

Just in case I change my mind.

The real problem is that I must accept that most (if not all) things are more mobile, changeable, mutating - just like that part of me I fail to account to. Nothing is permanent. Everything has a failure rate or a fade rate. Everything comes to some sort of end. At some point.

So, why is humanity so stuck on this idea of permanence when nature is ever-changing, ever-developing, ever-different. Perhaps, it's just that fear in us of never really having known anything at all. Then again, maybe there is something more than just fear here. Patterns we innately yearn to trust.

Integrities.

We can comprehend some weight or significance to such patterns, such ways of being or existence - and we comprehend some grander meaning behind it all. Then again, it may just be an invention in order to feel less isolated, less trivial, less useless. .

I do not have to fear death because I am not disposable - am not entirely replaceable. Perhaps, it is nothing more than our own fancy.
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I imagine our ideas, our words are far more immortal than we ourselves.

It is not a concept I am necessarily eager to accept, nor comforted much by, but I fear that it is only individualistic self-preservation that would feel so - if I were to admit it. I want to continue on because I like to exist. How trivial.

I have a notion that the thoughts we release into the stratosphere, the ones we let echo out of our control, off into the distance reaches of wherever they may go - those are our immortality.

The question then: if the individual does not carry on, what is the meaning of this realm full of its immortal echoes of all that have gone before? What is the goal, what purpose could be achieved? To only go through more souls, more minds in order to effect more souls who will, in turn, forevermore effect more and then disappear?

This creates an eternal loop that is only self-justifying. It exists to exist, continues to continue, renews only to renew. It feels more like an outrageous cosmic trick than anything else. If the lesson is only learned to teach the same lesson again, why not rebel from the system and force its shut down - if nothing more than to discover what is outside of the continuum of immortality that we can glimpse? Why not simply remove oneself from the cycle in order to discover if there is some existence beyond it? Why not force the hand? Another will be conjured up to fill the space and the cycle will go on for the purpose of going on, anyway.

But, that feels quite trite. As if all of existence is simply a snark back at itself. Which, in and of itself, is quite cheap.

And so, we are forced to consider this: can the whole of existence be cheap? A thing which any individual can willfully just step out of and fuck the whole thing without a single repercussion? Can the whole of it all even be such a convoluted trick without being found out already? Or, is it so absurd that humanity has decided that, to be truly original, it will dilute itself into believing it?

This seems to be a likely possibility, at this point in time.

***
Und Zwei:

I feel as though I ought to feel poetic. But, I fear that I don't. I suppose I feel a bit prosaic, but even that is stretch. In many ways, I am only writing because (in truth) I am waiting. I have nothing better to do, and a pen found its way into my hand - and here I am.

Sometimes, it feels as though it's the pen that gives the ideas - or the paper. As if I think of them only to write of them. Almost like an orator might think of speeches for the sake of speaking them. It is almost "art for art's sake", but not quite. More like art for the sake of being an artist. It feels a trifle cheap. Contrived.

I suppose it is I who has the ideas, I who think of the words to express them. But oft, the words only come in the form they come for the sake of writing them. Perhaps, that isn't nearly as cheap. Perhaps that view is overly optimistic.

Photography, it seems, is much the same. And I wonder: does photography severely alter our self-perceptions and our concept of history? Especially, our concept of self-history.

It occurred to me, while I was waiting, that I can only recall how I looked in the past due to photographs that have been collected over the years. People, it seems, have a desperate need to preserve themselves in this way, as if stamping out the effects of time from their memories. Which it does. In a way.

I wonder how much of our self-image would be changed if we had no photographs to remember in perfect detail. I wonder, if we would not feel like we do - constantly lamenting the us before. The beauty we can so clearly see has been lost, the youth that has faded and matured, that look in our eyes from the person who made us feel in that way. I wonder if acceptability of ourselves would be easier if we could not see into the past with such objective eyes.

The problem with photographs taken in this way - to replace our minds recollections - may be that objectivity concerning the past is imply inappropriate. Damaging to some internal processes that occur that we had not guessed guard us and keep us on the right track within the endless threads of our recollections. Perhaps, we recall our past - our history in such vague terms because that is how the past is most meaningful, most beneficial to us. Perhaps, subjectivity is how the mind processes the lessons of the past and puts them into a palatable form for our physical being to be able to interpret.

Perhaps, the weight of the exact past is simply too much to bear. And, in attempting to bear it so completely, we have lost something grandiose and deep-rooted, now irreplaceable - irreparable.

This may actually be our greatest downfall: this seizing and owning of the past - the wind, if you will.

And yet, we cling to it so desperately that these words will soon be lost into the stratosphere as something not to dwell much upon...