Thursday, September 17, 2009

Retrograde Motion

Is it the fear of being alone? Is it the illusion of concern? Perhaps it is the cataclysmic bizarreness of one thinking mind interacting with another. How do we account for shame? Why does the presence of another person hamper our honesty? Why do we hold back? The fears of judgment and subjugation are the blinders that eliminate your peripheral vision. We are like a predatory horse, a beast of burden turned aggressive ruthless fugitive. We have escaped from the bonds of meaningless isolation, been imprisoned by stolen freedom and pursued by inescapable detriments of every persuasion. Everybody is horrible and frightening. Everybody is capable of atrocity in all degrees. We all are, because in some layer of our terrified consciousness, we harbor the belief that other people aren’t real, at least not as real as ourselves. Goodwill and charity are easy when no danger is involved. I have done nothing to deserve my comforts. Nor have you. There is no such thing as “deserve.” There is no such thing as debt or justice. There is only malice, revenge, and vested interest in the well-being of another. Everybody hurts the same way. We all want to get back home. It all feels so unnatural. It is an itch that cannot be scratched. Words like “me,” “I,” and “mine” are self-referential utterances that point at nothing but themselves. They are signs without meaning, signifiers with no signified. These absurdities allow us to fumble our way through the dark, just like when the lights go out and you are somewhere unfamiliar and must navigate by senses you aren’t used to using. Those tender, familiar crutches start to become more important when we begin to see the perfect darkness take shape into monsters. Perspiration and tightened bowels become the limits of our knowledge, and create our prejudicial attitudes towards nonexistent things. It is all sincere. It is completely natural. With what alternative are we left? We cannot move in a vacuum. Locomotion requires objects with greater mass than ourselves for reaction. Action can only be reaction. There is no groundless movement. Even more upsetting, there is no apparent causa sui at the root. There is no root. Anchors are futile, but create the necessary rigidity that allows you to find a point of reference and navigate the soup. They are the objects with greater mass than you. Nausea is what happens when you learn that you aren’t moving, but are instead simply rearranging the objects around you.
 

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