“In the anesthesia produced by self-knowledge, life is passing, art is passing, slipping from us: we are drifting with time and our fight is with shadows.
...
What is war, disease, cruelty, terror, when night presents the ecstasy of myriad blazing suns? What is this chaff we chew in our sleep if it is not the remembrance of fang-whorl and star cluster.””
Someone once told me that I wrote tolerably good sentences, and that maybe I should try to write a novel. Somewhere inside, one of my seventy-two nirvanic couciousnesses smirked. I shrugged. Through the secure and complacent void of the Internet, I wrote back that I didn’t believe fiction had enough social impact, and therefore penning said novel would not align with my counter-culture values.
Fast forward in time and here we are at a ten-minute countdown until the fine neighbourhood coffee shop closes. The Python script I’ve been working on is regrettably stuck on a silly loop, and I’ve invested too much in it to control + c. A frisson of excitement runs through me - maybe I could write something instead.
When I stepped up to the counter to order earlier, the barista had preemptively announced, “That’ll be $6.30.” We were both confused until we realized that the clock read 6:30PM. Sometimes we don’t catch what we say before it’s too late. She then laughed and gave me a free Americano. Nonetheless, even free drinks grow cold, and I have to lift my snapback to tuck away a wisp of hair. These age-appropriate smart bobs are high maintenance.
Struggle meaningfully, so we tell ourselves.
I don’t remember the last time I was afraid of death. I do occasionally wonder if we can find enough lithium to power fleets of electric cars, cybernetic augmentations, and in general, our way to Human Enlightenment. The Big Bang probably gave us enough for the next three centuries or so, but we won’t have another one of those anytime soon, hopefully.
Eighty percent of existing species are beetles. I’d like to think that I’ve rescinded my anthropocentric and organic-life-centric views by now, but sometimes I still have frightening dreams of giant beetles with shiny pronotal horns advancing upon humanity. Herculean beetles, stuff of nightmares. Alas, the Freudian slip.
I’m at a stage in life where despite trying desperately to read books from unrelated genres, the concepts they touch somehow still manage to converge theatrically, yielding aha moments left and right, morning and night, paper and e-ink, visual and auditory. This is an intrusion upon my nihilistic and existential thought framework. This is as if the universe is some try-hard at attempting to be meaningful. I can almost envision myself founding some New Age rational optimism movement.
In m x n parallel multiverses, this would have already happened. In others, the blade runners of tomorrow are the social democrats of yesterday.
“And thy spirit’s fiery flight of imagination acquiesces in an image, in a parable.”