How Soon is Now?

Really, what does that statement mean? I seem to be hearing or reading it a lot, but what does that mean? Well, I used the question because it talks about time and time seems to be what is most important in the discussion of existentialism, aside from being that is. Being and Time by Heidegger and Time and Narrative by Paul Ricoeur, both talked about the importance of the fact that we are fleeting entities. Time = Death. We die, we have limited time, that's it, now stop reading this and go spend your time living or existing. That's how I see it, their point that is, that since we have limited time, and we will eventually die, we need to get to live our lives before our time runs out. Or as how Ricoeur puts it, like a narrative, our life is bound by time, and how it needs to be told for it to count as existence. So let me share some things in which where I learned the idea of fleeting existence from

Dust in the Wind - Kansas


In the End - Linking Park


Sick Cycle Carousel - Lifehouse

Oh such beautiful songs, now excuse me as I slash my wrist and wait for my timely death.

Really, where do we go after nihilism? After knowing that we are dusts and in the end nothing really matters, and that all these are just a sick cycles? I already discussed this in one of my previous posts since the flow of ideas are from the first to the latest, how nihilism is really nothing. Maybe it is this very idea of fleeting time that most existential thinkers think in the same line, we know we only have limited time, so we need to make it precious. So, we have time left, until we die, our story shall continue...

And oh, another good suicidal song is Mad World by Gary Jules

A Little Out of Place

This picture is an idea of my sister. These are the foot of my cousins plus me, the original idea was to take a picture of those who are wearing chucks to symbolize our unity as cousins, but I insisted that I don't want to wear my chucks that night, a few others followed me, so there you have it, you can either say we are out of place, or they are. Well, if it were all chucks, it would have been cute, since it will form a white circle in the middle, but hey, as I said in a previous post, it's all about distortions or absurdity.

Let's all shout that we are different!!! Then again, we all shouted...

We all know what conformity is about, but where does it end? And up to what point are we conforming? The same thing can be asked in not conforming, up to what point are we not conforming?

That's why I stopped being different, I just started being me. If I am the same as others, I enjoy it, same thing as how I enjoy it if I am different from others. Now if one is to ask how to be yourself if there is no self, well, I tell them that I try to follow my heart. If they argued more than that, I tell them to stop killing their hearts and start killing their minds. Then again, no mind is insanity, and too much mind is insanity too. So it's all about the balance, but how will I talk about balance? Ahh, Zen, but who can talk about that? I know it but I can't. Ask Kim, maybe he knows.

The Walk/On the Edge

The title is so because I wanted to share two thing. First is this, The Walk [you can listen (and pls. do listen, I could not put my point any clearer than what the songs has to say) by clicking the "launch media player now" option], a song by Hanson, which deals with what I really wanted to say in this post. Also, it is very much like the view of Nietzsche that one of my previous professors talked about, about man walking in a tight rope. The lyrics goes like this:

The Walk

He waits for the slow of the breeze
Oh, wow, look at him now, on his feet
High up in the sky
And every moment stands endlessly
It feels as though time isn't moving

And every second, one breath not to breathe
I watch as he moves to the beat
While I'm on the floor
I watch from my seat
And watch as he sways with the trees
And slowly he moves, but elegantly
I'm more on the edge of my seat

On the tightrope
Everything's bare
All that there is is from here to there
On the tightrope
The goal is quite clear
Don't lose yourself in your fear

Everyone waits on the walk
Some are long and some small
But all of them tall
Everyone must make a choice
Will I go for it all
And possibly fall
The tightrope is thin
I could possibly win on the walk

Well high on the walk
The tightrope it bends
And nobody knows where it ends
To win or to lose
You're all on your own
Everyone must be alone

On the tightrope
Everything's bare
All that there is is from here to there
On the tightrope
The goal is quite clear
Don't lose yourself in your fear
_________________________________________________________

So there, that pretty much explains a lot of things. Oh, how I love this song, and the methapor used. I wanted to explain every line and how I read it, but by doing that I will be assuming that the reader do not understand the song, well, I want to assume that the reader is smart, and can see through the song as I did, so let its interpretation fall into the readers hands.

Well, on the lighter side of thing, the second thing I wanted to talk about, being on the edge, is somewhat related to the song and the methapor. As you can see in the picture, that is me, on the edge. Haha. It is somewhere in Tagaytay, a place we saw behind a house of a souvenir maker. It is a tree sticking out off the cliff, with a chair near its end. At first glance I wondered who had the courage of putting it there, and who has the guts to sit there, I mean, if you would see the pit, there is no way you can be alive after falling, but the fact that it is there means someone had put it and someone sits on it. Being the extroverted me, I asked the souvenir maker about it, he laughed and told me that it is his private chair. And being the silly me, I asked if I can have a sit in his private chair, he laughed at me and dared me if I had the courage, well, I really don't have the courage but I wanted to feel what it's like. So I asked him if he could help me, and he did. And there you have it, the highest point I have ever been, sitting on the edge of a tree sticking out off a deadly cliff. My sister seeing me instantly told me that she would take a picture of me, so I maid my pose, but as you can see, I still look afraid and silly.

Life is Unfair, That Makes it Fair

Funny, I always say this before. The unfairness of life makes it fair. So maybe, long before I encountered Camus, I already agreed with him. Here, a dialogue between me and some other me. hehe

Me1: Life is absurd, so what?
Me2: It is painful, that fact hurts me.
Me1: So you want out because it hurts you?
Me2: Well, yeah, sort of.
Me1: Ha! Chicken!
Me2: Easy for you to say, I'm bleeding here, life is flowing out from me!
Me1: It's like this, no one said it's going to be easy, they just said it's gonna be worth it. Now worth it really varies, for me "worth it" is something interesting, I can see your bleeding, and it is interesting. Haha
Me2: Ouch!

I can really agree with Camus, absurdity is there, you cannot escape it or find a way out, you cannot also find any solution to know why it is there. It's there because it's there, escaping it would only make you lose a part of you. Now in my previous post I mentioned that for me absurdity is somewhat part of the divine, well, my point in saying that is because for me the divine is life it self, it is everything, including the absurd, I don't know how to explain further, maybe I can use Heraclitus as my stand point (I know, a little off-topic since this man is from the ancients) in explaining my point that for me the divine is everything, more like a pantheist. And so, I have accepted that I cannot escape absurdity, and that absurdity makes life interesting, like Sisyphus, what I can do is have fun doing what in the first place is not fun, I can only find peace in there.

Then again, my being sometimes shouts, WHY?! haha, but of course it is only a product of my being human, hence this poem that I thought of sharing, about a picture of absurdity, this was my first and last published work under Malate Literary Folio

Fetter

A wolf is in hunt
for a deer escaping through
the beds of snow,
leaving blood-stained hoof prints as if winter would not
let it go.

The cold wind
shivers the town
of a little girl
hampered by boredom.

Snatching her hood she stepped out,
holding to her basket so tight,
longing to leave her home,
wanting to pick red berries amidst the snow.

She saw the wolf
circling the deer,
it is helpless.
She runs home, dropping her berries as if the memory of the deer would not
let her go.

The Day I Looked Like David

Whatever one calls it, it is fun to be someone you are not, even if it is only in your little place of comfort or in the little events and places you construct so as you could be that something. And I could agree that if at that specific moment you made yourself to be that something, then it could be granted that you are that, relative to the place and event in which you were. So, this was the day I looked like David.

Well, in the perspective of someone who is into the unconscious , it is what we can call masking. Putting up a facade of what you want others to see, it might not be necessarily who you really are, but it is what you put up for others to see. The self is hidden somewhere in those layers, that is, if there is really a self. Because at an existential stand point, or for Sartre, there is only pure consciousness, no I, the I only happens to exist because there are the others who see you.

Well, what ever it is, I or consciousness, the point is that we live this life, there is life, so we exist to put something in it. I can really go along well with the idea that existence precedes essence because when I became aware of my consciousness I initially asked the question why; why am I alive? I didn't choose to be, so why? So it entails that I do not know why I am alive, I do not know my essence, so maybe, all that I have been doing is putting essence in my life. But it can also be argued that I am only fulfilling my destiny, I did not completely let go of that idea, that what I have been doing all along is filling up the void space given to me, that everything is already planned, and I'm just filling up that plan.

Pre-destination, that's what I mean, I am pre-destined and it has all been planned for me by someone or something. It really is not heart tearing to subject yourself to the divine, hehe, or what ever it is called. Because I have questioned enough, and it is not giving me anything. Personally, I reached nihilism on my own, after a life long quest, and a life long asking, a life long bitching, a life long everything, I had my share of life and I can say that nihilism is the end point of thinking, at least that's how I put it, since when I reached that point there is really nothing to think about anymore, or nothing to do anymore, I nearly killed my self when I got there. Nihilism; the end point of one's thinking, really, where can you go after that? You'll tell yourself that you are the key? That life is in your hands? It is you who will choose? Come one, let us not fool ourselves, by saying that, your only creating another reason, a created reason, same thing, only this time it is you who created it, what good it is compared to the one's you've broken free off? Hehe.

I'm being a little off-topic here. I am to discuss Camus' view of the absurd in another entry, because I also have the tendency to agree with him, for me it is the same as giving in to the divine or something, it's just that those are different things for him, because I somewhat see the divine as the absurd, but for him there is no divine. hehe. A little off-topic again.

Well, my point is that, what ever you want to call it, masking, or choosing, or existing, or other related terms, the bottom line maybe is that, we are alive. We have life in front of us and we live it, whether by choice, by chance, by whatever, really, including escaping it, is our way of living it. Life, life, life. A question, a challenge, a whatever. It is in front of us and we are asked to live it, so, we do. So the day I looked like David, well, not really, since I am behind a stone, hehe, is the day I can say I am alive, like how I can say I am alive right now, because I choose to do this post, or like how I can say I am alive everyday, not giving up.