The Wandering

The Wandering

To say my mind wanders a bit is an understatement.  Thus, the internet is an horrible and unspeakable invention.  Here is where the mind is allowed to wander free of any sort of barrier (well, if you live in America that is pretty much the case.¹)  I have, in the space of an hour: looked up aspects of the Myer's Briggs, read a short story by Donald Barthelme, watched a movie trailer, and on and on and on.  My left eye is twitching because it wants sleep, but here is the problem I have: this is the time when I am most lucid.  My mind is simultaneously on fire and a dwindling pool of embers.  I told one person that my mind doesn't start really working until three a.m.  That was a lie, my mind kicks in at about midnight and three a.m. is the time when it is ready to collapse but it is still very much awake.²

This is my world.  The hours of two o'clock and three o'clock are my hours of temptations.  Here I can feel society giving me a unison "tsk tsk" as I plow into the night accomplishing nothing.  "At least," so it says, "do something with this time.  Plan a business, write a story, do something."  I can't.  I try start an essay, but it ends up unfinished.  I run out of words or find that a myriad of segues have led me to some unknown area; like a traveler in a car stopped by some desert gas station, I pull out my map and mumble, "well now where the heck am I?"  I know exactly where I am.  I am at my computer at two o'clock in the morning writing a paper that will be read by a few people.

Well, the heck with it.  I am a great writer.  Perhaps I am not as disciplined as others.  I have a great affinity for all of my thoughts because they are mine after all.  Like a little-league coach, I want all my players to play in the game regardless if it is the right time.  I send my thoughts out there.  I joke that I just like to see if any one of them will really and truly stick.  The fact is I want them all to succeed, even the inconsistent ones.

The fact is, it is very late.  I wonder if this is just catharsis.  I wonder if my words have meaning to anyone out there.³  I think they do, even though they don't.  Kierkegaard talked about relying on the absurd instead of the known outcome.  It is less pleasant to human pride, but it is the only way any of us can function.  Barthelme says as much too in the one story I read by him.⁴  It is here in the absurd that we find meaning in the meaningless; and we find that meaning by accepting the fact that maybe we are too concerned with finding meaning.  What is the point in our discovering the answer if it doesn't give us an answer.  People make fun of my love of useless knowledge because it doesn't seem to have any application, the absurdity would seem to dictate that our greatest answer undermines while reinforcing this notion.  Life is absurd, find that answer and you will be something ... whatever that means.  When one realizes that nothing has meaning and that means that it is infinitely important; one truly begins to be insane; and insanity is the label that the world gives to people who really start to get it.

We write off the insane, not because they are crazy; but because we do not like where they are going with all this.  I am probably wrong, so lets just skip it.  There are people who believe they are Napoleon Bonaparte or Teddy Roosevelt or a box of Chex Mix; they are clearly insane, but they don't get it.  Maybe all people who understand life are insane, but not all insane people get life?  No, insanity is merely a place that we have to walk through to get to enlightenment.  I am laughing right now.  How often do we talk about enlightenment, and we never really mean it.

Well, I need to get some sleep, the pitter patter of my keyboard is having an intoxicating effect on me; and it is pretty obvious that it is time to sleep when that sound is as musical as the sound of sheep being counted.  Though, here is my question, why am I cursed with thinking so well at this time of the day?  Why couldn't this happen a few hours earlier when the sun was out and I was quite bored.  I wonder if the insane are bored?  I wonder what it is to be wandering after you have gone through the world of the insane and reached the world of the absurd.  I bet God still allows for journeys there as well.

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1. Oh sure there are many who would argue that this is not the case and that there is a great deal of repression going with regards to American access of the internet, but that is mainly due to copy-written stuff, military secrets, and good old fashioned corporate greed.  That stuff is normal.  That stuff is typical.  That stuff is boring.  If boring people want to have boring secrets, I say let 'em.
2. I can remember at college dragging myself up stairs to go through the necessary steps and processes and rituals to prepare for sleep.  During these times I would wish simultaneously for sleep and still be thinking of the subject of the paper.  I would write sentences in my head and contemplate all of the different subjects going every which way.
3. I sometimes like to dream that there is some college out there secretly basing a field off of my study.  Some professor has been stealing my stuff for years, passing it on as his own, and he gets caught one day and I am now the genius.  Or perhaps some country has decided to develop my philosophy into some sort of model for development.  Who knows?  It is fun to dream.
4. Unless of course that one story Spencer let me read was by him as well.  Something about porcupines going to college.