(photo: Puppet by Zeen Chin)

I can’t write wittily or in that post-modernist satire which I can’t stand anymore, nor give opinion of some utilitarian dream humanity has been failing at constructing, you said to write about my stream of consciousness—like Joyce?—and I think there’s misconception there, every thought would bring forth another one but not so spontaneously because I’m inducing them, writing in a stream i.e. spurting a stream of painfully personalized aphorisms that only make sense to the person who wrote them, is what I often mean when I say “I write”. If you’re willing to endure me.

Long had the prestigious gist of philosophy and intellect taught us that everything decays meaning and flesh alike, labels and status and abundance, yet we shouldn’t settle for any of this, most had left us with hints instead of answers so that we could seek more knowledge, question, revise, not settle. But why should we—the ones left to carry the torch—follow their genius, live under their splendor, can we not —individually, create our own, or are the crowned prodigies preselected, on top of the lair of men, deciding how we should or should not think. Each of us has so little time on earth, we’re egoistic, lonely, and confined in the solipsistic prison that is consciousness, and we still desperately look for a unison for this individual chaos.

If this is true, how can I be sure of anything? I can’t. I’m not even sure of an eventual complete annihilation, yet it is the most precious, most likely happening we have, just like it is most likely I could never have enough, none can, not enough knowledge, not enough money, not enough distractions, not enough mastery of the self to balance all the above, we’re driven by will to power, but why should we follow the mad man who lost it at the sight of a dying horse.

What’s true then? Does real and true exist, am I smart enough to understand an answer given by the same people that created these abstractions I’m questioning, or should I remain ignorant and have less questions and more convictions and plans of A and B I follow, but high heavens do I loathe convictions, they’re lynching verdicts and I’m falsely convicted. If so I have to question everything, but what or who allowed me to, what’s the point? Should there be a point? Shouldn’t there be vacuum, the nothingness that once was untethered to become this, and then there was light then life, and there was consciousness and pain…it’s so tedious, inhumane, to have all this bombarded inside your skull.

I’ve observed that people who have plummeted in life then draw what appears to be an ‘exaggerative’ pessimistic deduction, reach a culmination point where pessimism is not just a temporary grey mood, it’s a defense mechanism; a creed of acceptance that pain is all existence ever will be and everything else is a placebo to hinder that pain. Whether this creed or conviction, or most probably a conclusion, were born from misfortune or a result of some major catastrophe, one can say that it is justified considering the short lifetime of the individual, for them to find solace in a very distant future, unless there was a drastic change in life or a long interruption of the catastrophic events, he or she can’t bring themselves to see any remote resolution of that struggle. Even when the struggle subsides, such an individual would live in a present completely revolving around the possible coming of a new eminent one, and if they can’t break that cycle, depression—which was induced by the consecutive hardships— would slowly give that justified pessimism a radical aspect; suicide.

Turning anything into a conviction is devastating, there’s a good chance that it will lead to self-destruction, pessimism like theism and other “ism’s” are constructed as such to become the conclusion to all conclusions, the only truth, the ultimatum. That being said, convictions and creeds begin with a period of euphoric relief to not having to question anything, to not having to live in doubts, everything is readily answered when conclusions are turned into concrete creeds, it’s a utopian shell, but once those questions start to make a strong voice inside one’s head, the utopia would turn into hell. Madness. The madness of doubt.

We all harbor a thin line of madness; we compulsively gnaw at our fingertips in dark rooms going through meticulous details of what went wrong, that process breeds so much emotional pain, just to extract something that would make sense.

There’s truth and falsehood to each delusion, if balanced they give the mind much less trouble. Delusions like self-grandeur and egoism, are healthy, yet when they manifest excessively one would find oneself facing a certified person nodding absent-mindedly while mentally flipping through the DSM looking to classify your symptoms.

The brain is so impressive, in a very absurd way; it creates its own convictions and realities: it turns delusions to facts, self-delusion, decadent delusions, are such a precarious obduracy.

When that familiar nothingness starts creeping on me again and I don’t feel any relevant stream of thoughts I know what I wrote had lead to some catharsis, that or I’m just bland and empty. I’m a brute anew: thinking only about basic hedonistic needs, no questions, no convictions, maybe I’ll watch TV, then sit to regret that I procrastinate things I’m anxious about, then I’ll brood and reminisce, then be afraid and anxious, then be excited and euphoric, while letting the present moment flee perpetually, and live in a lonely reality—that I keep creating, of an uncertain future.