Here we go, pushing again

The choice of Sisyphus as a name is not gratuitous and definitely not cheap. Life feels just like that for me. From a very young age, I’ve had to accept the fact that I’m very intelligent, just because I’m aware of a lot of stuff that most people tend to be able to ignore and, by ignoring it, function.

Are we finally dying from global warming? I’ve been monitoring that situation since the 90s, and my opinion is that we’re doomed.

Are we living at peace? Oh hell no, I can tell you about every single war raging on the planet.

Are my parents slowly dying? Yes, and I can tell you the rate and my estimate of the time left.

Are my dogs dying? Yes, in about 7 years one and 10 years the other. And I’ll miss them so much.

Is my car deteriorating? Yes.

Am I done for? Not exactly, but a lot of my past life will never return, and dealing with a huge disability — really 3 if we are precise — at my age is not a walk in the park.

The curse of awareness is one that will weigh you down day by day, reading the signs, seeing patterns in the world, in other people’s behavior and looking at the signs: happiness, danger, catastrophe and, having decided long ago to keep silent because, like Cassandra before you, nobody will listen to your warnings and, if you open your mouth, they will also contradict you.

Whomever had the idea of coming out of the sea and evolving into apes, I want to have a word. I want to have a word with Eve about curiosity and with Adam about thinking for himself — though I can’t imagine how messed up the world would be if Adam had rejected Eve. If he really loved her, hell or well, the risk of hell was a cheap price to pay for her company, wasn’t it? See? Here I am eating the damned apple.

This is a particularly hard weekend for me. Even for men, thinking about marriages and everything the concept entails is huge. I don’t know how it is for women, but being chosen or choosing someone to marry is huge, and, because of me, and the rock I carry in my chest, I have missed one important wedding. I have instead spent a day in darkness and sadness doing that which I despise: looking at me and wishing I was somewhere else. Here I am, as a good nihilist, remembering that nothing matters, but “nothing matters” is another infinite with scale. There are things that matter nothing less than others without having any specific real matter.

Years and years ago, I found a quote in The Arabian Nights that has stuck with me across many lives, loves, and painful experiences:

“How sweet is death, and how preferable to betrayal!”
— The Arabian Nights, “The Tale of Aziz and Azizeh”

I would rephrase it for the modern world as:

“How sweet is ignorance, and how preferable to awareness!”

Why? Because it’s impossible to feel really happy in this world. If you’re happy, you’re just not paying attention. I can’t even begin to discuss with Payne and making that line just “Faith is fair and perfidy foul.” What a boring, probably happy man to put it like that! I know, I know, it’s closer to the original, but for my 10-year-old brain that quote was perfect, one of the first imprints of love in my young brain and, given everything I’ve seen, the most accurate.

There are lots of ways to go in such a nihilistic, bitter writing as this one. In the end, nothing matters should be liberating, just as we should imagine Sisyphus happy: nothing matters and, in time, death and decay will take everything and everyone you value. If you’re a solitary being like me, selective and picky, then you’ll lose less than others, but it will sting more. You could decide to burn it all to the ground or you could decide to take good care of every single thing in your life. If you choose the second road, the road of listening to that voice in your cognition that tells you what perfection would mean in a given situation and striving to achieve it instead of half-assing it, then you’re pushing the rock, just like me. You’re also Sisyphus and I also imagine you happy, dear reader, because the world lacks meaning, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work to turn it into paradise. If you can’t run, walk, and if you can’t walk, crawl, because a dark abyss is waiting to swallow you forever and everything about you will be erased some time after your funeral. A minute, an hour, a century, it doesn’t matter. When it stops, it stops forever: no more love, friendship, sunlight, or the comfortable darkness of curtains closed and air conditioning working against the tropical heat.

We’re all gonna die someday. Repeat it.

Write it in the first line of everything you write.

Remember it with every kiss, every smile, every tear. Time is finite and precious, and so is everything done with time, which is everything.

Being a simple mortal, that’s my pledge: I’ll do as much as I can, as well as I can, and then I’ll die, leaving a better world, even if only in my love and care for all the people that matter to me, my people. Even if I can’t go to their weddings.

Learn to say hello and goodbye with a smile, because in the end, nothing matters, not to the huge planet or the infinitely bigger universe, not to life and definitely not to death, but sometimes, some things do matter for those involved. We all should care for bonsai trees and then use our favorite as a grave marking.

All this crap to say: fucking live while there’s still time, because some things remind us of death, like missing an important wedding, but we’re still alive.

The best lesson I have gotten from nihilism is to pick my battles for meaning. There are boring days to fill in. In the end, I can fill them with nice things or with tragedy, and it’s my choice to an extent, so love easily, hate easily, make friends easily, and cut them off forever easily. It doesn’t matter, not for anyone that’s not you.

You’re gonna die, but you’re living. Answer this, dear reader: what do you want to do while the music is still playing, knowing that eventually, you won’t find a place to sit?

Never let go of the rock, it's worth pushing it, we've been doing it for a long time and everything we do, we carry the rock with us, giving up is not way.

“And finally, when you are hungry and thirsty, someone drives you away.”
— Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations, “Childhood”

Maybe i'll publish another entry some other time.