The Line Between Us and the Universe

Library - 4641
Originally uploaded by greenlawnchairs

Lines are infinite by definition.

Humans, by definition, never cross lines.

The boundaries of language, I quietly cursed.

And all the different names for the same thing.

I feel like my life is one of those cds that gets stuck in the cd player.  The same note plays over and over until someone pushes skip or stop.  I have had the opportunity to experience so much, yet that is almost a disadvantage.  I do not look forward to life as much as those who have less experience. 

I have noticed that no matter where I go, people are unhappy.  It's a frustrating experience.  I guess it sort of crushed my hope for anything.  I know that if I become famous I will be just as unhappy as I am right now.  I know that if I am accepted to Harvard (ha, likely, not) I will be just as unhappy as I am right now.

I do not know what I want.  I don't think I want anything?  I'm indifferent I suppose.

But it is unhealthy to be indifferent to life.  I have to find something that will drive it.

Maybe it is love?  I don't know.  I see so many unhappy couples.  Maybe love is just a distraction until you die.  All things are distractions.  We just muddle around until we die?

I don't know.  I see people who are poor or sick, and they are no more miserable than some of the rich people I meet.  Helping the world seems useless.  People are always telling me that I need to make a difference.  I don't think I can.  I don't think anyone can.  I mean circumstances will change, but who really wants a peaceful world filled with equality?  How boring.  People would be just as unhappy.

Back to the beginning.  The unhappiness I find repeats.  Each time it becomes more complex.  As a kindergartener, it was that disconnect I felt between the other giggling kids and myself.  They never wanted me to play tag.

Now it is more complicated, yet still just as insignificant.  Now I am haunted by the laws of the universe, human instinct, you know, the usual.  Like all of the other 6 billion people in the world, I sit up late at night and ponder my existence.  Like 16% of the population, I cannot find distraction in religion.  I feel like covering up these thoughts is denying that they are there.  I feel like religion was designed to just distract you.

I feel like every few months, I go through the same thing.  I stop caring.  I stop pursuing that ivy league dream.  I stop working for that perfect gpa.  Instead I turn to insomnia.  But I am not a good insomniac.  I can't survive on 4 hours of sleep.  So I sleep as late as I can.  Or I go to class and don't pay attention, saying to myself "oh I'll learn the Spanish subjunctive from a website later."  I read dark books and listen to dark music, feeling sorry for myself because of all of the pressures I have chosen to put on myself.  It's ridiculous.  It doesn't do any good, and it leaves me feeling detached from everyone, like I've learned some big secret about life that no one else knows.  Only I know that life is meaningless and that God deserves to be punched in the face.  Such an esoteric group.  Not.

Why are we so selfish?  Why do we wallow so much?  I know I am insignificant.  I know that my feelings do not matter.  I know that the best thing would be to just to get over myself and keep truckin'.  Yet I keep the cycle going.  I keep the options open.  I resort to rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.  Masochism almost.  I load myself so full of feces that I can barely keep myself from falling over.  I test myself, stretch myself as far as I can go, just to see if I will be able to bounce back.    I am Stretch Armstrong.  Metaphorical children pull my limbs, trying to break them.  They jump over them like jump rope.  They tie them up into bows, into figure eights.  Until finally they left my limbs go and if I am lucky, they bounce back into place for the next group of kids.  

Why do I do this?  Why do I live between two extremes.  If I found some balance, maybe I could stop the cycle.  There would be consistency, nothing to repeat.  I could take on a moderate amount of work, enough to keep my head from rambling like this blog post.  I could make a moderate living and live a moderate life.  I could be just as unhappy as everyone else but with a moderate house and living conditions.  It would be the life I suppose, the American Dream. 

Maybe I am sick of having my dreams defined by others.  Maybe I am sick of the expectations and limitations that have been placed on me.  Maybe I want to be a homeless woman, wandering the streets unpredictably.  Maybe I feel like I am read too easily.  Maybe I envy the mysterious.  No one can get in the head of a schizophrenic.  Maybe I am dissatisfied with nonfiction and its definition.  Maybe I want the crazy surreal dreams that keep my head wandering at night to come true.  Maybe what I want so much is the unpredictable.

Maybe I want the rules of the world and gravity and morals and conduct to just

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I want so badly to believe that there is truth that love is real.

I know you're wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the feeling that your perfect verse is just a lie you tell yourself to help you get by?

Well I do.

Words.  Words.

So powerful, yet so insignificant.  They're made up of little tiny pictures, hieroglyphics, that point to a certain sound.  The sounds are memorized in your lexicon.  The intelligent have larger capacities for memorization of the hieroglyphics.

The intelligent have the capacity to learn entire new layouts of language.  They can look at Arabic or Mandarin Chinese and see the meanings through what we interpret as chaos.  Their eyes turn the upside down world into coherent thoughts.

Or so we think.

We think that logic is logic, that logic creates a structure to the world.  Logic is flawed.  Logic is human thought and therefore, inherently flawed.  What if our mathematics, our sciences are wrong?  What if there is an invisible man, an invisible puppeteer, making all of this happen, making the world seem intelligible, pretending that there are consistent forces knocking little atoms around?

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atoms.

Smaller than this period.  Smaller than fleas, than specks, than pixels.  In fact, they make up the specks.  They make up the pixels.  They make up the Marilyn Monroes of the world.  They make up the gold, the Cadillacs, the mansions.  And they make up the shit of the world.  The piles of feces stinking up the oceans.  The worms wiggling through the rain onto the sidewalk to fry, to stick that metaphorical gun to their foreheads.

Those worms are just atoms.  I am just a pile of atoms.  You are just a pile of atoms.  

You are insignificant.  You are unworthy.  Your life does not matter.  Even if you do manage to make your mark on the world, it is just temporary.  Even Abraham Lincoln will be forgotten at some point.  But it doesn't matter.  It just does not matter.  Why do you care whether you leave a legacy?  You will be dust.  You will be incapable of caring, of regretting, of wishing, of hurting, of loving.  You will still be insignificant.

There are over six billion people in the world.  Your thoughts do not matter.  Your words do not matter.