blog

Kierkegaard was an urban writer. All the signs are there: the poisen pen, the self-absorption, the cleverness, the feaux-jadedness as a tractable island to retain poise over an intractable sense of wonder. He even takes time out here and there to complain about how meaningless his life is. Love it—I’d only regret coming to it so late, but regret is a waste of my motherfucking valuable time. A month into my time at Dartmouth I knew that I would come back to the city, at least a city. I enjoy my time the most at the center of the disease—why? Innumerable reasons. Relatedly, ever hear of the folks who during the holocaust would snap and throw themselves against the electrified fences? It’s the way I want to go out. Here’s an imperfect/perfect metaphor. You don’t know it unless you know it. I was a Brahmin in a past life so I know better. Statement of fact. To prefer unity in a dualistic world seemed a matter of integrity, of obligation to oneself. To prefer it also a matter of escape. From obligation first, fellow feeling second. BUT knowledge by acquaintance vs knowledge by description. To someone who feels she values knowledge above all, this little duality, this clarification, is mind-blowing, life changing. The brother calls: he was on the 1-train and heard…a thud, an emergency break, an entire platform gone wild crying and screaming—talk of a child. My first reaction to (factual, not theoretical) pure overwhelming horror is to think of the words on the wall of the uptown pastry shop “secular humanism will save my life”. Of course the universe has a mystical core—if only if it is the subtraction of the known from the unknown which comes out to an infinity—and then that mysticism is just the general fogginess of what one is ignorant of? It’s more than that. Subterranean spring yadda yadda. Again though, the Daoists got it wrong. The entire Daoist canon is one flash a brilliance gone corrupt (of course I’m not qualified to say that but I’ll say it anyway). Duality trumps unity. Climb out of pleasure seeking/pain avoidance into greater things. Into loss of ego boundaries. And then there are things even greater than that—the creation (creatively, awarely) of new ego boundaries, for the sake of oneself and the rest of the disease. Ultimate acts of autonomy. The human supra to the ante-human. Something as unglamorous as secular humanism. So I’m back in the city to stay.