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"Tuesday, March 28, 2006

" I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: "In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death." I only meant that the hero of my book is condemmed because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives; he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of private, solitary, sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to look upon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least one much closer to the author's intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn't play the game. The reply is a simple one; he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn't true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels."
--Camus


- I've become very laconic.
- .....because whereas most of my relationships have been kept afloat by laughing a lot, and saying very little (even if we say it desperately, movingly. And then theres the lying, so much lying...because there are no such things as values right), I have at least momentarily lost my tolerance for (for lack of a better word) bullshit--especially my own.

"X: he's unspeakably alone; as am I
Y: as is everyone
X: everything is done in flourishes to disguise the fact""


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First rule of life is to never be too obvious, for the obvious reasons (do you know them?). And, all that veracity inevitably has the property of calcification, of heaviness—all that’s wonderful and mysterious, and pregnantly silent falls off, which is the worst thing it does.

Relatedly, I was wrong. There’s nothing in the world that cleanses so well, that is so conducive to moving on, of living well than all that flourishing. Say less, say more, but never say the truth, most of all not to yourself. Never commit yourself like that, never accept a reality that is just so boring when it's not painful. Romanticize, glamorize, poeticize—and do it well. Tug at your own heartstrings with counterfeit emotions; they’ll never have the power over you that monstrous reality does when taken seriously.

And, have you ever noticed how in a roomful of people, if one person coughs someone else starts coughing? Here are intimations of where language came from, as is the nature of all things biological to react. Not to react is an ultimate act of autonomy, of differentiation. Like the learned stoicism of abused children. The guy on train platform is hot but looks like a douche and an otherwise repulsive human being. He coughs and then I do the same, which I catch and stop, because I don’t like him at all. There are better, less (physiologically) depressing ways to control all that reactivity. What I mean is to learn how to react well, which maybe means falsely.