My speaking self, nay my writing self blah blah…

 My speaking self, nay my writing self blah blah…

 

My speaking self, nay my writing self blah blah – yunno what I’m talking about!(?) Anyway, it sounds very certain of himself. The reality is the same. But this reality is contingent on a brain fed body requiring a desired balance of pleasure & pain; and as a yunno miggle miggle class, affluent first worlder etc, it’s probably unsustainable for the planet, other people etc, the whole frigging game/sacred ineffable existence, blah blah.

 

What I really saying is: I’m an illusion –  in my apparent solidity (legal/medico/financial/corporeal/relational etc).

What others are too well behaved/dishonest with me/themselves (maybe the latter irrelevant and worth only proximity, not causality – but science runs this way today innit?, so why not muddy the waters of neo-Rousseauian confession(?)) to tell me,

is the ‘fact’/judgement,

what in this moment seems a fact or at least a realization

(whatever the hell this latter word means in this imprecise tongue – English (comparatively to certain other languages – or so I’ve come to ‘understand’). Is this:

‘My’ ‘fact’ that I am a “weak” man. A coward. Not out of holding some undemonstrated ‘will’ back,

but my weakness/‘need’ (it’s a want perhaps? Or maybe is a need?) to numbing the intense pain I feel.

 

Lao Tzu beautifully said (according to Stephen Mitchell, whose version I know best) that (paraphrasing): fear & hope are both illusions that come from thinking of the self as (the) self – as opposed to the all/nothing,

& he implies

that this illusion is best avoided.

Or does he?

He does say that mystery & manifestation both come from the Tao (loosely translated by some as ‘the way’, there are other words sometimes used in its place, I can’t think off the top of my head/under ‘inspiration from my Muse’ (haha)).

And finally, or rather, principally, that the Tao that can be told & named is not eternal, nor infinite, but somehow the Tao/‘it’ is. (I think?, but could be missing the point?)

 

Marvellous!:

How a fallible being articulated this,

is I think, extraordinary.

And what I am suggesting here, is that a similar quantity/quality of thinking might be achievable by me.

Because no doubt, Lao Tzu didn’t exist any more than I do (the ‘illusion of thinking of the self as (the) self’)

& ,

he did,

as a man,

fall prey to the same weakness(es).

(Nah singular will do)

 

What is not known,

is whether he held less or more weakness?

Less or more ambition,

less or more wisdom?

Or if miraculously,

the words just got f*^$ckin written?

 

A good book, for mine.

Similar conclusion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, I’d say. Both of them, I’d say, were conformists. But so what? Societies are made up of us conformists. What Sociologists call ‘Deviance’ (or ‘deviating from ‘norms’/normative behaviour, only serves to strengthen, not threaten, the Society. Serving as a ‘folk devil’ which the rest of society bands together, to ‘fight’

-      which could just as easily be said to ‘embrace.’

 

This what I have taken from what I’ve learned, and if possible to do, ‘observed’

(if indeed it’s really observation

& not projection?).

 

I’m tired now.

See: ‘WEAK’!

NOT a philosopher:

A POET.

SHORT STAMINA held intensely in fits & starts.

In long: a MAN.

Attached, not detached, as philosophy ‘ostensibly’ requires.

 

Whatever the f77ck I am.

 

Finally,

(perhaps connected, perhaps not, (both?/all? none?)?:

 

Is intelligence affective?

Is there present an affective intelligence?

Does this affectiveness need entertainment?

Does Tragedy, Drama, Sport & Comedy, Pornography, Ecstasy, Irony, Ennui, Absurdity, Music, Dance, Culinary/Excremental odours, Perfumes, (of course there’s more varieties) etc

Satisfy it

Or leave it unfulfilled?

In short, did ‘God’ create the ‘world’ coz he was bored?

Is ‘he/she/they/us/blah) still bored?

Dead?

Still affective (or feeling)?

Involved?

 

Somehow I think sympathy does exist.

I think Love, for want of a better name does exist.

In short, I think Life does exist.

There’s just no way to explain it.

But that’s ok.

We wouldn’t have the strength to do so, even if we could.

 

Yunno what,

Despite it ,

Or perhaps,

Because of it all(?),:

I like people.

Illusion/illusions or not.

I do.

Better than being dead or alone.

 

Not GOOD,

Not BAD:

LIKEABLE.

That’s pretty f85king good.

From one illusion to another:

“Here’s looking at you kid.”

 

©Malachi Doyle 2023.