Tuesday, December 13, 2005

I write, therefore I am

Sometimes I feel as though this blog is taking over my life. So that it feels that I'm less a person writing about my life than a writer living out my own script. So that it feels as though I'm a spy, an observer, a journalist covering the beat of my own feelings. So that it feels as though the only reason I do things anymore is so I can write about them afterwards, so that I enjoy things not for the way they make me feel, but so I can explain later, to an audience of strangers, just how much I have enjoyed them, and why. So that, like a photographer hungry for scenes of carnage, I have come to accept pain, more, to seek it out (or failing that, to simply imagine it) so that there is something to write about every morning, beecause that is the only way I can prove to myself that I still exist. So that I live my life for the sake of being able to say that I have lived it.

"To thine own self be true", Polonius tells us. But which is the true self, and which the approximation? How can we begin to define this self that we are to be true to, and how do we know it is not who we are already? And if, in the end, our will to life is only the will to describe, to explain - if we are interested, not in the thing itself, but in the idea of it - does that make our lives any less real? What would Plato say? What would Blake? How can we seperate the intent from the action, the desire from the aftertaste? As Yeats says: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

8 comments:

ozymandiaz said...

Perhaps there is no true self, at least not definitive form. Humans are physical forms drivin by, for lack of a better term, etherial mechanisms. Life is change, down to the quantum level. There are no absolutes and the "self" is included. The obsever ultimately decides the observed. Than again, as we have discussed before, we disagree about the existance of objectivity. Is it a cooincidence that your word vrification is "oscili"? Sounds very similar to ocellus, does it not?

Falstaff said...

Oz: Tch. Tch. Spellings, spellings. There may be no absolute self, but there's always spell check. (sorry to be pedantic, but I counted 7 distinct errors in that last comment - I'm just saving you from what neela's going to say)

Neela: Whaddya mean fiction? You mean you don't believe that I'm this tortured soul caught in the throes of existential angst?

Heh Heh said...

i thought everything that you wrote on this blog was fiction.. :)

The Black Mamba said...

Sometimes I feel as though a bunch of blogs (by other people's - not my own) are taking over my live.

Every evening (ok, every morning) I get all excited about the interesting things that have happened in these other lives, the day before.

Cannot help, but feel like Jean-Louis Trintignant in Rouge. Only I don't have to feel guilty about it. Some sitemeter account is monitoring my visits to their life (oops, blog). :)

Cheshire Cat said...

So you live to write? Well, then, your life has purpose! You have no right to complain.

But to write to write, now that is surely wrong...

ozymandiaz said...

Make that five errors. "oscili" isn't a real word as it was generated by the verification. "Ocellus" is a real word (a type of photoreceptor organ in animals, or very small eye) even if it isn't in the spell check. As for the other five, well, all I can say is I was coming off of my first full nights sleep in two months and it had an adverse effect on...oh, who am I trying to kid, I can't spell worth a flip.

Ocellus
We as gregarious beings
Form upon what we’ve seen
An ontology which
We all but contradict
Observe with smallest eyes
Do we upon the skies
As painted with ichor
Forgoing observer
As pre-eminent being
Our sanctity not seen

Falstaff said...

heh: Ah, but who is the you it is fiction for? I would have thought you (all seventeen of you) would realise that it is entirely possible for something to be genuinely true for part of you and completely made up for another part.

Neela: Yes, exactly. And then my advisor wants to know why I'm not making progress on my dissertation. Sheesh!

BM: Know how you feel. Have you got to the stage where you're passing off things that happen to people on blogs you read as things that happened to a friend of yours?

Cat: I'm not complaining, exactly. It's just an idea that takes a bit of getting used to.

Oz: Make that 6. I didn't actually count oscili or ocellus - but I did count etherial, which the OED tells me is an acceptable spelling of ethereal. The 6 I have are: drivin, obsever, existance, cooincidence, vrification, than.

P.S. - I think cooincidence is such a wonderful term - like bumping into a couple making out in the park

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