3. The Eccentric Nature of Meaninglessness

It is amazing how we get irritated by something once it is within our proximity for an extended period of time. No matter how much we used to yearn for it, how we used to crave it, how we used to love it. Its close proximity soon irks us and gets under our skin. Why do we react in such a manner? As if we are selfish by nature. As if we are self-serving and only look out for "numbero uno" in whatever situation. That our true selves are incorruptible in its loyalty to ourselves. Case in point, I can't stand myself. In my solitude, I am all I have to handle. Yet, it is indeed testimony to the human psyche that I can get tired of myself. I can't stand my mental voice. My witness-consciousness can't stand the self-pitying nature of my "self". They can't coexist yet they have nowhere else to exist. What strange and uncomfortable bed-fellows dwell in my private realm...

So I sit here in my chair not being able to stand myself. I am thirsty. I have a sore-throat. I have a rumbling stomach. The multitude of sensations and biological registers and imperatives make their way to my mind and shout at me till they are hoarse. They wish to be satisfied. But I like to sit and pretend that I am but a corpse. Let me change that, a carcass. Yes, I like to lay and pretend and wait till they start to lose interest as my mental secretary at the desk chews on her pen in a sultry manner and repeatedly delays their attempts at getting my attention. And then just when they are about to leave, I announce that the manager will see to them now. His important conference call has ended.

My mind draws back to the figure that I crossed on the way home. She was attractive. I knew it. She knew that I knew that she was attractive. Her curvaceous figure flavors the uninteresting air around her aggressively through the air as she strutted past me. Her fragrance hung lightly in the breeze and yet stung my senses sharply as we crossed each other. But I didn't look. At that cosmic moment, it was quite laughable to take note that she registered an element of disbelief. The point is that I don't look anymore. There is no point. I don't look, I don't think nor do I consider. Just as there is no point in dreaming so I don't dream anymore as well. Evolution and efficiency works in that way. Only the necessary functions continue. Selection and survivability dictates that dreams and desire only matter for the living.

2. The Eccentric Nature of Meaninglessness

Another three hours of basking and I have effectively spent myself. So I stop which is a good thing since at this point, I am truly sick of myself and the music that I produce. What seemed like a sweet and rapturous note is now enough to cause me to convulse in debilitating nausea. So the bass notes and melancholic melody stop harshly. They would be back tomorrow as sure as I would wake tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn.

I brush my hand through my hair that was once strong and flick off the residual rain drops from the downpour earlier. As I perform this attempt at grooming myself, I catch a glimpse of a stranger in the puddle from the corner of my eye. He looks a despicable figure and strikes a frail presence despite his clearly robust and athletic frame. I study him from head to toe and then once more like a scavenger eyeing a thrashing animal in its death spasm. He reeks of pathetic. His lackluster slit eyes betray his lack of conviction in life. I move closer to the puddle and indulge in this voyeurism with an unhealthy appetite. Oh, this poor sullen human specimen. Then I realize that he is me.

At this ghastly realization, I fall upon my bottom and sit as if shell-shocked. I rock myself slowly and surely back into my mundane reality. I never did realize that my bolts had come loose. That I had lost rein of sanity. I was under the illusion that I had kept it well-nourished and reined in my stables of fortitude. But now, I came to know that all along, it must have been buckling and pulling at its shackles with its animalistic brute strength. Day by day, its sheer determination meant that it was pitted in a seesaw battle against the cold iron shackles of my pathetic clinging grasp. It must have torn its flesh and cut itself to the raw bone. I get slightly woozy at the mentally conjured sight of bright red and gurgling blood and then bruised and infected flesh wounds. But despite the surely immense pain, it must have found me and my pathetic needy nature so contemptible that it persevered despite every screaming sub-molecule of its flesh. Oh, how grotesque I must be.

"Hey, mister. Are you ok?" a random stranger snaps me right back into the mundane reality that surrounds me and blows through my wet clothes. "......." I am unable to mouth a coherent response. It does not matter. He is not really interested in how I am doing. He has already moved on. He is one of those Samaritans who get more of helping others than the people that he has helped. So he carries on his way to surely rake up more spiritual points and "feel good points" so as to feed himself through the cold and lonesome nights. His silhouette cuts slowly across the grayish landscape. My eyes escort him out of sight and I get back on my feet. I pick up my cello, bury it in its case. I pick it up. And I place one feet in front of another and make my way to nowhere to do nothing.

1. The Eccentric Nature of Meaninglessness

It starts to pour. At first, a light drizzle shifts into the sky and then it starts to pour as if mother nature was at first fickle but then she decided to punish this sordid week further. My leather shoes already stink from yesterday's debacle. Now, it is sure to be even more putrid after this blessing shower.

I scramble to collect and consolidate the coins in my hat and place my cello in its case to protect it from the rain. I have heard that all rain is acidic nowadays due to the pollution that we have wrecked upon mother nature. So it is her form of vengeance. Counting my coins in one hand and putting my sloth-like mind through its arithmetic paces, I shelter my instrument with my umbrella. After all, it is probably worth more than me and all my mental and physical possessions put together.

My paltry earnings come up to only $3.94. Not enough to feed myself fully and not enough to buy a sturdy enough rope to construct a noose either, I conclude. The rain patters down continuously and gets heavier. So the rain drops provide me with my only contact in weeks with kisses upon my cheeks and the droplets run teasingly down my nose bridge.

Have you ever stood for a long period in heavy rain before? I have not. But now that I am, let me warn you that it gets old really quickly. Nothing entertains you but the cascading and ebbing crescendo of the harsh descent of H20 molecules as they come crashing into the unyielding asphalt texture of our concrete jungle. But even if they are to be your sole source of entertainment, they are unwilling performers who possess no talent and desire to impress their captive audience. So I stand with nothing to wish for but the end of the rain. I suddenly realize that I did not notice when I slipped into such a moment-to-moment mode of existence. When did I become such a creature that was only content on breathing and to keep breathing? When did I lose sight of my ideals?

The rain stops as though it senses my sudden displacement and it is in conspiracy with the rest of human destiny to sedate me back into the norm of harsh mundane meaninglessness.

1. Truth (snippets from "Why Truth Matters" by Ophelia Benson)

Most of us don't love the truth, not all of it, not all the time. In fact, many are not really interested in believing the truth. They might prefer it if their opinions turns out to be true.

When people say, "I am entitled to my opinion," they are speaking of their indifference and it would be simple rudeness to persist with the matter of inquiry.

People deal with unwanted truth in various ways. The simplest is internal denial. It was more viable in the past."

"The role of authority is to tell people what to believe and think and coercive and authoritarian but also liberating as it liberate people from the responsibility and hard work of thinking.

Of course it was to community and authority's advantage that everyone be on the same page, regardless of the truth in matter. This would ensure social cohesion and smooth operations.

Another way would to be cordon off certain ideas as taboo and sacred. Religion is the most obvious of such no-go areas.

Obfuscation, a tactic of post-modernists, would be to ask unanswerable questions to temporarily silence and divert.

Ultimately the truth is important to us but so are our needs and desires and hopes and fears. Without these, we would not even recognize ourselves. We want the truth but we also want to care, some of the things which we care about would invariably be threatened by the truth.

"Not wanting to know the truth can be a coping mechanism. It is not exactly denial but more like minimization or compartmentalization. But it often trains us in bad habits and we may get used to the wrong idea that truth is subject to the human will and manipulation by our will, thoughts and actions.

4. What is the Soul?

Previously in the attempt to trace the realm and origin of the conception of the soul, I stumbled upon a roadblock (so as to speak). I asserted that "the existence of our Soul is given a push with Language and thus our Mind's Voice. Language arms our Mind's Voice with conceptual tools to term our experience, to give it meaning (direct or laden). Without Language, emotions and experiences would and may be stuck at basic feelings. Thus from here, we can see that Language (semantics) plays an important role in our interpretation of emotions and experience and thus our idea of our SOUL as well."

But I was wrong. Rather, I was too quick to conclude. After reading the chapter, "The Horminid that talked" by Maurizio Gentilucci and Micheal C. Corballis in "What makes us Human?" (Charles Pasternak, ED), I came to appreciate the significance of speech. Speech advanced communication and language from a primarily visual form (a "schematopoeia" that holds parallels between sound and meaning)to one that possessed the ability to arbitrary symbols and laden meanings. In fact, biologically only humans have adapted this "gift" of speech in bio-mechnical design (neocortical system developed or precise vountray control of the muscles of the vocal cords and tongue).

3. What is the soul?

What is the soul? What is it without our conceptualisation of our heart as the source and center of our emo-spiritual being?

But of our heart, Ingrid Michealson sang of this,

"Have you ever thought about what protects our heart?

Just a rib-bone and various other parts.

So its fairly simple to cut through the mass and distort the muscle that makes us confess.

We are so fragile and our cracking bones makes noise.

And we are just breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys."