Stream of Consciousness After being Post-Avoidant Because of Weeks full of Meetings and Family Surgeries.
Or "I'm dropping in to remind you and me of my existence, even if it's messy and lame, not like a duck or a disabled person but like that which is left unwatched."
Telling and not telling. I am an avid avoider of my own bellybutton. Cleaning it is torture yet I must because it’s too tight to even be a pucker. It’s more a slash in the fat baguette of my abdomen. A score settled on my flesh. The debate and conversation about AI bores me to no end, until I heard someone say this morning that we mustn’t conflate intelligence with consciousness. Just because something becomes smart doesn’t mean it will become aware. As if, as humans, we cannot not project. I barely feel conscious some days because I’m so often not in the place I actually am. Danny messaged to ask how I was this morning, and I said “things are good, it’s just my mind that makes them not so.” Maybe I need a reset. An episode of transient global amnesia due to swimming in water too cold or getting fucked too properly. When your brain refuses to make new memories, maybe it’s just your brain taking a breather. When I was at my mom’s today to hang out with her as she recovers from a left hemicolectomy, I saw one of her myriad post-it notes stuck to the side of my step-dad’s dresser; life is lived forwards but understood backwards. It’s a version of a quote by Kierkegaard about how – if I understand correctly – we can never really understand our lives because they don’t stop long enough to contemplate the happened, the happening, and the yet-to-happen.
If the internet is correct:
Det er ganske sandt, hvad Philosophien siger, at Livet maa forstaaes baglaends. Men derover glemmer man den anden Saetning, at det maa leves forlaends. Hvilken Saetning, jo meer den gjennemtaenkes, netop ender med, at Livet i Timeligheden aldrig ret bliver forstaaeligt, netop fordi jeg intet Øieblik kan faae fuldelig Ro til at indtage Stillingen: baglaends.
("It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards." Often shortened to "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards"---in Danish, Livet skal forstaas baglaens, men leves forlaens.)
---Søren Kierkegaard
Soren made the word count 420. I get high to get rid of my nightmares. Lately, I’ve realized that my nightmares are the effect but not the cause. Today I logged out of Instagram.
I haven’t studied German since college, but Yue will include German words in her emails to me and it makes my mind feel young. My German professor used to tell me, as I’d be in a rush to leave campus for the weekend, “Don’t wish your life away.”
💓💓 sogar deine Bewusstseinsströme sind fantastisch!
Happy to see you writing again. You always have a deft way with words that makes me totally jealous hahaha.