River of Consciousness¶

Note

After this article ran I it was referenced a few times under the mistaken assumption that the river here is my own. While there are a few elements—mostly existential in nature—that have a basis in my own thoughts and feelings, the bulk of it is a work of fiction. I tried to put myself into the minds of people to see if there were more compassionate reasons for what appeared to me to be problematic behavior. It’s an amalgam of things based on my own interpretations and intuitions of [mostly]others.

You shake yourself. Death. Not existing. A momentary piece of you grasps the paradox of it and shakes you to the core. Desperate you hide from the idea and distract yourself. You talk to someone, read, turn on the TV, open your phone, open a book, walk around, run around, pace, direct your thoughts anywhere but the abyss. Step back from the precipice. Don’t dare look. Don’t dare dwell on that. Don’t dare ponder. Don’t dare.

So run. Run run run run run from it all. Go make babies. Now I’m not alone, I’ve made more things that have to face what I am running from. There. No reason to be ashamed. It’s natural. Evolution of course. Forces beyond our control. Drive to create life. God/random diety/Gaia/L Ron Hubbard… has a plan of course. I’m too small to know it. Freed of the responsibility to really face the abyss it’s okay to act out our feelings onto others. My religion must be protected. Others must NOT get in the way of me pushing it on others. I’m hurt. Better hurt others. I feel stupid. Seek out the stupid and put them in their place. That’s better. Everything has it’s place and problems come when things don’t know their place so I’m doing good work by putting it back. Things out of place are an affront. No parallax allowed there is only one privileged frame of reference. I’ve a duty and sometimes it isn’t pretty but there it is. Someone has to do it. I’d better protect everyone from those out of place concepts ideas feelings unsafe unsafe alert here I am it’s okay. I feel attacked. New feelings. Must address. I must fight run fight run attack blame evade hide confront. What is best? What is safe is what is best. Protect myself. I’m important. I have to be. I am the one with this experience. Am I an experience? What am I?

Shit. Hit the abyss again. TV shows are amazing. Such depth. Check this one out that I found. How dare you say THAT show is good. I’ll show you what is right. The cows aren’t home yet so we have plenty of time to debate. What will happen next? Delight in the absurd. Delight in the nuance. Delight in prediction. Feel good when predictions are right. I’m RIGHT. Evidence I’m important. I have an important point of view. Mine is mine. Mine. Mine. Possession. I owned those people. I’m better. Better than what? Self doubt. It creeps. So many are more than me. I’m not as good. It’s all so vast. I’m small. Your existence makes me feel lesser. How dare you do that to me. It must be on purpose. You are trying to bring me down. You think you’re superior. How dare you do you know who I am? I’m tired of the way your actions make me feel lesser. I’ll bring you down. See how it feels to be brought down? Good. Now you feel bad too so it’s okay. No way I was going to let my bad feelings say with me. No way, I have to get them out and onto others. Step on them on the way up. My feelings are the ones that are important.

Feelings. What are feelings? Emotions? Chemicals? Chemical signaling can make one happy or sad or afraid. Am I machine? Am I human? Dancer? What experiences? Will experience always? What is asking? Asking? Why? Why relevant? What is it that I don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it please it can’t be real am I real is death real how can it be real if I can’t experience it at all? Am I all? All? One? What are you? Please? Are you here with me? Is there a here? Why does anything exist at all? How could nothing exist? What is ISness? Loops. Loops. Loops. Loops. Fear. Dread. Loops. Can’t resolve it. Can’t resolve it. Paradox? Is it logical? Could it be? Existence and non-existence? Can there be both? Can there be one without the other? Must I die because all existence is finite? Is the finite nothing relative to everything or is everything meaningless as soon as there is nothing finite? In all of everything is there meaning? What is meaning? Does it exist independently of me? I HATE this.

Better not think about it. It’s too much.

FUCK YOU ALL. You’re patronizing me; vilifying me; silencing me; glorifying the evil; calling me a coward; calling me anything I don’t want to be called; what are you doing this for? I won’t be treated like this that’s disrespectful and boy is respecting me important. I don’t respect myself really but I say I do and the way I act like I do is to not take all this shit. Shit. Shit. Drowning in it keep going we can keep it all at bay if we work together. Let’s get our shit together. Make it fight. You fight me. I’ll fight you. We’re different and that has to be resolved. Has to fit into an order. There’s a natural order and if we fight it out it’ll automatically get sorted and things will be in their place again. Nothing abstract here. Facts. Solid facts. This is all real and so important that I feel like I should be spending most of my waking life swimming in it. It’s not a distraction how dare you. It’s just how I recharge or blow off steam or keep the world from descending into chaos. Ignore the pain inside me. Your confrontations your challenges your differentness is a threat. I don’t want to dig too deeply into me. I know what’s there. I know myself really well I promise. I can always tell that I’m being objective and everyone else well - they’re the ones who are biased and affected. What is your intent?

Intent?

Can anything besides me have intent? Is selfness special? Or am I all? Am I secretly afraid I am all and thus ultimately important but ultimately alone or am I secretly afraid I’m nothing and not special? Why do I need to be special? Is special a part of existence or is it just a feeling? An opinion? Whose opinion? Mine? Narcissist. Coward. Why am I never doing the things I say I should be doing? Why am I not studious. Why are other accomplishments more than my own. What happens if I did reach my goals? That’s the problem. Nothing happens. Eventually it’s all gone, all dead, no more. Built a civilization? Smashed to ash by the staggeringly large universe. Sun is burned. Universe has reached maximum entropy. All is gone. It’s ALL going into the void, just at different rates. Some things last longer but none last forever. Why do I even care about legacy? Maybe I do and don’t? How can I hold a contradiction? Maybe I have to try not to think about how nothing matters so that I have a reason to do things but that doesn’t work for herculean efforts… maybe I am a coward. Why don’t we face it? IS there a we? Global we? Individual we? Why am I like this? Everyone else must not be. It must just be me.

You shake yourself. Death. Not existing. A momentary piece of you grasps the paradox of it and shakes you to the core. Desperate you hide from the idea and distract yourself. You talk to someone, read, turn on the TV, open your phone, open a book, walk around, run around, pace, direct your thoughts anywhere but the abyss. Step back from the precipice. Don’t dare look. Don’t dare dwell on that. Don’t dare ponder. Don’t dare……………………