Why Work? > Why Work?
Why Bother-I do this to pass the hours. Only to pass the hours.
Holden:
I do this to pass the hours. Only to pass the hours. This couple sentences do things to me. I use them as a signature . And it's as good an answer as any when you start to question what's the point of doing anything. Regardless of our goals and intentions, eventually it all comes down to "killing time while time kills you", as they say. So, in a way, passing the hours is the ultimate point of anything.
I am entirely ready and by degrees am giving myself over to those forces which go their own way and take us with them. Can you feel us both being swept into a tempest of transfigurations? Can you feel the fever?
Nation of One:
I do feel the fever.
"killing time while time kills you"
That is why I talk into a recorder and listen to it. This is why I enjoy listening to music.
In his talk about the debt we owe to the "Drunken Indians" (meaning North American Aborigines who took to drinking booze as an act of defiance/confusion), John Trudell says they were, in effect saying, "You won't let us be who we are, and we certainly are not going to become what you would have us be, so we will just be NOTHING. We will DO OUR TIME and simply get through it." (with comic indifference and downright hostility)
Very often our rebellion is self-destructive.
Why Bother? I had ceased all "message board" activity. Remember, we only started this board because we both felt like we were in some kind of Lovecraft story ... and it is best we keep our discussions organized, which would be impossible with email since it has been so over-run with spam advertz.
Out of time again. You keep my neurons firing brother.
Peace.
Holden:
"You won't let us be who we are, and we certainly are not going to become what you would have us be, so we will just be NOTHING. We will DO OUR TIME and simply get through it."
Its something I have said to myself innumerable times.
Remember, we only started this board because we both felt like we were in some kind of Lovecraft story ... and it is best we keep our discussions organized, which would be impossible with email since it has been so over-run with spam advertz.
This blog is the oasis in my desert-like life.
Nation of One:
--- Quote from: Holden ---This blog is the oasis in my desert-like life.
--- End quote ---
I do not take you for granted, Holden. Raul, Ibra, Silenus ... also very much appreciated. Raul was perhaps the sole presence reading the blog at wordpress, motivating me to treck to the library to post before I had access to computers and connection from the current domicile.
At least one person was reading the blog, and offering encouragement. Just knowing that someone with a pulse was reading what I typed helped me immensely. It takes courage and a certain confidence to stand as alone as we do.
Quality, not quantity. We really are in a science-fiction zoo. With others in day to day life, there is a demand that we "not be so negative," and that in itself makes it difficult to just be myself.
It is said that people are "too busy surviving" to think too deeply about anything. Our societies have managed to promote labor, any kind of labor, as heroic, and any kind of "contemplation" as "daydreaming, goofing off, etc."
One really has to find a way to transcend the tyranny of public opinion. I think that this discussion board may help us in this respect.
In In the First Circle, where the character Nerzhin represents Solzhenitsyn himself, Nerzhin reflects on how his life has been one long, senseless, depressing chain of misfortunes from which he lacked the strength to struggle free. I have to say, going through my notes has been somewhat painful, but I would like to sink into these raw emotions - to allow this powerful mood to take root in my entire being.
Holden:
--- Quote ---I do not take you for granted, Holden.
--- End quote ---
Thank you and neither do I. I have noticed that you having been posting a lot more message on the board of late and I guess,you do that because it brings to you a degree of solace as it brings to me.From my perspective,I could not be happier,this is really a feast for me -to be able to read so many things written by you.
Its a pity that the US,surely of the the richest countries in the world, has not been provide better support to you.As for India, it appears to me, that all it could afford is a Kafka,meaning someone who works full time and then writes/thinks/philosophizes/studies maths in his own time but not a Schopenhauer.
Russel writes that "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."I have a hunch that most of the people who work in my company try to forget themselves and focus on work,work which is mostly soul-crushing.
But they would rather be slaves and work the whole day long than think about this strange predicament they find themselves in.They follow the script in letter and in spirit.Even the slightest of deviations from it is enough to reduce them to a quivering jelly.
People like you are rare,in that, you wish to squarely face the predicament.
A girl of about five or six,in the street, was selling roses.Ten rupees for a rose. She begged to me buy one. She said"Brother,please do buy one rose". And it hurt me deeply. She is, to call a spade a spade, a beggar.A beggar at the ripe old age of six.And yet this is what the machine of existence produces in large quantities.
It is enough to test the patience of a saint and I am not one. I did not buy the rose. I just hurried away.I hope some of the couples, there were many around that place, would have bought it from her. It just hurts to see her plight because I could have been that girl myself.
Whatever it is that brought us into being ,it could very well be perpetual.That little girl might be stuck selling roses on that street corner forever.The roses looked dead.And while I could not detect any smell, I felt sure they must be emitting nauseating smell.
Another kid was sitting in the bifurcation area.Between two roads with heavy traffic.His eyes turned to stone. Maybe a his soul too.
Take care.
https://youtu.be/CMbI7DmLCNI
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