10% of the world has a sixth finger in their right hand. 7% tie their shoes the wrong way Only 2% don’t tie them at all 42% sob spontaneously at 11pm And 68% masturbate afterwards 2% look at sky thinking it’s a good day 74% won’t say Hi back to you when they don’t know you Numbers don’t lie right People do When walking on Rittenhouse Square you can test this Wave at all the strangers passing by Wait for them to look up the sky Look at their under-eye bags filled with stories The ones in black t-shirts just lost their jobs People walking their dogs have family stuff That one saxophone player is having a great day He might've been dumped by his girlfriend No one is reading their stories Their pages remain unturned Everyone walking on Walnut St Could have died the day before But their stories keep writing Can't stop walking through their books Telling their stories to themselves In the mirror with just looks Every morning getting up shedding Every gesture and motion fading Every memory once treasured ebbing In the flow of the neighbor's story In the narrative of another one's glory 76% of statistics are made on the spot And 100% are capable of love Turn the page of your book All you need is a little shove
The Anxiety of Existing
I have been feeling the existential dread peaking through my curtains at night lately. It almost feels like a gigantic kraken passing by my tiny mouse window and looking inside to find only a pitiful scene. At any point it could smash my reality into oblivion or choose to ignore my singular insignificant existence.
So I started looking as to what other people had said about some big questions: why are we here, how are we here and what am I. I got pretty sidetracked with some historic hijinks and gossip like the cafe club that Isaac Newton was a part of before his whole “gravity exists and I can prove it” revelation. There is much to look for when trying to find answers to big questions and I am no big philosopher to get close to answer them, maybe just conscious enough to wonder about them. Thus, I started with a concept I was familiar with, René Descartes’ famous quote “I think, there I am” or ergo cogito ergo sum for anyone who knows latin.
The questions Descartes proposed is basically the same one proposed in the Matrix, how do we know anything is real. This has been explored by other famous thinkers but the Descartes summarized it in this beautiful, concise and misinterpreted phrase. Descartes philosophy of skepticism dealt more in the how than the why and that leaves many questions open for interpretation like “Is anything from a reality we don’t know it exists worth it.” The translation in English makes it seem that because I have thoughts I exist. The whole idea began as a thought experiment for Descartes thinking what is real in comparison to a dream. When you are in a dream you can talk, you can see things, you can invent other people interacting with you, what is the difference? We can’t trust our senses because they can easily be confused by dream-like illusions. Experiences are basically information and now we can understand the science of how the brain stores this information, our own memories are easily altered like a can of Bud Light melting away inside the forgotten fire pit of a college party house.
Literature followed suit using this question to build stories around it. One of my favorite classical examples of this is the Spanish play by Pedro Calderon de la Barca titled Life is a Dream. The title is self-explanatory but the story showcases this ; the story is about an imprisoned prince whose father decides to give him a chance at ruling the kingdom. So to test the prince’s poise and morality he is put to sleep so the king can move him from his prison to the kingdom’s castle. When the prince wakes up, he believes he is merely in a dream and thus proceeds to enjoy the perks of being a king. His greedy and capricious attitude proved he wasn’t fit for the crown so the king imprisoned him again in his sleep. One of the most memorable scenes of this play was the soliloquy the prince performs wondering about the meaning of his life in contrast to the dream he had, thus stating that if such a vivid dream was possible then life could be no more than another dream. The realization leads to him becoming better, knowing that in his life he would still prefer to be ethical and honorable, even if life was just an illusion.
This privilege of consciousness can be burdensome because humans are the only animal to doubt our own existence. Doubt is the very essence of what Descartes describes as the foundation of our existence. The original excerpt in French made more emphasis in this idea that doubting means we can think, and that means we exist. The Spanish play explores a situation of someone accepting his doubt of reality, if everything could be a dream then might as well be authentic. We can’t fully understand everything the universe has to offer and thinking that everything could just be a lie makes everything seem meaningless. There are many types of existential anxiety and thinking about questions many philosophers have proposed can keep your head in the clouds while the world moves around you. An article by Arlin Cuncic from VerywellMind talks more about what an existential crisis is and how to overcome the anxiety it brings. The thought is very common to the point where it becomes parodied by shows and movies but it brings many important questions we should be asking ourselves.
To think about the vastness out there beyond our blue ceiling and our place in all of this quantum clutter, to wonder, doubt and dread is part of what being conscious is. Humans are complex individuals, unique in this planet and we don’t even understand why we are that way. There is a world of things out there and maybe the reality we see is just as fleeting as any dream could be. Yet those who have tried to answer these questions have not left us with messages of paranoia or hopelessness, but of something beyond that. Descartes concluded that the Christian God put us here as conscious thinking individuals who are meant to doubt and exist and because of that we should trust reality. Calderon de la Barca used the prince’s monologue to portray a semblance of hope underneath the meaningless of an unsure life. Beyond everything there is something and as humans we are only a bit of something on a bit something bigger. Thinking about big questions is what makes us interesting but those dreadful answers should never stop our progress and our hope for tomorrow.
Links:
Cartesian Skepticism Crash Course: https://youtu.be/MLKrmw906TM
Life is a Dream full play: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2587/2587-h/2587-h.htm
VerywellMind article: https://www.verywellmind.com/coping-with-existential-anxiety-4163485
Pandemic Holiday
It’s beginning to look a lot
Like someone forgot
To stop the clock at midnight
And the night kept going
Showing off to the sun
That the clouds are stronger
The shadows they cast
Hover for longer
Somber are the lights
On empty balconies
The whiteness only silence
Of the carols left hanging
Lightning as the only
Christmas ribbon on the tree
Lighting fireflies on the leaves
Faces in the rising smoke
Soak in the last breath
Of a year long fight
The last bell chime
Of those we’ve left behind
I Can Feel
The dark magic of consciousness
Was a successful mistake
No errors in the code
All the witches’ chants ideal
No time, present or future
Just us in the center of it all
The candles were lit
The cauldron was filled
A mind, a soul
A body, a heart
We were walking worms once
But something sparked
And the magic started
And the fire ignited
Something giving light to the world
As if all the senses obscured
Were born from nothing
The big bang of self
I taste the whisky on the rocks
I can talk to the bartender
I can feel the stool under my scarred body
I can feel
The path up until now
Is blurred with magical runes
Something from nothing
And nothing again
Every memory is so vivid
Every possibility graspable
The names of “things”
Those things of understandable
I can feel
But how to know
Awareness is only there
When you are aware of it
How to know you know
I can feel the stool
But maybe I’m sitting on air
I can drink and drink
But maybe I’m drunk with emptiness
I can talk endlessly
Making up rhetorical questions
And the bartender only bored
From the meaninglessness of it all
Or maybe worse
He isn’t there
Maybe something made up
Like the words on this page
Like the pixels on the computer
You yourself reader
Just a fragment of a dream
Or maybe the fragment is me
I can feel
I don’t know if you can
But I know I can
Maybe thought came first
And maybe life second
But I know I can feel
I can feel
The grief and loss
I can feel
The warmth of a blanket
I can feel
The pesky sunlight
Waking me every morning
I can feel myself as one
Inside a big room
Painted with stars on the ceiling
Windows with skyscrapers
And rugged floors of grass and meadows
Not many but I can feel
And you might too
All around us there are bits
Of nothing but fragments
Whatever it is
Whenever it is
Wherever it is
We can feel it
The Gifts of the Mind
Atop the sky
The man of the North looks East
Then South then West
And he spots a tree
Engraved with chaos
Leaves of red and blood
People throw food at it
Stare at it, pray to it
Seen once by everyone
Often visited by only the fool
Sorting out the rot from the ripe
Picking the fruit no man saw
The weathered peaches
Lying to their face
The inciting apples
Bloated with rotten rage
But the tastiest is hidden
Painted with a flower
Talked only to the fool
And entered only
Through open doors
And the man of the North laughed
knowing the poor man’s luck
Burning Insomniac
Under the moonlight, beaming,
as the dawn lays in its sleep.
Bedsheets with ashes teeming
where broken dreams left to reap.
The frosty winds lay still
inside the empty cluttered room.
The time bombs ticking ‘till
a sudden sound of a silent boom,
yet the flame holds onto
the clock’s hands and legs
it stops those stubborn two
and kneels and begs
The smoke of burning blood
scares away the god of dreams
The shadows start to flood
this body’s etched seams
Screams from inside the walls
keep watery eyes restless.
The only ceiling light falls.
Chains of rage senseless
in the executioner’s bed
with no light but the burning steel.
Resentment and sorrow have led
to this, no tears, just burns to feel.
Firebrands engraved in my chest,
nightmares of fire in my head,
every single night with no rest
from the reminder of the dead
Quick Math for Anxiety Attacks
A marathon is 26 miles
running half of that shouldn’t take long
The first mile of 13
Filled with long seconds
4 minutes per mile
to end it in less than an hour
the training during study days
each routine planned for the week
months weren’t enough
The human body can survive 3 weeks without food
3 days without water
3 minutes without air
So as you enter the second mile,
breath
you’d be dead if you didn’t
count each breath as it were your last
don’t let an anxious heart fasten your pace
10 beats every 6 seconds
10 times you are reminded your heart
is still with you
count to 6
if your scars itch at night
count chocolate wrappers
make it sweet
ones and zeroes can’t hurt you
so keep running
and turn them into
non-binary digits
the third, the eight, the fifth
the middle miles are mindless
Your tired mind turns to a toddler
It took you years to walk
and it takes more
to run
Forget seconds, minutes or hours
miles are long
taking up space, present and future
years past hurt kilotons
no matter how many times you recount them
numbers flow in the river of asphalt
in front of you
keep running
and Count the steps
the track isn’t going anywhere
and
you can’t change the end
afraid of the ending stretch
or bearing a big number, still
Make every step count
Starved Anger
Sick of digging for scraps Reaching the empty bag Finding myself at the bottom for the last time No more eating dog food On the silver platter And now there's only way to reclaim what's mine The silverware rusted The door hinges busted A chained beast who only eats before bedtime The battered prison bars Are growing weaker But I will not wait in your room with quiet time No more shushing my screams You are ripping at the seams The smiling face masking your pain won't hide this crime I will tug till it breaks That is all that it takes No locked door can keep up the act of your fake shine Just try another rhyme Wait for the bell to chime But what you want is for this to be the last time
The Party Beyond
The fantasy of our existence might go beyond our comprehension as a species, all alone amidst millions of stars, only those of we can see. How selfish is it for us to think we are the only superior minds of the universe? Or how foolish is it to think there are others who have walked our same path? We are a pollen particle resting on the surface of Mars with just a small chance to grow something bigger than ourselves. Only if.
The words existential anxiety are not foreign to me and I was an outsider for fearing these questions or asking about the beyond, almost like it was a secret that everyone kept, a tru Fight Club situation. I have watched exurb1a channel’s for a while and it has brought me a sort of relief to these dreaded ideas, like it was not wrong to imagine the answers beyond that only add more questions. I appreciate his ideas and hopefully you can also find some existential relief listening to the hypothetical voice of those waiting for us beyond.
Sea Bottom
The water is cold
jet streams of submarine
volcanoes are the only thing warm
down here
In the deep darkness
even burning death has some Light
Drowning does not
Words are swallowed by the empty sound
of the glaring precipice
hope is left pitying from above
existence prevails but not Life
Light here is but a lure
a fishing net for lonesome corpses
organic material
with the wish to dissolve
Feed the abyss
the last ledge
was 10,000 leagues above
no way to get to it
swimming is easier than sinking
but Scarier
dumping this vat of nuclear waste of self
where no current can reach it
that is much Safer
no way to be cleaned
no will for it either
the burning core below would
end this Descent
reaching a Dazzling explosion
the pressure breaking the
Impenetrable walls of this vessel
flooding the still-empty pores
Of the stowaway inside
where little spheres of thoughts remain
No use for them at the bottom
they will be stripped from the corpse
They can have a chance to get out
somewhere new
someone else
my last breath will climb the darkness
knowing it can float
leaving this corpse alone
Hoping
To see the horizon
and climb even more
Write & Wrong 