On Fear and Chaos

Day 27

“...afraid of being seen...” - words I heard whispered once from a schoolmate, during a group project. We were filming a short video, and one of us had to act out a character's lines– but they didn't feel comfortable acting in front of somebody. They asked the rest of the group to turn around, to not look at them, while they did the piece. Too many eyes hurt, too many eyes was to tough to get trough – or perhaps the eyes could be gotten trough, the acting could be out in public, but it needed time, time to gain trust, time to feel that something terrible wasn't going to happen. What? Nobody knows – the monster in the closet may have dread fangs and terrible teeth if we talk about him, but more often then not I envision him as a nameless dread, a feeling almost indescribable except by the name of fear, for all the good that does. We don't name fear and then know it – we now fear, and then name it.

Small things can mean a lot. Words half heard uttered by someone that I don't really know, not directed to me. A sentence I don't remember, about an event I can barely recall. Like trying to grab mist with your hands. Witnessing someone panicking over responding to a message, we too feel and understand their panic, for it has been our panic. How could we possibly communicate this moment of empathy? How could we possibly understand it?

It reminds me of me. Its an articulation of something that I too have thought and felt. Uttered by a child, a peer, and elder, what does it matter? Does the person who says the word change how we think of it? If the words were said by somebody else, would the meaning that we have from them change?

Either way I'm tired. I'm more tired than you can imagine, beyond the memory of rest. A tightness in the chest and a weight upon the breast, like atlas holding the world up, like somebody pushing the boulder up the hill. Push hard enough and the boulder flies upward for half a breath, running off your shoulders before coming back down harder. Damned if I do, damned if I don't, what do I want to do?

Other words I have heard, other feelings and ideas that showed me myself, or whispered to me of something which was a little more real than what I saw and felt, a sound that tied on the lips of the past and never reached the winds of the future. A nothing and yet a something, a em that reaches everywhere yet one I can't see clearly. We can connect to all that we hear and have, and yet be far enough away that we can't touch it.

How afraid can you be? How much can you open up? How many masks can you wear? Sometimes it seems that I can only say what I really mean when I talk to myself. Am I a coward and afraid, in a world I never made? To an extent. I have limits too – but so does the world. At least I have to think so If I didn't, I would drown. Drown – but it wouldn't be me drowning, it would be someone else. Someone else, something else, does this make sense? I know people can be vicious and mean, can be pretty and sure of themselves. People want to help – but sometimes that help is harm. Sometimes I do feel that we need to be self-reliant, self-reliant in such a way that any help is a harm. Or rather, any intended help, any help that pushes. We are fighting against the world, against ourselves and more.

I'm coming to the end of my first month here in Finland. I have had, maybe, two ten-minute conversations with somebody the entire time I've been here. I haven't talked much, or even left the apartment much. Why? I'm tired. I found out a long time ago that I can either do philosophy, I can either think – or I can talk to people. I can of course do both at once, but I can't be excellent at both at once. If 'excellence' is something I can reach, that is. Perhaps my meanderings are endless, perhaps I

am lost in a maze of my own head and I only think that this a way out. Perhaps I have said nothing that hasn't been said before, and will be heard by nobody. I don't know – I'll never be sure either way I think, not enough to deal with any doubt in my heart. The heart rules the head, and so my intelligence says that I'm doing something – that only goes so far.

So if I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't, then what should I do? Perhaps not acting is at least less of a trial, less of a spending of energy, leading to a lesser pain. Perhaps acting a way out, or its only a way deeper. There is an old story of Buddhism about Buddha sitting beneath the bodhi tree, when a being called Mara comes up to him and and taunts him. Offering him all the riches of the world and all the powers of princes. Mara was, as I recall, an illusion of the world, the illusion of personal wealth and power, of physical pleasure and endless death. Buddha touches the earth and tosses Mara away, then achieves nirvana. If I believe everything, then I believe in Mara – Mara exists. If Mara is something that exists, if the illusion of the world is something that exists – than what is it? Does Mara have some sort of Buddha nature, some part of Mara that also escapes the world? If Mara is effected by the earth, then Mara is attached to the earth. If Mara is seen by the Buddha, then Mara is attached to Buddha. If Mara is an illusion, if a mental figment of the imagination of the Buddha as a person, the part of us that whispers that buying one more thing or knowing one more fact will make us happy, then that still doesn't answer my question. At the end of the day its the same one as always – why is there something instead of nothing? Don't tell me how – tell me why. I want to know why, I why to want.

I tell a story about Mara, by why? Why that story, and here? Its a story that I first heard a long time ago, and one which I don't really remember too clearly. Like the tale I told at the start of this piece, its one that has stuck with me, that seems to have some meaning for me that is greater than a regular piece. Emerson once said that “I cannot remember the books I have read any more than the meals I've eaten; even so, they have made me”.* In the same fashion, it can be said that all that has happened in my life has contributed to who I am – even if I don't clearly recall at that has happened. How many of us can remember what we had for breakfast a month ago this day, or what it was like on the day after our 1rth birthday? Each petty cruelty we have experienced, each temper tantrum we have had, each time a pet came to us when we needed comfort – can we remember each time? I don't appear to, at least consciously. Nonetheless, all of those experiences have been a part of our lives, a part of the world and the reason the world is the way it is. I said that if we're damned if we do and damned if we don't, then we can do what we want – but what is it that we want?

Its not gems and riches, or not solely that. Is it someone that we can trust, or something we can hold onto? It is safety and shelter, or adventure and risk? Learning, or fighting? To be alone, to to be together? It's never clear, it's never sure. We can grab all that we may, and yet its not quite enough – or rather, its jest enough that nothing lasts.

I have mentioned two stories, but these issues are part of the same issue – why these stories, why these words? If the world is flawed, then those flaws are what make us unique. Each flaw is a weakness – but a weakness can also be a strength. Do certain words drag you down and remind you of your failures? Other words lift you up and suggest that you can do better. Some words release energies that allow the world to flow again, just like re-breaking a broken bone so it can be set properly. Like a battery, tear apart the matrix to resale the energy inside. This energy comes from my flaws, the cracks and pressures of my world, and to these words are important to me – because I am me. They somehow match a wavelength, or reveal some secret which is mine and yet I do not know. Maybe these rods are a trap, leading me to depression and a dead end – but is not a trap just another word for a trial, a test? A lot of people say that is what the world is after all.

A lot of people say that – in fact, a lot of people say a lot of things. I have asked questions here, and in many other places. There are certainly people who will answer them for me. There are people who have very logical reasons for their answers, or are very sure of them. There are answers which are healthy for me to know, and which can help me to heal from the wounds received through the tribulations of life. There are other answers which are scientific and grant power, or some answers which will bind me into a downward spiral, or in chains of bondage and order. There are so many answers to all sorts of questions – even questions I haven't asked yet. And yet, and yet – these answers are to me. I can ask what and why and how, and be answered clearly and concisely in ways that appears to be true in all sorts of directions. If I am confused about my morals or physics, my wants and my needs, then someone else can tell me all about them – but do I want that?

Emerson once said “On the other part, instead of [the mind] being its own seer, let it receive always from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery; and a fatal disservice is done.”**, and I feel that's not entirely wrong or right. Some answers are helpful, and are best given obliquely or understood from afar. Do I have the time, temper, and tendency to answer questions about the stress factors of concrete, the production of medicine to combat malaria, or the way to construct a timepiece? These are mechanical questions, ones which the world answers for me because I could spend my whole life learning how to answer them for myself. We stand on the shoulders of giants after all, and there are answers we should learn from giants. For all that though, we need to also be able to question these giants. The same goes for questions of morals and metaphysics – what should I do, what should I think exists? Wise old folk can tell me all about it, all the mistakes that I could and do make, and all the foolish decisions that I could have. All the ways in which my logic is wrong or my methods directly contradicts my goals. I should take heed of them, and judge their words with care. Yet, I do judge. All the answers I can receive are answers from the world, are rocks talking to me. They are more complicated answers, a method for dissolving salt instead of a wave of water that drowns me. I can understand these answers through language, through reasoning and the structures of the world. At the end of the day though, the answers I arrive at must satisfy me. Somehow.

Is this piece different from the others that I have written? I think so. It think its a little more flow-of-consciousness in its writing and execution. Its a bit chaotic, a bit all over the place. Yet, its connected all together. Connected by proximity, by origin, by destination, by system, by worry, by care. I'm trying to say something, to show something. Every action is a shout into the void, a scream to others and to ourselves. Philosophy is sometimes chaotic like this, is sometimes into the carefully measured and minutely figured out answers and thoughts that most papers are. Is that careful picture a goal we should strive for? Perhaps that would be better, perhaps a carefully measure and limber world is greater and grander then the mess in the mud that we have. Yet we came from mud, we began in stars. Is there rhyme or reason behind this poetic vision, or is it just the fancies of a mind unable to know whats up? Why do thoughts run round and round again and again – are they different each time, or the same?

Chaos is life, Order is life. What is life? I don't rightly know. I suppose I'm finding out.

* American Scholar Address by Ralph Waldo Emerson

** Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson