If you ever held the soft-bind of Catch-22, it displays a contorted red body. Left corner. I believe it to be a chalk outline of some crime scene. Still, a sun-dried tomato red with some butter mixed in, garlic for an outline. Plastic blue plate.
Instead of just one body outline, I imagine a thousand and it’s us. And the red is flowing, our pulse in us. But we’re in perpetual free fall. This feels more appropriate, as I used to characterize our passings to be leaning against the train window. Where we pass each other, separate trains, spare chance, the reflection of yourself imposed upon mine for however long that eternity appeared (despite it being a second at best).
Falling is more appropriate because we’ve lost mutual standing. That’s why I stopped writing here, because it didn’t make any sense to do so. What do you gain from it and what do I gain from it? I could not answer. How could you, when it’s confirmed that most people don’t even know why they carry on? The gravel crumbled along with the rest of the juncture and now everyone is gasping for breath while they’re falling. So I stopped writing.
I stopped because I made sound Reason the center of all actions and thoughts. Why do you type here? Why do you read this? Why do you talk to people? Is the reason good enough? Why are you doing this or that? When following along, I didn’t have a rationale to write anymore. There’s no rationale to be had in making friends online, or to read of people online when you weren’t seeking a particular section. Aimless. There’s little point in throwing my scraps out to the wind if I’m not even sure what they serve, what sort of patchwork you’ll sew them in. To “help” people unnecessarily when I myself was drowning. Maybe a blue moon you survey all of the different homebrewed sites and that’s the start and end, why are you still here? There isn’t much reason, then you see the screen composed of static pixels and you’re getting cramps.
But I’m back, and I’m here to tell you of a Catch-22: Most people talk by suspending reason, yet you need a reason to talk, and a good reason to continue. The reason isn’t always entirely sound: a vague loneliness pokes at you but this isn’t substantial at all; have you probed it more deeply? Maybe not, because most people want to forget Reason, even myself at times. Reason is hard, it takes energy, it’s not necessarily that fun. Why sedate yourself otherwise with everything available, from sweets to erotica? To get away from the pain of growth. It’s not fun to realize all of those times playing games, walking along, grabbing donuts and lounging about was decided with the thought capacity of a goldfish. To see that all of those years you spent with people were unsound, and rightfully a painful memory since you didn’t think it through. I didn’t think it through at all. And even the pain I didn’t think through either. It’s not fun to see how all of this pain is of your own doing, and it’s because one neglects reason out of reflex. But it’s worth working through.
When you’re in free fall, you forget what it’s like to be grounded. You don’t remember the lack of anxiety on the other side. You forget how lovely Logos (logic) can be, how it can save you, how you’ve been in free fall all of your life. And I was free falling previously. Not anymore. Got a meadow to rest on now. After setting up camp, I found that I was alone on the meadow, and had absolutely no good reason to talk to you.
I’m stationed on the hill, you’re flying around, how can we construct anything with the air slipping out? Maybe I suspend my gravity to fly with you, but this flight path isn’t going to last long, and we can’t build anything substantial. Perhaps we both have floating hills for a moment. How does one build a bridge between distant floating islands, or why, when you can float on over? Still, to float is to have no solid ground, and the lacy air vapor between us scatters at the slightest movement, and so you make more weak covalent bonds with others to forget. That even if you manage a bridge, since the island itself is floating, it could break away any moment with one tempest. Why were we building the bridge to begin with? Another way to lounge? Then we disconnect. Reality shows there’s rare reason to talk to people when neither are rational actors, that the very construction of our meeting is irrational in nature, that if we adopt rational grounds we find we have no materials to build with one another anyway.
My Catch-22 binds me. There are requisites to type now. But I thought I could at least write about how my hands are often bound. And how I don’t mind it at all. And that, well, that I realized it’s within my interest for YOU to be grounded too. We could strike some deals that way. For that’s how the world works. And maybe relaying this information to you will find you a bit less confused. That karma is amok, but I think karma only works if I have an Identity attached. Perhaps. Perhaps not. In either case, I started writing again because it is within my interest for you to grow rationally with me. That is, until the day I profit off your irrationality, such as selling you addiction. Could I?
What troubles me, sometimes, is how short I fall. Everyday. There’s nothing I can provide you, for example, beyond some detached appliances and maybe some amusing stuff to read for a bit. But I can’t build you a house, can’t strike a deal at all. There’s no deal here. We’re free falling, and perhaps that’s apt, to float with angels in the stand. We’re breaking the mortal coil into singularity, perhaps. But you know, I thought I could at least attempt to assert the meadow I am in now.
I’ll come forward and say the last couple of weeks from my departure of writing here has been unsubstantial, totally of my own volition, but I suppose it’s because there are just so many assumptions I have to reason my way through, on toward paradise.
At least I found a reason to continue writing here: for us to both become rational actors, so that maybe one day we will write up our mutual contract, provide our ends, maybe add some hors d’oeuvres of distinct experience. I don’t have to fly off the cliff to talk to you… I hope.