Caesar Or Nothing · 4:44am May 12th, 2020

“A despairing man is in despair over something. So it seems for an instant, but only for an instant; that same instant the true despair manifests itself, or despair manifests itself in its true character. For in the fact that he despaired of something, he really despaired of himself, and now would be rid of himself…. Thus when the ambitious man, whose slogan was "Either Caesar or nothing", does not become Caesar, he is in despair over it. But this signifies something else, namely, that precisely because he did not become Caesar he now cannot bear to be himself. Consequently he is not in despair over the fact that he did not become Caesar, but he is in despair over himself for the fact that he did not become Caesar.”

There’s this great little essay that’s pretentious but honestly pretty relatable called “I Know What You Think of Me”. I’ll link it here. The last line kinda got memed to hell, but it's got the truest shit. Yeah, being known is an ordeal. The mortifying ordeal of being known.

I kinda fuckin hate Hegel, but he’s right about how much of what and who we are comes out of seeing and being seen. Who I am is not something I can fully answer without interaction with someone else. To see myself, to see myself fully, I must have an interlocutor. I must have you.

This is under normal circumstances mortifying, stressful, and inefficient. This recognition through the Other--to be seen and to see simultaneously to be created as you create in relation to the Other--is a constant circling series of questions that work themselves out messily and sometimes violently, but eventually in synthesis. Inevitably, either through conversation, through conflict, through fist fights or fucking or playing Magic the Gathering somehow we will know both ourselves and (to an extent) each other.

The problem is that I and I guess you as well live in very not normal circumstances right now.

I live with someone, which is good. The fox is lovely and good and sweet and adorable and listens to MST3K a lot.

And yet I find myself so often lonely. We all have off and on, expressed in different ways. We were made to experience the Other and in more than one form. We were made to experience them over and over, to pass them in the street, to write things they will read and to say things they will hear. It is impossible--were it possible it would probably be somewhat irresponsible--for one person to bear the weight of all of the Others you were meant to see and be around. We would break under that primordial weight. This is not what we mean when we say we want to be someone’s all (and if it is you have fundamentally misunderstood what our fragile hearts can withstand, friend, and I pray for your safety).

There are obviously workarounds here, its not like the world has in a single pandemic lost its mind and soul utterly. Our technological arts are all at work around us, connecting best they can face to face. Zoom, discord, twitch, twitter, Small digitized faces and compressed voices with background static adulterating their dulcet tones.

Do you feel touch starved? Even with someone who could hug you near by, even right after they just have? A touch starvation not of reasonable need but of unreasonable and unknowing need. Not I need a hug if you don’t mind but an absurd stupid aching that won’t go away that comes back in other forms even when you deny it, It comes back as uncomfortably omnipresent sexual frustration or as emotional eating or as an itch right in the perfect spot on your back or as insomnia as you stare at the ceiling wondering why, O God, did you make beings that need to sleep to live, and for what did purpose did you make them to suffer, O god? Who will save me from this body given unto death etc.

More and more I find it hard to concentrate. My progesterone shipment is supposed to arrive soon and I’ve already started obsessively worrying about when it’ll arrive. I’ve started staring at discord praying somone will send me a message I can awkwardly insistently turn into a conversation, one that lasts a whole ten minutes. I make small talk with the cashiers at the gas station. I ask the card and game store owner about how things are going. People I meet in person who can talk do so more than they ever would have, eager to do so freely at last.

Sitting in front of the screen waiting I see myself less as human and more as a thousand hands grasping and clawing at void floundering, a burden, a beast out of the mists of grecian nightmares. C.S. Lewis writes about this unhealthy obsession with finding the Inner Circle, that you HAVE to get in but can never truly enjoy being in for all inner circles have further circles, that the whole world might just be circles all the way down ever tightening in on themselves. The feeling I have is like that but so, so much worse.

I think the worst thing is being presented with the definite knowledge of your own finitude. Not in a mortality kind of way, but in that you are not Important. In other’s eyes, in their lives and feeds, you are just another person. The way you talk about others, a character in the background of your story? That’s you. That’s you to everyone. It’s me to you, but also you for me.

The more I think about that the more horrible it is. “Sonder” that old idea was a romantic vision, but it was of oneself a small part of a vast whole, a cog in a beautiful machine. It was standing before a mountain and knowing your smallness. This isn’t that. Sonder required the seeing/seen. This feeling is of the vast indifference with which we operate. And I do not mean this in a moral sense, there’s no judgement to that, just that it's accurate. It is no sin to be some degree of indifferent to others in the course of life. If you and I are walking opposite ways upon the street and you do not remember me, nor I you, that is no sin. I mean, assuming we do not recognize one another, of course. Strange ships passing unseeing in the night, if nothing is amiss, need not be troubled by receiving no hails. (how can you be troubled if you never noticed?)

But that indifference does not harm us primarily when it is casual and when it is something which we can avoid merely by talking to someone we know. I think the agony, the newly found and now socialized agony, is in the inescapable aspect of this indifference. It is the opposite of Psalm 139--

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

Cruelly, now we cannot be seen at all. Those of us not desperately breaking quarantine at every moment (I’ll get back you, quarantine) find ourselves with less and less able to break the indifference, and the background noise that we would have allowed to slough in recognition of the Other just accumulates, until we’re tracking in our own alienated image everywhere we go, broken and mocking. We are not just unimportant to the world, but to the ones that we thought cared.

We are just another friend, or just another name in a discord contact list or a random username in a game lobby that no one laughs at despite our hopes someone might find our inane bullshit funny. We have been made to abruptly and totally re-evaluate our connection to each other. Are we mutual friends? Or is one of us more invested than the other? And if so, what if anything is to be done about that? Should we even care? If you are in the group call, what does it mean? If you are outside, what does it mean?

If there isn’t a group call at all, what does that mean?

The baseline of what we so contemptuously called Normal is disrupted. I said I would get to the quarantine. Even were the whole world to open up next monday, with the virus defeated, the whole world’s been touched, and my own country has been violently disrupted. The unemployment rate is probably hitting north of 20%. Millions of people kinda just didn’t go outside for awhile.

I think that it is safe to say that we will come out of this a little Weirder. It’s easy to frame the Roaring 20s as being just an age of excess on the east coast, but how much of that was the attempt of a bunch of normal people to be the opposite of everything that they had been for a year during the Spanish Flu? In similar situation to us, they found themselves erased in the minds of friends and lovers and as soon as they were released they lost their minds.

Wouldn’t you? Won’t you? Not in the same way, maybe. But if you can, if things get better, wouldn’t you? Clubs, drinking with friends, marathoning movies in crowds in packed apartments, doing stupid shit with your old college friend who got stuck in town with their parents at the time of the order. Even if you won’t, you can understand it.

The normal that we had does not return. It can’t, probably.

We will have to do something with these feelings. We’re going to have to actually accept or at least approach our action or inaction in our millions-of-isles archipelago. And I don’t know what we’ll do or be but god we’ll be something. The Covid-beast slouching towards Bethleham to be born is almost there, baby. It’s here to stay for a long-ass time.

More than the excesses of freedom, I worry about the deprivations to come. Both physically and mentally/spiritually, we’re all about to go through some austere times. (aside from those in their high towers attending the masque of red) Jobless, or touchless, lonely or mad, the healthy and the unhealthy, the young and the old, with no definitive end in sight and no sign that we’ve managed to adapt well anywhere in these disjointed states, without mercy or hesitation the austere times are coming like the rain comes on in Mississippi, first with whispers and then with such ferocity that everything around you floods.

I’m worried what I’ll do or say or be in a day, let alone a month. I worry about what kinda person I will be. I worry that I’ll re-adjust to these levels of contact and I won’t know how to handle contact anymore. Thus-- Thus.

Thus when the ambitious woman, whose slogan was “Either we go back to normal, or I’ll lose it” does not get to go back to normal, she is in despair over it. But this signifies something else, namely, that precisely because she did not become the normal self she now cannot bear to be what she is. Consequently she is not in despair over the fact that he did not achieve that peace, but she is in despair over herself.

Can we be something in of our ourselves? Can we be something without the constant reminder of the Other? I don’t know if we should, or if we can, but we might have to try to learn how. Or maybe it's just me.

Maybe it’s just me, in front of a computer, head full of books I half remember. Maybe the only finite thing here is me, and I’m pining for a chorus invisible, or maybe it’s just me, the books, gunpowder green tea poured into a Newk’s cup because I don’t know why, Protomen in the background, voices in my headphone ear, waiting for a new normal. Maybe it’s me that needs to learn who I am when there’s no one to talk to.

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darf

darf #1 · May 12th, 2020 · 1 · ·

you remind us very strongly of someone we used to know. we're sorry you're suffering. but that seems a silly summation of all these thoughts and feelings swirling around.

say hello some time. <3

SPark

SPark #2 · May 12th, 2020 · 1 · ·

Do you feel touch starved? Even with someone who could hug you near by, even right after they just have?

Big fucking mood.

It's dumb, because in an average three months or so I maybe shake a couple of hands at church, the end. (I mean, other than people I *live with* who are still here and that hasn't changed.) This last couple of months of missing only that shouldn't make much difference. But you miss what you can't have.

Are we mutual friends? Or is one of us more invested than the other? And if so, what if anything is to be done about that?

The idiotic, useless, illogical, meaningless attempts to quantify how often I start a conversation vs. how often somebody else is the one who reaches out to me is a constant aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Cynewulf