So what are you looking at?

Life can be like a childhood car ride on a rainy Sunday afternoon in March or April, where you don’t have any real concept of where your parents are taking you, and, while you’re bored, you’d rather keep riding than arrive and have to deal with the realities of the destination. In that case, I’m car-sick. Unfortunately, the impression of the car ride has taken its toll on my soul, and the eccentricities it has forced upon me will not be easily healed. Impracticalities is a word that comes to mind. To bring a lot of silverware on a boat just to act cool trying to keep it on the table nonchalantly as the boat rocks to and fro. There’s no more meaning in that than there is in the way the light comes into stairwell windows in glass buildings. There’s even less meaning in watching the sunset at a sediment depository on a windy summer day.

Those bizarre places you see from the expressway, with large piles of sands and salts and minerals. The conveyor belts to nowhere in the sky.

Such things have meaning to me. It may not matter now that they hold no practical meaning for anyone else. But it will matter very much if I decide to base the rest of my life on the inspiration I receive from wistful imagery. And I could do it too. Don’t doubt it. Some may say that there is more meaning in normal things than the fantastic, I believe the most meaning lies in vague, unrepeatable impressions whose esoteric message is hard enough to grasp by oneself, let alone convey with words. These strokes of inspiration are the most difficult things for me to convey in words, so logically they must be the most profound of my experiences, right?

Wrong. Having epiphanies over insignificant things isn’t a gift, it just means you have low standards.

I’m one of those philosophers who gets distracted readily, almost eagerly. To put it differently, my horizons are broadened every time I change my mind. Like finding out that sand slips easily out of a clenched fist, and trying instead to hold it in your mouth. That’s probably one of the most inadequate ways I could describe my situation, or anything for that matter. Analogies that don’t make sense, but are valuable only for their poetic and stylistic appeal, are something I could spend the rest of life producing. I am genuinely fascinated by such things. Perversions of logic that are grammatically correct are a lot of fun, mostly because of the irreverency of it. Sentences like “Checkers are fun, whereas canoeing is spelled differently.” This one has multiple layers. “Checkers are fun” implies not that the game is enjoyable, but that the individual pieces are amusing. Also, “canoeing” is spelled correctly here, and it should go without saying that it’s spelled differently than “Checkers.” Isn’t that wonderful? That absurd and worthless sentence is what I consider to be one of my most worthwhile accomplishes.

I’d just like to close by pointing out that non-nonchalance isn’t a virtue. Thanks for your time.