For INTPHIL//
in the sudden coldness of this summer evening. in the black hole of loneliness that ever pulls us under in the sight of dark clouds engulfing the light from shedding its hope and warmth. in this room, i try to make use of this feeling-- try to capture it and mold it into letters that transforms into names of you and me, commas for phrases that discern a single feeling into hundreds of metaphors, or periods that end something more than thought of words, like it finishes a firm decision of No or Yes.
and this have always been, and will forever be, my drug. here again i let fingers to push the plastic keys of letters in the hopes of making something beautiful. even in the absence of music, even if these plastic keys don't emit the dynamic notes of do re mi like the piano, this is still beauty. there is still beauty.
my cousin died last saturday. she was pretty like a model, young, and she was in training to be a makeup artist in this high-end makeup cosmetics company. i was surprised and sad when mother broke us the news. surprised because she was young, and there was so much in her life to look forward to in her age. i think, even if i have lived for a hundred years, there would still be many things to look forward to. and sad, because the world did not even know this. my family did not notice it, there was no empathetic hunch of an invisible thread in our bloodline being viciously snapped apart. there were no moving mountains, no sudden thunderstorms or hail falling out of a summer sky, the world did not care.
and here i remember that blue guy in that movie about masked heroes with personal issues. heard his existensial views and his musings that 'life is a highly overrated phenomenon', and that 'even if this world would die, the universe would not even notice.' and i guess i understood what he meant by that. understood how our lives would seem so miniscule compared to the galaxies and stars that ever shift through time. and i remember Rorschach, how influenced he was about Nietzsche's view, that his words bring a certain chill to my heart,
"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach."
it's not the chill of hearing a crazy man mumble words of our nothingness, or the absence of God. it's not the kind you feel because of disbelief that some crazy guy who is actually a hero, thinks like this. it's the kind that's there because you know, even if you try to deny it, that deep down in your guts you feel that he is undeniably right. and in that kind mentality, in knowing there is no Greater Power, Rorschach knew he was the only one defining his own moral thought and integrity--without religion, or bias, without compromise. his salvation was in his own hands and he knew this without fail. and this made him strong, but at the same time, this was the reason why he needed to die in the end.
so you may know now why this kind of notion isn't as accepted by the masses as it should be. Existentialists, or to be more specific, Nihilists, embrace the fact of the emptiness of life, the lack of meaning to our routines that most of us believe, defines who we are. it's kind of funny because Fight Club's Tyler Durden also had some of these views. and people are drawn to these figures because of their powerful presence and conviction.
and maybe the darkness of life isn't for everyone to accept. maybe it's better to think there is more to this. more to death. more to everysinglething that we are going through if we just give meaning to it. not the kind of meaning you get when you own a bag worth more than your semi-annual salary combined, or the kind of self-worth you get when you know that you have a better job than other people. true meaning is something that you don't search for in your CGPA, or the number of cars you own, how many times you go to Starbucks in a week, or all of those consumerism nonsense. meaning is the way you feel when you see the sky, and you cringe because you can see the majesty of it all, including yourself and the people around you. meaning is understanding that everyday is a new chance to make something beautiful and worthwhile. this is real meaning, and life is man's never-ending journey in search of that meaning.
