Seventeen Questions
How do you change from one minute to the next?
Why do you constantly question your emotions to that point?
Why do you share them with others, knowing the outcome only varies with your feeling of them in this particular corner of your mind?
Why do you continue to live in this space, the one that makes you question the core of every last occurrence?
Why do you continually make yourself vulnerable to those perceptions you create?
When do you expect to be able to let go and just breathe?
When does time start to matter less?
When does the internal dialogue cease?
When do you give yourself a minute to exist, unfettered by your self-imposed constraints?
How do you move from this to something more fitting?
Where is the point at which you become the ideal version of you?
Not the pretense, but an actual, with flaws all your own, those with which you’re able to coexist?
Are you just following that prescribed path to nowhere?
Has it all been preordained and if so, why go to the trouble of feigning free will?
Can you ever give yourself and give of yourself and give enough, and not feel the emptiness of that old vessel?
When do you just stop?
How do you stop? How do you stop.
11 November 2007 at 8:26 pm
Eighteen.
Nineteen.
Twenty.
Twenty-one.
And so on.
And so forth.
But life would be immensely tedious if we had all the answers. Let’s raise a glass to internal dialogues, shall we?
11 November 2007 at 9:22 pm
I dunno. You just do. But you have to not question yourself, first.
11 November 2007 at 10:52 pm
Ah the annoying friend in your head that never shuts up.
They are annoying, yes, but in many ways if they left me I’d be in more distress than their incessant questions cause.
But maybe thats just a fear of being alone. Hmm.
Why is that a fear anyway? Are we ever really not alone? How do you know?
Annoying, yes. But reliable also.
12 November 2007 at 2:47 am
Ummm. Yes? No? D. None of the above?
12 November 2007 at 11:12 am
NEVER. It NEVER FUCKING STOPS!
12 November 2007 at 1:30 pm
AUW: …for all eternity, amen. Yes, cheers to internal dialogues! *clink, clink*
Z: Yes, but the question is how?! If you have a clue, please share with the rest of us. Don’t be greedy.
Camille: I’m sorry, I’m having trouble hearing you over all these voices. [I have a theory on whether we’re ever really not alone but I do not wish to make you depressed.]
Bohémienne: Yeah, I don’t know either.
Peach: I FUCKING KNOW!!! Thanks, that was quite freeing. I shall coin it, Primal Caps Therapy. Like Primal Scream Therapy for the literary set.
12 November 2007 at 2:31 pm
I think you do yourself a disservice with your ‘pointless’ tag. This reads to me like a festival of pointfulness.
12 November 2007 at 6:05 pm
Ah, the free will versus determinism question. When I was in high school with a bunch of pretentious intellectuals in the early 90s, someone wrote graffiti on the wall which read, “Free will is overrated.” Another student later amended it to “Free Willy [the movie about the whale] is overrated”— which I actually found far more clever.
I like these questions, though. They take me back to that happier time. One can romp through the existential meadow in one’s tortured teens, without having to know much about real life.
13 November 2007 at 10:32 am
Drodbar: Most of my labels are a bit tongue in cheek. :)
Marcelle Manhattan: Hahaha! Yes, you’ll find a lot of pretentiously intellectual teenage drivel here, I’m afraid! I try not to censor myself or impose any boundaries, so you just never know what will emerge.
13 November 2007 at 6:40 pm
Why don’t I blog as freely as I want to — as effortlessly as it seems others do? ;o
14 November 2007 at 12:57 am
Ani, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that there was anything pretentious in your blog. Not in the least. The pretense was in a teenager writing something so performatively erudite on a corridor wall, and I’m pretty sure I know which friend of mine did it. He’s now a professor at the University of Michigan. :-)
I think I’m less comfortable addressing philosophical questions now, because they mean I have to confront empirical realities, instead of merely fluffing my feathers at how smart I am. It doesn’t mean the questions are juvenile; it means I grew up to be someone who can only ever answer as a pretentious kid, and not as a fully-grown adult.
14 November 2007 at 12:29 pm
Clarissa: It’s definitely not effortless but I do think (hope) it’s worth it. Relative anonymity helps. A bit of shamelessness, helps, too, probably.
Marcelle Manhattan: Oh, no worries! I appreciate your well-thought out comments. They are probably better thought out than some of my posts! I tend to let it flow organically and as I mentioned, I try very hard not to censor. This sometimes results in all sorts of questions with no answers and maybe a bit of unwarranted feather-fluffing, too. All part of the fun. :)
19 November 2007 at 3:28 am
Is it like the saying, “You know how dumb you think you were ten years ago? Well, ten years from now you will think you were dumb now.” ? These questions seem needless to ask, but they are always asked — with or without form. I suppose it may be pretentiously Zen of me to say that all questions are answered when they are answered, and not a second sooner. You can stop whenever you stop, never before. I believe it is always the eternal struggle to cease asking questions, but it seems slightly inhuman to do so. I really wish I could say I stood among those able to live in the Now comfortably, effortlessly. I am just one of those people that ramble for no reason. It’s nice to know someone else out there fills their mind with as many questions as I do, though. :)