hands over ears
a glimmer of who we are becomes more and more opaque and the static of our own incoherence grows shrill
Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, in his play Dirty Hands, wrote "It's the well-behaved children, madam, that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don't say a word, they don't hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on they make society pay dearly. Watch out for good boys." One should also watch out for good girls.
Cold, withdrawn, distant, detached: all words that the average public, including myself, would describe an individual much like this me. Though it's a given that my friends and acquaintances will be quick to respond with comforting words to questions like "Do I scare you? or other such comments I sometimes make, I watch as things are left unsaid or poorly understood. Just recently, in the dark of a hotel room, one such individual said, after what I'll nonchalantly refer to as the usual procedure, "We don't really know that well. Do we?"
It wouldn't be far from the truth if I, like Camus' Meursault, were one day to be accused of having "no place in a society whose most fundamental rules [he] ignored," but I suspect that this is just as likely a stage in my mind's conception. Bob Dylan, in his song "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding," sings that "He not busy being born/Is busy dying."
I'll admit that I don't imagine much more academically than the basic knowledge in making a living from a college experience, but I'm not at all certain what that living will actually consist of besides wandering rather aimlessly through Prague and Greenwich Village, writing diatribes and shooting films with suspicious influences. Perhaps I'll find my purpose while watching the clouds melt into one another on a tree-lined quad or through a heated discussion in an intimate setting. Speaking on terms of personal growth though: Surrounding myself with individuals whose futures are equally ambiguous and don't seem as prosaic as those in the pool I currently find myself treading, may be one of the more important steps I can take toward arriving at that critical moment when I emerge from this cocoon, heart-throbbing and thoroughly alive.
