existence before essence

all my days on this planet have been spent developing a certain perspective, chosen freely but also gifted to me by chance. completing a book, ive realized, (though maybe it was once told to me and i'm recycling the concept, as it seems so often to turn out with my apparently and appallingly not-so-original thoughts), can be the most lonely experience i can possibly imagine. minutes and hours and days spent enveloped in the world of someone else, voyeuristic, experiencing the how and why of the way their world has been compartmentalized and ordered, only to come to its inevitable end, leaving me back in my own harshly concrete and unfantastical completely material 3 or 4 dimensional banal reality. words never quite transcending their inadequacies at transporting me totally inside of them, i'm left with my own disorganized cloud of swirling conjectures about what has brought me to this place in time. i'll never be able to live anyone else's life. this thought drains me. leaves me pondering the directionless meaninglessness of everything, just like my 11 year old self did with my first real flirtation with the idea that death exists. micah, a boy who i barely knew, but was certainly a friend of friends, fell from his rope swing, snapped his neck, died on the spot. the reality of his death coming so unexpectedly, it shattered any previous conceptions that the world was in any way ordered and intentional. this has been followed by the occasional relapses through the years with other friends of friends, marissa, eli, etc etc, no rhyme or reason to their deaths. the world just simply happens, with or without our compliance.

last night i danced alone in the dark on the top of a deserted and barren grassy hill overlooking the city of san francisco. absolutely no holding back, arms flailing and hips twisting and legs scuttering and sliding and slamming on the rocky path. transcending meaninglessness to a world of fuck the world, fuck meaning, fuck drama and insecurity and earthly worries like how the fuck am i gonna afford to go on living like this and how the fuck am i gonna live any other way and how the fuck will i ever transcend this limited world with anyone else, ever. can i share enough of the same actions and contexts and physical constraints to ever understand anyone else totally, completely?

i work to break down the walls. barriers that divide, keep us isolated and individual. i work to relive the life of my dead best friend without consciously meaning to, his the only death that could in my opinion be classified as intentional, with a purpose. on further reflection, i have questions. am i hoping that i will finally share communion with him, doubting that i ever had, knowing we had something but not sure what it was after all these years, nostalgia clouding my memory, left only with a few pages of writing, a list of favorite authors, a couple of watercolor paintings. the lonely thought of am i only reliving the emotions that our shared time together once evoked inside myself. am i trying instead to communicate with that which i claim to not believe in, the ghost of devin risley, stuck in suicide induced purgatory. am i hoping to be proved wrong by its or his supernatural appearance?

and then i become conscious of myself again, wondering why it is i feel the necessity to post this on the internet, versus in a private notebook which will never be read by anyone but myself, or simply keep it up in my head. at first i justified it as the easiest way to organize my thoughts, but now questioning my belief that people show themselves for recognition, so called artists really just souls in need of a little recognition. some may think this sort of thing is a call for recognition, attention, response to justify whatever it is i need justification for but can not find said justification within my own self.

i've been thinking about how much i love people. how much i love their lives and their perspectives and their willingness to let me in for a glimpse. but then that leads to the same feelings i have when i finish a really good book, the flood of consciousness that i also exist, leaving me isolated and separate, walled and barricaded off. some may take this kind of talk personally, and maybe you should, but it should not hurt the way you may want to let it hurt. if anything it is a celebration of all that we've worked for. all that we've achieved. that despite the odds, the 100 to none guarantee that yes, we're going to die, we continue to work and strive and grope for the light that shows itself in both bright explosions and dull glimmering flickers between you and i. i love you and you love me and if that isn't enough then fuck maybe we should just give up.

all my days on this planet will be spent working on developing the compiled perspective of a million and a half other perspectives, since right now at this moment in time, this is all matt-"existential"-chris-smith has figured out.