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Picnic in the Rain

rain

I want to watch it rain. I want to walk underneath a tortured sky and look at all the pretty buildings while taking pictures of their architecture on the darkest days. I want to be cold and wet on a sidewalk in the middle of nowhere. All dressed up. All made up. And let the rain wash it all away into nothingness.

I want to peel the paint off the walls and uncover the coats of thirty years ago, moldy from the rain and faded. And I want to eat cheese and crackers in a dilapidated kitchen, falling apart, without working appliances while it pours outside. No heaters, broken windows, still cold and wet. With my damn cheese and crackers. Who said I can’t have a picnic by myself?

I want doors that don’t lock, and drawers that won’t close. I want to be where everything creeks and the bulbs are exposed, providing the only light against an angry sky. I want only one couch, torn and stained on a cement floor where I can watch the rain bleeding into the living room through the cracks in what used to be windows but are now only panes with peeling white paint. I can sit and watch the puddle on the floor grow and not care. The sun can dry it up tomorrow. Today I would just like to sit and stare for a while.

Spring is coming, or maybe it went, with all its promises of showers and flowers and saccharine nonsense. Spring is awful. Except for the chocolate eggs. I suppose those are okay.

I want sheets of water falling from the sky to deface the earth and baptize and sterilize. I want to watch it fall, almost afraid to go outside, but too giddy not to. I want to touch it, testing its strength one limb at a time, extending my arm from underneath a useless umbrella and letting the jet ricochet and splash the rest of me. I want to be drenched and cold until I am numb. With a box of assorted crackers and a package of brie. Sitting on the hood of my car taking it all in. Who said I can’t have a picnic by myself?

I want a cup of hot coffee in my hand and icy water on my forehead. I want to shiver to tears while the rain washes it all away. Diluting my coffee and cleansing my face.

I want to flirt with pneumonia and feel alive once more if that is what it takes. With now watered down coffee, soggy crackers and mushy cheese. I will just have a picnic by myself.

Meaningless Suffering

sisyphus

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

– Viktor Frankl from Man’s Search for Meaning

One must imagine Sisyphus happy. 

-Albert Camus from the Myth of Sisyphus

 

One must imagine Sisyphus happy only because through his tedious, repetitive task, has he found meaning to his existence. And that is to say that there is no meaning, but only the task itself that is filled with a physical and psychological suffering that most would find excruciating to bear. He perseveres simply through acceptance and a renunciation of hope. Tomorrow will be as futile as today, and infused with just as much pain. The rock moves forward, and the muscles ache, but there is no break – there can never be a break. It is not the idea of a break that inspires him forward, but rather the denial of one while his joy is derived from watching the rock tumble down, once more to be heaved upwards.

“It will all be over soon” is not a consolation but a reminder that once “it” is over, another trial begins. The same thing in a new form. Suffering is everyone’s destiny. And Sisyphus accepts his. We repeat our mistakes, bear the consequences of our actions, repeat our mistakes, suffer accordingly, reflect on what we have done, and repeat our mistakes. Yet our fault is not in repeating our mistakes, but deluding ourselves in believing we have learned from them, and expecting to not make them again.

When Sisyphus’ boulder came to its peak he never once believed it would not come down again, and therefore felt no disappointment when it did. He accepted his suffering, it was what it was, and so we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Swimming in Memories

dream

If you swim in memories do you ever have to come up for air? Or do they act like oxygen to keep you alive? For how long? Are the tiny imbedded beads of the past just like tiny buttons you can push to artificially recreate a chosen moment of an alternate reality that once was? If you relive the same moment in your head a hundred times will it become real again?

Meaning can be derived from nothingness, but nothingness cannot exist without something. Or is it the other way around? It doesn’t really matter. There was something, now nothing, and meaning fluctuates. I guess it depends on who you ask. Your memories are never someone else’s or vice versa and those moments you treasure you will painfully find out are sometimes insignificant for another. They can barely remember your name or that you once existed for them. Memories like little pearls scattered on the floor that another crushes under their foot as you scurry to pick them up. The longer you take the less of them you will find. And the other person has long left the room, building strings of pearls elsewhere.

Yet memories live within. They can be denied but never made to disappear. Age will destroy some. The most memorable always resurface, taking on various forms, and continuing to survive. And as you let your mind float amongst them you learn and relearn how to swim, breathing happy thoughts.