Angelheads contemplating dust

However improbable and contradictory this statement may seem to the unfortunate wretches who know me, I would still like to emphasize that I do have a monthly (okay, quarterly) quota for barbarism, and on such occasions when I’ve reached the maximum tolerable savagery in the areas of thought, speech, interpersonal connections and lifestyle, I resume the exemplary meanderings of docile bodies content with the sheer banality of their lives: the happy reduction of the ego to simple to the almost nil, you go for instant instead of brewed, donning the syndicated smile over the soft-spoken po and opo flung at every bipedal organism that exhibits even the remotest idea of democracy and coherence. In other words, I give Nietzsche’s slave morality a postmodern twist: I go on Facebook and spew inanities, get drunk on cable TV and suddenly Emeril is effervescent and the MYX VJs are gods. I make the table, I give pasaloads and free one-hour head massages, a non-instant breakfast for four, wash the ubiquitous dirty cup, resist the urge to mock astrology, organized religion and the Presidential sister with the thousand corned beef, MSG and vaginal wash commercials.

On a quarterly basis, yes – although that is subject to change without humanity’s prior notice. You want to treat me as humanely as possible then you never demand that I switch to a daily torture mode purely for entertainment reasons.

Yesterday I celebrated the 1,679th-day anniversary of the contemptible state of my room, and while I was  convincing myself to maybe fight the mutating kipple feeding on my eternal filth, I noticed the books stacked on a corner of my room, several of which I’ve finished reading long ago and have completely forgotten, relegated to the proverbial domestic sleaziness of mine.

I picked up some and blew the dust off many, and instantly became remorseful: I remembered that these were the books I once [and still] love, dedicated whole days or weeks to, even cut classes and ditch the nine-to-five work for. Some fueled and inspired me to write, or at least, attempt to make sense of my inability to make sense of everything through writing. Some books I have no idea why I even bothered reading and rereading, but most made me feel insecure for the sheer literary power they could wield over mere mortals such as myself. One thing they have in common though is that they all gave me the humbling feeling of being possessor of objects with the potential to recreate – at least from a metaphysical standpoint – an entire human being, modify personalities and beliefs, change a life – even in the most invisible, ridiculous  of ways. We should all read, is what I think – regardless of the subject matter or the academic qualifications or literary merits of the book and author. There has to be that drive for knowledge and discovery and insight and not simply information, this desire to make sense of everything that’s out there and everything inside every one of us, and perhaps even that which is inscrutable, unfathomable, nonsensical.

There’s no guarantee you’ll arrive at an enlightenment of some kind, that all worldly confusions will disappear – but if they were good reads, entertaining, if they piqued your interest, galvanized, poked, prodded your comfortable domain of humdrum existence and made you rethink and question if there are other ways, other possible alternatives to seeing the world, yourself and other people, life – then maybe, just maybe, the precious time wasted on words will be all worth it.