Burden or Bliss

I think, I think too much. It's not a positive thing. There are times (gazillions of times) when I just wish that my brain is controlled by a switch that I can turn on and off every time I need a good night's sleep or need to do something more productive than to lurk in a gloomy corner and emote on every thought that my mind attaches itself to.

I quiver when people ask me, "What are you thinking?" Are you kidding me? I mean, really… a couple hundred lifetimes ain't enough for me to declare my thoughts at one specific moment. Anyone who can do that is a paramecium. I try to refrain from responding "nothing" because it's a total insult upon oneself. You got a brain that processes nothing, might as well just sell it.

I am searching for the perfect cure for uber analysis, steadfast rationalization, and subconscious picturesque capturing, so far there's none. I'm thinking about giving up on the close-to-impossible mission, but I'm still on the process of thinking about thinking of giving up on thinking about it at this time.

On the sidebar of all these, but my precedence for now, I am also dealing with being constantly hounded by the past and unswervingly being daunted by the future. I am an anxious person who's nostalgic. I am anxiotalgic.

There's this conjectural line from Mr. Ripley that goes something like, "Don't you wish you could put your past in a suitcase, put it in the basement, lock the door, and lose the key?" Yeh, a multitude of people have probably tried that, it doesn't eternally work. Unless the door on that basement is made of imperishable material, there would always be a means of knocking that door down and unleashing all that's hidden behind it. Or that conventional thing that everyone struggles to do yet only those with pragmatic heads come out as victors, "moving on" and uhm... "letting go". Take it from Magnolia, there's just no way that the past would ever be done with you. That friggin' past doesn't forget, there would always be this whirlwind that would twisterize you back to square one no matter how far along in that puzzle board you already are.

Pothead has some thoughts about the future, after I asked her if it is proper to give up on something in the present just because you fear that it would not work the way you want it to in the future. She said, "You're bullshit!! You're so fucking full of bullshit!!" Then she stood in the way of a raging truck and got herself shattered into pieces. I stood there wide-eyed with my mouth open, and then I approached her dismantled body parts slowly and asked, "Are you okay?"

No, here's what really happened.

I asked her that. Then she replied… with a question. "Why are you gonna base your decisions on something that you have no idea about?"

"Well, maybe I do have an idea… sort of… kinda…"

"Still," she interjected,"it's stupid to give up on something now just because you're afraid of what's gonna happen in the future. It's not right. It wouldn't feel right."

For someone who dutifully does the wrong things for the right reasons, I incessantly need a reminder of that.

"Is that why you still haven't given up on --"

"Yes." She said with conviction. "The future is composed of the consequences of the choices you've made in the present."

Relinquishing something because you fear that in the future you wouldn't have it any longer is plain balderdash. That's contriving your own shortcut to the future.

"We should learn to bask in the moment", Pothead continued. "Live it one day at a time."

No rushing? Taking pleasure in the details? Anything less surreal?

"Yeh, like for now this is all we need," I took a puff on my cig. "A couple of smokes, a couple of scrambles. You and me and Manuel L. Quezon."

"We both should just stop thinking, really, that's all we need for now."

If only it is possible. A momentary shortage in the brain would definitely be appreciated. To have that second, make it a minute or two, of not thinking. Not having to go through the tedious process of scrutinizing every random goddamned thought that crosses the head. A fleeting instance of being blank. How heavenly it must be to be an imbecile.

Is it really wrong to rationalize on things? Should everything be accepted as the bare bullshit that the world present these things to be?

There is no solution to all these. If it requires thinking and thinking again about the possible ways out, the putrid thinking process just would never end. This is a total rip-off – "I have to accept this. This is my gift, my curse. If only it could also make me climb walls and swing from one building to another."

Most of us didn't really ask for a brain that we ourselves cannot control and maneuver. It is ungrateful to actually condemn acquiring a working one. Yet sometimes I wish it isn't much to ask to own one that doesn't toil overtime. The burden of wit or the bliss of ignorance? Those with the most answers are also those with the most questions. No wonder I still don't have an answer as to why I am paining to experience the latter.