Helplessness.

Yesterday, (because we had no money) Carlos and I were having water in McDo over a pack of smokes that Ron and I split for (must seriously think about what I'm doing to my body, living like this) and we got to talking about helplessness and that odd feeling that overcomes you when you sit still and realize that nothing is permanent; the odd, quiet realization that everything will one day disappear is enough to drive someone insane and a lot of the time, drives me into my fits of panic.

I think Milan Kundera called it the unbearable lightness of being. An hour later in Chem class, I got to thinking about that helplessness. And I think the only antidote to that is to pick your poison and take it like a man. I think the only antidote to helplessness is in the tedious, mundane, day-to-day things that we take for granted. And I suspect--I say suspect because I cannot, in my gut, believe that anyone can really know why they write because if they were able to pinpoint the exact reason for that impulse, the impulse would disappear--that this might be why I write. Writing is terribly mundane, really. Some people talk about it like it's this grand form of escapism or make it out to be this grand gesture or this sudden rush of ideas that have been boiling up inside you. But really, it is hours and hours spent in front of a computer, looking for words and switching around sentences, trying to get at something that doesn't quite exist. It's just one of those things that people do to deal with the fact that we are floating in space, suspended by invisible forces--in the same way that a ballerina dances or an accountant compiles ledgers or a manicurist carefully clips a woman's cuticles. I am in love with that mundane-ness, with that day-to-day tedious picking at sentences.

I also realized yesterday that I am terribly private about these things. Hahaha And even now that I am writing this, I feel a bit uncomfortable. But what the hell.