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Sometimes we can wake up inside the routine of our own lives and realize that we are free to think, if not act, in new and poetic ways. Freedom of thought — highly valued by the Stoics and the great Enlightenment thinkers — is rapidly being devalued and forgotten: specifically because so many of our thoughts are homogenized and determined by the totalitarian apparatus of our ‘free’ press and media.
Freedom of thought. The freedom to invert the logic by which we live.
It’s snowing this more; was snowing on my walk to the subway. Yesterday, I was so tired, and frankly, unhappy, that I had the crazy thought — wouldn’t it be great if there was a little bombing today, on the subway, so that I didn’t have to go to work? Such thoughts, obviously, are signs of despair; of a pattern of behavior, of living, of being, being worn out; ground to dust. These kinds of thoughts are signs that we must change — that we are past the point of needing to change.
And change what? Hamlet is proof that for the modern person, action is not really possible — so all we can change are the patterns present in our mental life.
Is this an ineffectual, passively nihilistic point of view? — I don’t think so. It’s liberating. It feels liberating to me.
The snow is falling; otherwise, today is just like yesterday. Except… it doesn’t have to be: not for me.
