Category: Series Seven

and cringe titles

2:17am. It’s another night I can’t fall asleep. I just lie there, tired, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Or it’s 4:51am. I already fell asleep, actually at a reasonable time, and now I’m awake, lying here, thinking, thinking, thinking.

I hear the rattle of something outside my window. It’s been 1.5 years, and I’m still unsure what this object may be, and what may cause it to rattle. Check the Weather app, there’s no wind. It’s too early to be construction, too late to be the sounds of a night out.

Wake up.

It’s before my alarm. Am I dying? Have I died? Odd, it feels like I’ve died. This has happened twice now in the past year of my life: I’ve felt like I’ve died, I’ve woken up feeling like I’ve died.

I hear the noise of excitement outside my window. It’s early morning, and the city rises.

I hear the noise of excitement outside my window. It’s a weekend afternoon, and the courtyard hosts a party of voices.

I’ve heard these noises for 1.5 years, and I’m still nowhere closer to enlightenment since when I first moved here. Not that I believe a true enlightenment is attainable – something about how “success” means something different to every person – but I haven’t been able to find my enlightenment. Nor have I been able to define it.

So how do you achieve something you can’t describe? Well, I can describe it, I just can’t define it. I don’t know what the end goal is, or I do know what the end goal is, I just don’t know what it looks like. And if I don’t know what it looks like, I don’t know how to get there.

So how do you forge forward on the path in an open world map when you don’t know where the path leads? Is the search for enlightenment, the quest for the destination, part of it, part of enlightenment?

I feel like I’ve asked these questions before, for years of writing and creative posts and skeletons and ghosts and come no closer to an answer. I thought I’d be closer to answer by now. It worries me that I’m not closer to an answer by now. (Clearly, repetitivety is not key, but who can fault a person for wanting their writing to rhyme like poetry?)

I started writing this in the middle of the night when attempting to sleep.

Now I find myself in a trendy little coffee shop, like the one I wrote about on the home page of this site when I first started WPC in 2019… although to be fair, and potentially even worse, I believe I originally wrote it in 2018. So five years later now, not just four years later, and numerous writings, some that have been on point and some that has missed the mark, and I’m still asking the same questions from I first decided to start. (Like actually start, and not just thinking about it and think about it and put it off and put it off.)

The two two-person tables next to me, one on my left and one on my right, are both empty. Next to the left, a young man reading. Next to the right, a young woman reading. Across from me, well, directly across from me is an empty seat, and believe me, at 31 I am ever acutely aware of there being an empty seat; but across from me, behind the chair, the next table, another woman reading. A few people at the front of the shop, besides the kind baristas in the middle, and a group of three college students studying to the left of me, diagonally. On the opposite corner of them, an older woman with her coffee, an iPad, and headphones; only, she doesn’t seem to be using the iPad to scroll through social media or the internet, she seems to just be genuinely sitting there, listening to music. She seems so content and confident and completely immersed in the experience. Maybe this is the final destination: the search.

Maybe the final destination is realizing, acknowledging, understanding, and accepting that there is no final destination. The final destination is the search, and the enjoyment of all things, both good and bad, that come with it. And being able to find enjoyment in the little things, in everything.

Coincidental it would seem that Coldplay’s “Fix You” played when I was writing the ending. However, I should realize, acknowledge, understand, and accept that this is just the ending of this post, but there will be more words to write, and there will no ending until the final one that takes us all. To quote an athlete, “There is no such thing as perfect. There’s only the relentless pursuit of perfection.” Well, I can’t quite transcribe that to my view on enlightenment, but it’s close. I’ll try, “There is no such thing as enlightenment. So stop trying a pointless pursuit of it.” I’ll close by saying, it’s also good to not go in the exact opposite direction, so, keep that in mind (me, keep that in mind). Now can someone remind me why I named this piece “Skeleton and Ghosts” in the first place?

Disclaimer – Say Anything: It’s strange, I’m skinny when I’m standing, but I’m Buddha when I sit, and if I’m truly so enlightened, why’d I waste your time on it?

“I’m useless alone.”

“We’re all useless alone. It’s a good thing you’re not alone.”

Did you know that apartments in New York City have horizontal windows, and the horizontal windows don’t open completely, maybe just a few inches?

All of them?

Mine does. Ask me how I know.

The fate follows the falls; she looks out her bedroom window, heavy rain soon

Another dreary day outside, is it night or is it noon

And inside, where the weather has no effect whether she feels high or low

In these four walls while drenched outside, there’s nowhere left to go

Did you know that apartments in New York City have horizontal windows, and the horizontal windows don’t open completely, maybe just a few inches?

All of them?

Mine does. Ask me how I know.

EEAAO spoke to me – it seems like it spoke to many who watched it. But there’s one scene in it that has bothered me since I first saw it: “We’re all useless alone.”

I’d like to think we aren’t. I’d like to think we all have the chance individually to be someone who can make the world a better place. Of course not everyone takes the opportunity to do so, but the point is the opportunity is there.

And each person has the right to do what they choose with their life, even if it is to make the world a worse place.

So, what am I going to choose? I ask myself, as I type myself, my soul, my self, still lost. But although lost on who I am and what I am doing here and what I am meant to do here and what to do to make the world a better place on large scale, I know I can accomplish this on a small one. I can daily strive, daily try to make someone’s day a little more bright. It may be dark outside, clouds blocking light, but I can still find the little ways to make the little things in life come to the forefront so the rest feels fine. It’s what I’d want someone to do for me, so I’ll do it for someone else, and in the process of trying to make someone else happy, maybe I’ll make myself…

Each person has the right to do what they choose with their life, to actively or passively make the world a better or worse place.

What are you going to choose?’