Today was such a waste.
I got home from work at around 1:30, read about a third of Naked Lunch and fell asleep until 6 p.m.
I watched that movie Shallow Grave… it was okay.
I started watching that one that I had such high expectations for, A Zed and Two Noughts, and I have it paused 38 minutes into it. The cinematography is… lacking. I should watch M instead. It’s too late to start it though. I need to finish this film, even though it is boring me. Royce called me tonight at around 9:30 p.m. I wish I knew what he wanted. I wish I knew what I wanted.
I can’t seem to get out of this mood. I suppose reading Burroughs doesn’t really help my state of mind. I did have this cool dream where I got to hang out with the guys from DiggNation, but it really wasn’t very cool. In the dream, I was at this reunion for my high school. I met this girl that I hadn’t seen for a long time, and suggested that we go to Shari’s (for some reason the reunion was in Oregon) to talk about old times, and she ditched me because one of her sources called back on an article she was doing. I drove back to the place were the reunion was, and there was Kevin and Alex from DiggNation and Alex apparently had been trying to ask that same girl out. “Good luck guys, I’m gay and she won’t even go out to eat with me.” And then I woke up.
I don’t know why, but I have this secret fear that Kevin and Alex wouldn’t like me because I’m gay. I guess I’m sort of envious of them, talking about “smokin’” girls and such. I feel I am never going to have the cool male friends that I want to. I just feel like such an outsider. L’Étranger. Oh well.
The real problem is that I am Meursault. I’m straying from my character in my interactions with Thomas. Nah, I’m not Meursault, I’m Antoine Roquentin. Antoine feels violent emotions about his existence, but Meursault doesn’t. I’m totally Antoine Roquentin. I would cry at my mother’s funeral. Speaking of my mother, she’s reading 1984. It’s odd to me that she would now get my joke about working at Minitrue.
I feel like the foundation of my philosophy is sinking into the muck. I should write a systematic analysis of my philosophy. Bloody hell, it’s 12:30. Much too late for such things.
“[In The Stranger] Camus is reinforcing his basic thesis that there is no Truth, only (relative) truths—and, in particular, truths in science (empiricism/rationality) and religion are ultimately meaningless.”
That’s my thing. Every value and idea is arbitrary and the only thing that is important are personal truths.
I just read that my favorite scene from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea was a description of a bad mescaline trip he went on. Great. Teach me to read Wikipedia at 1 a.m.
“[In Nausea, this] indifference of “things in themselves” [...] has the effect of highlighting all the more the freedom Roquentin has to perceive and act in the world; everywhere he looks, he finds situations imbued with meanings which bear the stamp of his existence. Hence the “nausea” referred to in the title of the book; all that he encounters in his everyday life is suffused with a pervasive, even horrible, taste — specifically, his freedom. No matter how much he longs for something other or something different, he cannot get away from this harrowing evidence of his engagement with the world.”
And there we have it.
I’m going to be done with Naked Lunch by the end of the week. I’m considering getting Being and Nothingness, but I want exposure to some philosophies that I’ve never considered before.
God I love Wikipedia. It’s like a 1950s sci-fi movie where they sit somebody in front of a computer and say “Here is all the information amassed by the human race, and it’s free of charge and not owned by corporations.” Enjoy!
Wikipedia reminds me of this TV show I used to watch called Connections. It was this really long show that would take you through all these scientific discoveries or books or events in history that were all connected and it was really interesting..I would learn so much about to seemingly unrelated things that were connected by all these other interesting things. My Wikipedia connection session went as follows:
Albert Camus wrote The Stranger which is a work of existentialism, of which Simone De Beauvoir was involved in, who went to the Sorbonne in Paris, where she met Jean-Paul Sartre whose philosophy was influenced by Martin Heidegger, who borrowed ideas from Søren Kierkegaard.
I’m still trying to decide whether it’s pathetic that I’m reading articles about the different districts of Paris in order to pretend that I’m living there. Paris is the polar opposite of Del Norte County. Everywhere you look there is history, culture, and art. Here all you see is trailers and illegally dumped trash.
“The name Montparnasse stems from the nickname ‘Mount Parnassus’ (In Greek mythology, home to the nine Greek goddesses — the Muses — of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighborhood in the 17th century by students who came there to recite poetry.” [...] Virtually penniless painters, sculptors, writers, poets and composers came from around the world to thrive in the creative atmosphere and for the cheap rent at artist communes such as La Ruche. Living without running water, in damp, unheated “studios”, seldom free of rats, many sold their works for a few francs just to buy food. [... Today] works by those artists sell in the millions of dollars.”
Kelly and I need to move to Montparnasse and be artists.
Well, all this reading about philosophy and culture is making me hate my life. I should finish that lame movie and get to bed. Nah, it’s too late for the movie. It’s time for some immediate sleep gratification.
