We’ve been working on this project together, how to think about life, death, and this thing that seems to be a unified thing and very much seems not unified, “self” (myself and yourself, in no particular order). How does it seem like it’s going? Are we succeeding? Are we figuring it out? Are we doing better than Montaigne? A Montaigne for our times? Or just a restatement? It’s a good sign when there are more questions, because there are no final answers (death?). Expectations for the project are vague, I hope. I’ve been trying to keep the scope of the work in a context that cannot be followed by me or anyone else and I’m still not exactly sure what it is. Perhaps it’s an amateur-ject. If it were professional, the scope would have to be much more clear. There would be an editor and publisher and expectations and money. The project doesn’t point toward expectations and money as the places to ask better questions, beyond clearing out these asbestos insulations without breathing in too many dangerous particulates. We’re not quite there, so keep your mask on. Maybe by the time we’re listening to the audio book and walking through the park together we’ll be able to breathe easy. But it’s hard to say. Looking into my own eyes and into the eyes of strangers, I see questions that I have ready answers to, but no answers when I’m feeling most spontaneous. Hence the spontaneity training without a map, on foot or on two wheels, rolling and strolling and going wherever feels right (as long as there’s food nearby, and ideally coffee). It’s not a strut or a confident ramble, it’s more of a casual Rimbaud, heading to Paris but not expecting to get there.
Intimate, personal descriptions feel closer to what we’re doing here. Would you write me a book in response? I’d like to read the book you write in the margins and in your notes. But this is a pretty one-way conversation right now. Not quite a soliloquy, not quite a monologue. Perhaps a series of monologues. I’m always impressed with people who have a look of both purposefulness and consternation, viewing their kingdoms with a mixture of disdain and ownership. Something about tucked in polo shirts that enable this look, and typically on the faces of men with undeliberate facial hair (or mustaches). I’d like to avoid evolving into such a face, though I recognize that “natural selection” could drive me that way. I wouldn’t like to read that evolution’s book; it seems as though it would be a continuous justification of unthinking actions, poorly thought out (thought I expect if this book is ever reviewed or if notes are made in marginalia, some may reflect such a view). And sometimes I feel as though justifying the past if the urgent task of the present. But then I try to think less in money terms, because debt is the root of all historical litigation. And life is certainly not about litigation: finding solid ground to stand on and take a pound of flesh for the pound of flesh taken away; if this were what we were doing (and to be clear, many are doing this) we would need to litigate the fact of our impending death until the last breath, trying to extract the infinite price for the cost that our lives must eventually bear. And I’m not interested in a pound of anything, except perhaps food, every couple hours. Because the waiting is free and I’m not in a hurry.
Roman Ryan 