C'est la Vie, C'est Rien

I wonder if the following article would make sense to anyone but those who have overactive imaginations. Hey, it’s postmodern, from an “art history standpoint.”

C’est la Vie, C’est Rien

The cursor blinks against the white background. You know, that white background pretending to be paper. I know it’s not.

It’s just an illusion; a careful organization of light designed to make it seem like paper. To make typing documents look as real as writing them down... To make technology both new and old at the same time. To make it seem familiar, even if it’s a completely revolutionary innovation. To make people believe in what they can’t touch, to make them overlook the absence of the feel of paper, the irregularity of the handwriting and the stain of the ink. If this is the age of the papyrus it wouldn’t be a white background. It’d be dirty yellow, with the stalks of the papyri as authentic as the computer programmers can make it. Quite ingenious, really. Making the new seem familiar is a psychological trick that was employed by even the conquistadors and the religious leaders of long ago.

Microsoft Word is not as innocent as it looks.

My fingers are typing nonsense because my brain is coming up with nonsense; typing with instinct borne of months and months of pummeling away at plastic squares, desperate to make sense, to have sense.

What is sense, anyway?
And for that matter, what is nonsense?

Nonsense is usually seen as the ignorance of the speaker or the writer... But can’t it imply ignorance of the listener or the reader?

Or maybe it’s both.

Maybe there’s something that goes between sense and nonsense. Like midsense. You know, when nobody understands it... That doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean anything.

I’m ranting away like this because there are so many things to do... Too many, actually. So many that I wonder what they’re for. The professors assign so much work to do, and I can’t help but wonder why. Are they doing it so that I can learn, or so that they can sleep blissfully at night thinking that they’ve done their jobs well?

Even as I let my thoughts wander aimlessly into this abyss of words, I am plagued by the things I have to study. To memorize. To know. And all for what? To have a good grade? Grades are just... well, grades...

Numbers, letters, ways of telling us that people will always find a way to quantify the unquantifiable. What’s the point? You can never tell how smart a person is from tests and reports and homework.

What is “smart” in the first place?

I know I’m supposed to be doing something more productive than this. I just don’t want to. And I’m not going to. But as much as I want to be a full-time anarchist, social constraints have already corrupted me. Although, thankfully, not to the point that I won’t ask questions. The day I stop asking is the coming of the cocqcigrues. If I can’t eventually break free of these deeply ingrained tendencies to follow what is asked of me in school, then procrastination towards it is how it’s going to be.

What’s the point in doing things I don’t want to do? It doesn’t please me, and if I do need to submit those things, the people on the receiving end will grade them according to their own subjective terms. I don’t suppose continuously scrutinizing mountains of paperwork pleases them either. Then they’ll tell me how badly I deviate from what they expect.

What do they expect?

Do they expect me, you, us, to know everything?

And still, I stare into the abyss; unable to see anything but inky darkness and shadows of figures I can only ever hope to comprehend.

Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss for too long... The abyss stares back at you.

Maybe the abyss is staring back at me right now. Maybe it wants to drag me into its unfathomable depths, so that I’ll find the answers to questions I ask over and over again.

Maybe that’s why we never find answers. Maybe it’s because we look everywhere except into nothing at all.

Who’s to say that nothing has nothing in its unmitigated realms?

Has anybody ever looked into nothing?

I want to express how I feel, but somehow I can’t find the words. Or words are not enough. Silence is not enough either, so I guess I’ll stick with the words.

This is not misery. I know misery; she’s my next door neighbor. And it’s not depression either. I have an ongoing flirtation with depression, and right now we’re cooling off. I don’t want anything steady.

Ah. I know. It’s somewhere between indifference and frustration. Paradox? Who cares. And as unhealthy as it is, I am determined to not let anything lift my mood out of its current state. Indifference is my best friend, and frustration is my middle name anyway.

Suddenly making sense doesn’t seem all that important.

Does it?

*Clink*

Oh, look. The cup tipped over.

My grocery-spawned Earl Grey tea has spilled onto the floor, and I have no intention of mopping it up.

They say you shouldn’t cry over spilled milk, in this case spilled tea, but nobody said you shouldn’t let it evaporate from neglect either.

Suddenly, I’m aware of the time. It’s midnight, the witching hour... not that you care.

Oh wait, do you?
How am I supposed to know that?
How am I supposed to know anything?
Am I supposed to know everything?
Or am I supposed to know nothing?

All things considered, knowing nothing is the most incomprehensibly difficult.

The cursor blinks against the white background. You know, that white background pretending to be paper. I know it’s not.

Do you?