POP!

bored bored bored bored bored

I have learned a lot recently but the more you learn the less you know which makes learning feel stupid. Nothing makes you feel smarter than feeling stupid. You call yourself stupid when you know you feel smart enough to know you’re stupid. It’s the knowledge that you know nothing, least of all yourself.

The lack of a divine other from which to derive moral standard leaves means that our moral standards, if we choose to have them, are created ourselves. If God is not holding us accountable, we are only accountable to ourselves. If we are only accountable to ourselves, we can make up the rules as we go. Sin is justified rather than forgiven; we rewrite the rules rather than repent; forgiveness as a concept is obsolete. There is no mercy without forgiveness.

Justification is addicting, just as addiction is justifiable. This feels like freedom and it feels like agency but it is not freedom nor is it agency because freedom requires something to be free from and with no cage in sight there is nothing to be free from. An abyss. Nothingness. Being free from Nothing feels the same as being caged from Something. It’s just as restrictive, and quite boring.

I can’t remember the last useful thought I had. I have had a difficult time thinking because I have felt like I’ve been going through the motions, operating on autopilot, living without necessarily being alive—it gets increasingly difficult to feel alive, which, I have learned, is much more important than feeling free. There is freedom that exists within life and there is nothingness which feels free but is not necessarily free, it is just nothing. You can only see the difference in retrospect, and at that point you’re floating and your only hope is that someone pulls the balloon down before it pops.

POP is popular is populism is poppy seeds, a poppy seed bagel can cause you to fail a drug test. POP is a noise, burst, the sound rings, it is a collective experience just like popular and populism. POP is sudden. Turning heads, shifting gears, new becomes old, old becomes new, yet pastiche, yet pop, yet reborn, but not quite baptized. I’ve never had to take a drug test. I’ve never eaten a poppy seed bagel.

Baseless claims and baseless art have a lot in common. Baseless claims are as artful as baseless art is accusatory. And art is dead. And the dead are weeping. And the living are barely alive.

Time is ticking. The longer Nothing prevails the harder it is to trust the surviving Somethings. Then everything is nothing, even the somethings, because without trust there is no faith, and without faith, there is nothing. It feels as though that which breaks through must be tainted; that which doesn’t break through remains innocent, but remains buried like the dead that were never born.

And they weep the loudest.

Destruction and creation are a similar act. Birth and death are a similar act. Laughter and tears blend together. Spring days feel like fall days. Everything in between is created by the extremes, of the extremes; it does not exist between the extremes, but after them.

Trust is most difficult when nobody knows what to believe in.

I would rather be believed than respected but respect will get me further in this life and I’m still not sure if I believe in the next or if I just desperately want to.

So I still won’t listen to pop songs, but not because I think there’s something better to believe in, but simply because my ears don’t really like the sound. I’ll keep knowing more nothing with the more I learn to know, and sometimes I will fall back into the habit of mistaking the floating as freeing. I’m not begging anyone to pull down my balloon, but I may or may not be begging for mercy, which may be the same thing. Please let me know if you know something I don’t. I just might believe you.