Matter

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

As a child, one of my first enduring loves was for dinosaurs; paleontology to be more precise- I loved my trilobites just as much as my allosaurus ; can't have archaeoptyrx without having 'T.Rex' first (archaEopTyRX, see?), and did you know that some scientists used to speculate that Rex actually had a form of rudimentary plumage, although I think it that idea has been abandoned...

For a period, I refused to watch movies that featured dinosaurs alongside humans- hogwash! I would declare, full of childish indignation- everyone knows the dinosaurs were extinct for millions of years before homo sapiens walked the earth...sheesh. Insufferable fucker, I was.
Was?
At least nowadays I can enjoy movies where dinosaurs eat people without ruining it for everyone else by shouting out how there is no way you would ever see a mastodon and a pterodactyl together in "real life".

When I was ten, I read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller ; it profoundly changed my thinking, suddenly it dawned on my young mind that not only was man trying to destroy himself, he was going to fail, and he was going to use that failure as inspiration to try harder at the next attempt at self-destruction and so on...

But, as I would cheerily point out, none of it really matters anyway because the sun will eventually explode and destroy the solar system, which will slooowlly be sucked into a black hole at the center of the universe, which will then contract for eons upon eons , crushed by gravity until it eventually vomits forth another universe which will very likely be inhabited by organisms just as wretched as humans could ever wish to be.

I started reading books that were beyond my years or just plain weird: Ellison, Burgess, wildlife guides, Burroughs, atlases,Vonnegut, almanacs, Batman comics,Heller, Illuminatus, various tombstones etc.... nowadays, I doubt that our schools would encourage or even allow such reading by grade-schoolers, but back then it didn't matter.

Often, I didn't even have to attend class.

Did you know that galaxies die? They do.

It's hard to study while galaxies are dying.
As a child, it's hard to explain this to adults without scaring them.
When I got older I had more and more classes that didn't exactly involve attendance, it was easier for every one that way.
It saved a lot of explaining.

I knew the system was bullshit and I played it so that I wouldn't have to do much of anything. I'd just write a few papers about books I would've read anyway, get the teachers all worked up and by the time they discovered what a truly fucked-up child I was- that they'd basically been conned out of giving me 'real' homework and into giving me plum assignments- I'd be whisked away to another school, soon to be standing in front of yet another group of unfamiliar children, explaining how it's better to read the glossary first when you read A Clockwork Orange, otherwise they might find it confusing.


So.

Long ago there were dinosaurs, then they died (and all the smart people knew it was a meteor, even then) and eventually they turned into oil, which we turn into gasoline -which was being rationed back then because OPEC wanted to punish the US for it's support of Israel in whatever war was raging in the Middle East at that time -Yom Kippur, I think, as if it matters.
Yeah, 1973...fuck, it really does seem like yesterday. Like last hour.

Jesus, back then I was too busy watching the nightly 'Nam body counts to understand the nuances of Middle East politics.
(I still don't understand those nuances, perhaps because there are no nuances to understand)

Plus, I was 8 years old and didn't understand a lot of things that I currently don't understand - I just have a better understanding of my lack of understanding now , is all.



Anyhow, the dinosaurs are gone and surely aren't coming back during my wholly insignificant lifetime, besides, like I said, the whole Universe is constantly going BOOM! crush BOOM! anyway, so why bother with anything- every thing's doomed to extinction, subject to be extinguished all at once or over billions of years- what difference does it make?

My 5th grade teacher asked me where I learned to be so nihilistic.

Nowhere. Duh.

I used the same line in 6th grade, in response to the same question.

By the time I was 12, I had used science and reason to soundly establish my own insignificance as well as that of everyone and everything around me. A sort of cosmic resignation sank into my spirit-didn't break it, mind you; though it might seem that way from the outside. In truth, I think I really enjoyed the awesome power of negation that comes with knowing more than is good for oneself.

Suck it up, keep on truckin' yadda yadda 'cos it don't mean shit nohow, right?

Even though I clearly understood, -understand, rather - just how empty, pointless, pathetic and unremarkable my puny existence is, I still didn't lose interest...I can't stop the stars from exploding, but it would be cool to watch one blow up.




















I have been asked, more than once, why I bother carrying on if I feel that life is so hopeless...these inquiries miss the point, misinterpreting my meaning- I never said life is hopeless.

I don't believe life is hopeless- if it was, I would be dead right now because right now all I have is hope.

I am. Therefore. Life is not hopeless.
Sum ergo whatever...

Life, however, is pointless, especially when viewed on a cosmic scale.
Can't argue with that.
We don't mean diddley-squat.
Boom!
Back to dust, wait for gravity to start forming new planets, don't hold your breath 'cos this might take a long time, Rocketman...

I honestly don't care if life is pointless. I'm a lifetime supporter of pointless causes, a pillar of pointlessness in my community, an ardent champion of Things That Don't Mean Shit-which, by my childhood definition, is everything and everyone, past present and future. I'm passionately pointless and pointlessly passionate.

For no reason.
I can't justify it.
I don't have to- I don't even pretend that any of it means anything.
Why should I?

I know it's useless, that nothing I do will ever mean anything, that my old fantasies are absurd and that there might not be any new dreams to replace them with... but so what?

I don't have the willpower necessary to give up living.
I'm too lazy to do nothing.
It's hard work, this doing of nothing. Just thinking about it wears me out.

I might as well try to do something. If nothing matters, it can't hurt to try.