16th March, 2014

"But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood."

--Hamlet--

Shall I find comfort or terror in the nothingness at my window?

 

The days whir, and I am part of their whirring, and I whir within them. Whir, whir, whir. An endless hum. And I am an academic. So my title goes. I get to read books for a living. Papers put food on my table. I am a good academic, moreover, a very studious one, one who pays great attention to her work, and does everything assigned of her, and does not slouch in her industry. And yet what does it avail? I give myself over to my work just to keep up with my work, and so I have nothing to give to my work. I am replaceable. I am a cog, a whir, a breachless hum. This "me," this version of myself that plies the books and grades the papers, that writes the essays and prepares the lectures, she is replaceable. Indeed, I daresay the university would be better off replacing me. There are others with more energy and less latent recalcitrance; there are others who could do what this "me" does much more capably than I do it. But they do not replace me. And so I do, as best I can, and because I do, I do not think. There is no time for thought in all the whirring. Whir, whir, whir. A cog; an unbroken hum.

 

Perhaps this is why we whir. Perhaps it is all set up so that we do just do and do not think. I lay my finger upon the perimeter of thought and find it caustic as ice and fire. Thought is terrifying. To think the nothingness at my window is terrifying. But I want to think it. I do not want a whirring away into death. I want to become a better thing.

 

Yesterday, at dinner with fellow students (my one monthly concession to university social-life), I sat next to a chap called M_____ who said he hardly ever thought. A dimensionally-robust figure, with a full head of hair on his chin and not a hair to be seen on his head, he sat on a child-sized chair and ate from a plate of fried fish that could have fed the five-thousand. I tried to bury the raw tuna I had unwittingly ordered under the greens of my Salad Nicoise so that the chef would not notice when the plates were returned. I had attempted to eat it, but the magnolia steak was so unashamedly fleshly, with its oxygenate tint, its gelatinous texture, its iron-rich afterbite, I couldn't do it. I buried the thing, hid it from the world like a rabbit laid low in a lettuce patch, and grazed conscience-strickenly on the olives round the edges. M______ cradled a snifter of brandy and described his average morning: "I wake up. I make coffee. I put on the TV, but I don't watch it; I just look at it for about fifteen minutes, without thinking..." The adjacent girls, K_____, A______ and I, looked aghast with appropriate envy. "How does anybody not think? How do you manage to turn off your mind?" M______ didn't have an answer specifically; he attributed his ability to not think to having played sports in his youth. K____ and A_____ were intrigued by M_____'s ability to switch-off his mind, equating it to the mystery of being male. I sipped my wine, and nibbled my olives, and laughed and smiled as a good guest aught to, as a civilized being aught, but inside I knew myself to be breaking. I broke because I couldn't understand the nonchalance with which M_____ described his morning, and the professed thoughtlessness in which he lived the better part of his days. I couldn't understand the company's fond approbation of drunkenness. I couldn't understand this cultural embracing of numbness. I sat in the midst of that brewery, with the dim-lighting and the deafening hum, the whir, whir, whir of socialization, of commerce, of machines, of lives-being-lived, and felt so horribly, utterly alone.

 

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light." The whir. The endless, unbroken hum. These non-thought numbnesses, these drunken numbnesses, these are not the same as peace, these are not the same as silence. I am not alone. I cannot be so unlike you. Surely you too want to break free from the whir. Surely you too want to know what fresh air feels like in the lungs, and what unwhirring calm sounds like in the ears.

 

I am going to the place without whirring. I am going to the place where the thoughts are. I do not want numbness. Numbness is a dull ache and an anathema. I want strength. I want to feel my self in my body, my being embodied. And if I find terror in the nothingness at my window, I'll take comfort that this is surely better than finding nothing at all.