Addiction and the AAA
Could it be that my latest addiction is an obsession with being online. I must confess, a day doesn't pass by, where I am not online. I find something vaguely comforting in the act of searching for information, posting self obsessed rambles on online forums and generally living in a an artificial world where connectivity is but a mere click away. I will also confess that I have no social life. Alas it is my tale of woe...it is also my tale of finding solace in the emptiness of the universe. At least in this semi reality I can have some hope of reaching somebody, where as, out in the "real" world I am a nameless face in a heavily populated forest of faceless names. I pretend I don't exist when I walk amongst the mire of people that are so eager to get to some destination or another. Sydney is a fast city I believe....no one has time to greet anyone on the street....we have to be somewhere and with the queer look of, I'm running late to perhaps facilitate some sense of worth or greater importance. It can be a lonely city. I lie when I say I have no social life...I do...but it is not the type of social setting which most people experience....suffice to say, I have a place to go when I am feeling lonely.
Having somewhere to go is a blessing when I really ponder the idea...So many people in this world feel and are isolated. When I used to catch the train to work, I would walk past the homeless. The down trodden and less fortunate. I too ignore these people and am no saint when it comes to helping my brothers and sisters. I am far too self absorbed in my desire not to exist to really be absorbed in the helplessness of those very people in the street. Henry Lawson wrote a great poem called Faces in The Street , it really sings a wailing, sordid sadness, when I read it, as it did the first time I read it. It brings forth those very faces I used to walk by, desperate and yearning. I think it is why so many of us just walk by, fuelled by ego and self delusion, thinking our life is so important. Whilst in our peripheral vision we a get a glimpse...a reflection, a mirror staring at us, the "faces in the street" peering at us, pleading and at the same time demanding that we acknowledge their existence. It is the same desperate yearning we all have if we look deep within....we all want to belong...we become frightened by the fragility of this yearning and desire to belong. In some profound sense, we begin to understand how easy it is for any one of us to lose our sense of belonging when we look at those "faces in the street".
It is easy for me to apostatize ego and drive when sitting here behind this faceless machine, theorizing and moralizing, yet a couple of lines from Henry Lawson's piece can hammer home my own shortcomings.
"I wonder would the apathy of wealthy men endure
Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?"
I am sitting here, behind apathy, pondering my own fallibility. I am probably worse than those wealthy men...I have a moral conscience but do nothing with it. That is absurd. Absolute Apathetic Absurdism (AAA).
Perhaps I ought to get back to my addiction....it seems less absurd.
Having somewhere to go is a blessing when I really ponder the idea...So many people in this world feel and are isolated. When I used to catch the train to work, I would walk past the homeless. The down trodden and less fortunate. I too ignore these people and am no saint when it comes to helping my brothers and sisters. I am far too self absorbed in my desire not to exist to really be absorbed in the helplessness of those very people in the street. Henry Lawson wrote a great poem called Faces in The Street , it really sings a wailing, sordid sadness, when I read it, as it did the first time I read it. It brings forth those very faces I used to walk by, desperate and yearning. I think it is why so many of us just walk by, fuelled by ego and self delusion, thinking our life is so important. Whilst in our peripheral vision we a get a glimpse...a reflection, a mirror staring at us, the "faces in the street" peering at us, pleading and at the same time demanding that we acknowledge their existence. It is the same desperate yearning we all have if we look deep within....we all want to belong...we become frightened by the fragility of this yearning and desire to belong. In some profound sense, we begin to understand how easy it is for any one of us to lose our sense of belonging when we look at those "faces in the street".
It is easy for me to apostatize ego and drive when sitting here behind this faceless machine, theorizing and moralizing, yet a couple of lines from Henry Lawson's piece can hammer home my own shortcomings.
"I wonder would the apathy of wealthy men endure
Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?"
I am sitting here, behind apathy, pondering my own fallibility. I am probably worse than those wealthy men...I have a moral conscience but do nothing with it. That is absurd. Absolute Apathetic Absurdism (AAA).
Perhaps I ought to get back to my addiction....it seems less absurd.
posted by TwistedTripper at 9:21 PM
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