2013-11-10. To T.
Figure 10: Leuven (Belgium), September, 2013: The 24th. My 20th birthday. I was exploring the center of the city, enjoying the free beers that one gets only by showing your ID and proving that it is your birthday. Fleeting happiness…
Leuven, 11th of October of 2013.
Greetings T.,
How is everything going? I hope that well and without too many frights.
I attach a letter explaining some of the thoughts I have had in my mind during these months.
I mentioned my intention to call you during my stay in Barcelona but, as I explain in the letter, I preferred to use writing as a means of communication.
My trip to Barcelona has left me in a rather strange state of longing, melancholy, and loss of comfort… I do not know if these beautiful three days I have spent there have been beneficial or harmful.
Greetings and thanks,
Carlos
Leuven, 10th of November of 2013.
Greetings T.,
I hope everything’s going well. Remember that the time we have is to try to live as best we can. Knowing our limits and trying not to exceed them.
The first thing is to apologize. You’re going to read something that, I suppose, will cause you discomfort and disgust. It’ll probably influence you emotionally and intellectually. My ideas, let’s hope, can’t influence you, but I sense my mood will affect you. Empathy is within our human condition, as our compassion for our neighbor, which many of us forget and is left only in exceptionality. Like yours. I’m so sorry that you have to read this letter. I’m really sorry. But the situation is becoming more complicated at an unexpected and alarmingly speed. I feel pushed to ask you for help; to take on the role of psychologist and priest-confessor, (ironic considering how much you don’t like priests…).
T., please take your time to read and answer this letter. My problems are not in a hurry. I know your advice will always be of incredible quality, so it will be worth the wait. I also don’t want my problems to get in the way, more than they already do, and they’re going to do it, in your pace of life, in your priority issues, much more important than mine.
Regarding the communicative medium, writing, I have preferred to use this letter because of the ability to reflect and reread that allows us both. In this way, we can present our organized ideas and retrieve the exact information if necessary. I don’t know if a phone conversation or a face-to-face talk would have a greater short-term impact, but the memory is very fallible. This is not, for me, a transient problem that can be solved with a coffee. It is settling into my soul, in my being, and in my mind, unconsciously and insidiously. As far as I believe, it is necessary to root it out and make future revisions so that it doesn’t regrow. Still, at Christmas (Winter Festivities) we’ll have a coffee and catch up.
I will use the metaphor to help express some ideas, as my intellectual resources are markedly limited. But I would appreciate advice without and abusive use of these, unlike I have done. I would like to see clearly the way to be followed and avoid possible misinterpretations. Still, the beauty of your words and the power of the images that your metaphors can create will be a great encouragement in my disoriented search for a right path. I’d like to tell you a few things that are hanging around my head over the last few months.
Probably the source of the problem, or a factor in its appearance, was the reading of a book: Pulp by Charles Bukowski (Bukowski 2002). I did it as a language exercise, to improve my English, but its message has insidiously meddled in my thinking. Unconsciously. That hatred, that banality, the death, the impoverished quality of the human being of the twenty-first century, the disorder, the violence…
For similar reasons, I’m no longer sure I want to read poetry anymore. The idea of death appears repeatedly and spontaneously in my thinking. It’s uncontrollable. Sometimes it blocks me, sometimes it depresses me, others it causes me frustration or anger. The multiplicity of interpretations offered by poetry, and my pre-activated mind, make me detect constant references to death. I can’t get rid of the idea. It’s lodged in my brain.
This thought has led me to value the importance of life, a human being. But wrongly, I hope, I only see banality, hopelessness, a continuous wandering towards an inevitable destiny. The nonsense. This society is sinking at an alarming rate. It’s sinking unstoppably. We’re heading for the abyss. I’m losing my faith, my hope.
Besides, something dangerous and new is appearing in my way of being. I’m starting to feel hate. A deep hatred towards mediocrity. A hatred that begins to take root in my heart, in my soul. It catches me in social situations, at mass parties filled with crowds without any purpose. Anesthetizing our senses, with noise, low light, and alcohol. I admit my enormous guilt since many of these thoughts of hatred manifest more intensely if I find myself under the influence of drinks. My instincts are revealed, my hate manifests.
I have not had any physical fights, for I have never been a violent person, by ability and principles. I consider that intellectual capacity and aggression are inversely related. The higher the amount of one, the less of the other. Only when we feel frustrated and scarce in resources does aggression and physical violence appears.
Despite the absence of physical violence, my words and thoughts portray powerful hate. My intentions are, indeed, aggressive and violent. I’m not able to start a conversation that doesn’t lead me to an argument or a clash. I start incriminating the other person, judging her, considering her mediocre, inferior, banal. Things get worse if I try to advise her, showing my point of view, instruct her, even. Who am I to teach? In those moments the confrontation is absolute. The other person gets tired and usually runs away. I still have hate-laden bullets ready to fire.
F. doesn’t help. I think part of this mentality is generated by him, by his verses, his ideas. It’s made me hopeless. Another friend of mine, C., who has a very powerful mind, has also led me down a path that I am not sure is the right one.
Both C. and F. have opened my eyes, they have taught me the world of shadows in which I was living. They have pushed me out of the cave. I’ll always be indebted to them. But, I think, they’re not treating people who continue inside the cavern properly, living out of shadows. They despise them, they abandon them, they repudiate them.
I want to believe that the people left in the cavern, in the banality, should be helped. But the empire of Facebook, Twitter, the Internet, and WhatsApp controls them. Their ideas are now within me. I’m afraid of this situation, it makes me nauseous and disgusted. I’m repulsed by people who are imbued, drowned. They prefer to continue to be fed with vacuous dreams, for not facing the truth.
In the direction towards the exit, I hope, halfway through, I start to see the light. It blinds me. It aches and hurts me. Sometimes I wonder if it’s better to keep living in the cave, comfortably, quietly and futilely. Outside the wind intensifies, and I’m not used either to nudity, transparency, nor loneliness.
I know I’m doing something wrong. I’m misinterpreting something. Or it may be that I am fighting for a lost cause, and I should embark alone on my personal goals, (An ethical force blocks me). Or should I go back to the cavern, to the blindness and join them? (Having approached the light, the truth hampers this option). I feel weak. I need support all the time. I have powerful social needs that drag me to stay inside, living out of shadows. I’m pretty lost and disoriented. I’m thinking of going to therapy to be fooled into fooling myself. Getting into the warmth of the cavern, to see the shadows and wait for death seems to me as the most feasible option.
I’m loosing out on the experience of studying in a foreign country with all these thoughts in my head bombarding and bothering me. I can’t taste the beauty of diversity. I forget the power of human warmth. A few weeks ago, we had a class on the relationship between happiness and social relationships; the sadness of loneliness, of the lonely one. My nature is social, very social. I used to be happy. I’m aimless now.
I think only a person as exceptional as you can give me some guidance and good advice. I need some information to make the lest incorrect decision as possible. To get out of the trap I’ve built myself.
You can’t imagine, T., how lucky I am to have met you. How much I admire you and the tremendous respect I have for you. Death assaults me, all the time. Thinking about your age overwhelms me with anguish. My eyes are flooding. Thinking about the unconditionality and premeditation of our destiny is very hard. I don’t know what I’m going to do when what’s going to happen actually happens, with each and every one of us.
I am surprised that the oldest of my friends retains hope and believes in the future, on the change. However, youth is devastated, hopeless and lost, like me (21 years), C. (24) or F. (33).
Could we pick up the towel we threw away?
I’m sorry again for reading my problems and stealing your time.
Eternally grateful.
Carlos
References
Bukowski, Charles. 2002. Pulp. Txalaparta.