侘寂 Wabi-Sabi

“It's too late to be grateful. It's too late to be hateful. It’s too late to be late again…Everywhere I looked, demons of the future [were] on the battlegrounds of one’s emotional plane.” – David Bowie

It felt like the kind of high you never come down from… until you hear yourself saying that out loud shattering the jelly-laced bubble boosting your ego to a spectrum you had hitherto only conceived of conceiving. You know it can’t last. And there you have it, a split-second in and you’ve sunk so low, you’re practically scraping the sea-bed for a warm shore. Bowie once said something along the lines of “it’s not the side-effects of the high, I’m thinking that it must be love”. Ironic how one learns to love themselves in the forgotten minutes of riding a high you don’t deserve on a substance you shouldn’t substantiate.

The Japanese hold sacred an 'aesthetic of the flawed', which is paramount in their understanding of the human mind. The Wabi-Sabi is seldom explained but is revered in intonation, of both the Samurai and the layman, as that perfection in imperfection…often alluded to as the beauty of the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. The same lifeline also prevails in the Buddhist first noble truth of the Dukkha, Kanji that beleaguers perfectionists as being without spirit and clinging to tattered emotional and logical anchors to preserve a sense of self. I have a bit of a reputation for being quite guarded about my anchors and I have always coveted their presence in my life. I must confess I am a complete stranger to the Wabi-Sabi but I am finally beginning to appreciate its undertones.

These days, I appear hell bent on living without myself. I am making it a point to abandon all senses and tenses of the I, that I affiliate with myself, every time I walk out of my front door. It seems to be working… whatever that means. I no longer recognize my reflection. I suppose that was the point, to elevate my personality from its previous peripheries along the art of time-suckage to actually experiencing hedonism in its essence. It is said that in some cultures it is considered good luck to wear one’s socks inside out. I am testing this theory at elevated modules by wearing myself skin-side out for the first time. Open to experiences but closed to letting them truly penetrate lest I buy into the farce that I know I am operating in at present. It is an odd arithmetic, all even numbers and nuances removed. All self-effacing shadows held at bay. I know it couldn’t possibly last. My three-month sabbatical is nearly up and I am still unsure about whether I want to stay on in this city and look for work. I fear I will lose that girl I once recognized who saw life trickle through the sieve of precariously measured do’s and don’ts that she would allow herself. I am not that girl at present. This simultaneously scares and sustains me. A Wizard of Was skips hand in hand with me each time I find myself transgressing against one of my many moral monitors. They seem to be cross with me and I am luxuriating in that pool of bile.

At present I am riding the tail-end of my first high located alongside a thin, crooked line. I am not sure if this is my act of reticence or revolt. In all honesty, it seems to be an odd blend of both. I feel powerful - invincible even, for a few moments - and this is something I cannot comprehend. It lasts a split-second and the Id cultivated by this high descends as the guilt for experiencing self-satisfaction sets in. I seem to be programmed against self-confidence but I have faked it often enough to recognize the real thing when it slams into me.

I could get used to this, I feel.

I can’t get used to that feeling.

There is a perverse Modus Ponens operating around my guilt as I feel the words rush through my mind quicker than my hands can keep up with them. In propositional logic Modus Ponendo Ponens, is Latin for ‘the way that affirms by affirming’ – it is the implication elimination that rests on simple argument formations and the rule of inference. M implies A, and if M is asserted to be true, so therefore must A be. It is logic that dates back to antiquity but is in no way antiquated. If the me I am cultivating with foreign experiences and foreign substances abound (M) is actually proven to be a true variant of my personality, so must the me I have relegated on pause (A) be true of that setting. I am not sure if I am disproving my former self, or re-affirming her. I am slightly disoriented by the algorithms of this social experiment I am conducting on my own person. That said, I take some comfort in the fact that Modus Ponens is not a logical law, instead it is a construction and an anchor for defining and confining substitution. It is art as much as math. I feel I can play with the art of mathematics, as long as I keep my bearings enough to not let this logic run the other way around.

I am beginning to fear my ability with regards to contriving such an elaborate deception effectively. This is foreign terrain, and yet these tiny, flaky crooked lines elicit surprisingly potent emotions. I have never before witnessed so complete a submission by so many people at once, to something that never demanded it. Perhaps it is just a metaphor for many missing moments and I am trying to fill in my own blanks but I am brought to Sherlock Holmes’ musings about emoting and demoting certain vices in ‘The Sign of Four’.

“A seven-percent solution. Would you care to try it?” He asks.

“No, Indeed,” I answered brusquely. “My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it.”

He smiled at my vehemence. “Perhaps you are right, Watson,” he said. “I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendentally stimulating and clarifying to the mind 

that its secondary action is a matter of a small moment.”

I know, I shall move forward from this and not return to this juncture. If the point of this particular sabbatical-sojourn-social experiment is to try everything (addendum: almost everything) once, than I have been here. I shall not visit again. I hope.

Still, I cannot deny the clouded illusion of self-love I recall having experienced. I can see why this would bring people of a certain constant self-loathing back again. I can see why it would keep them here. I am tempted. Or perhaps I am merely addicted to the act of saying things and having them matter to someone.

Vini. Vidi. Vici  Victus Fuero

I came. I saw.

...I am conquered.