“you’re the music while the music lasts.”

So—

with my puppy resting his head on my arm makes it a little hard to type. Just a little.

yes since i last posted, i had been working on this essay...I don’t know if I’m making too much of a claim in it, or ... hahah it feels very delicate when I can sense my pup’s breaths against my arm...

yea that’s sort of what I wanna say in this post: the physical sense of existence.

my friend once said something like this: “i like winter because i can see my own breath, and i know that i’m actually alive.” interesting.
and funny ‘cause we have to physically see something to physically feel our own, so-real, so-unavoidable existence.

in the past year my class, well not my class—sounds like im teaching the class or something—but my english class, we worked with autobiographies. and how daring of me, to argue about how their authenticity could very possibly be challenged, in my essay. Well authentic not in a sense, that “they are not realistic” because it got to be pretty damn realistic when there’s an autobiography written by a blind guy. but authentic in a sense that, it doesn’t narrate or deliver the entire “self” in this autobiography completely.

let me explain the core reason for this:

read the title of this post, it’s a quote from one of the articles i read as research for this essay; that is the definition to the notion of self.

note that music is wordless, and so even when we talk about self in anything—autobiographies, blogs etc., those words that we use are so limited as to be able to fully describe our complex and rich selves. We’re human, and you know how complicated this species is. scientifically speaking, just the brain is enough to say that all those autobiographies are not able to really say that they have delivered readers a full and complete representation of the autobiographers. Feelings, thoughts—conscious, unconscious. even more, soul.

“self is a state of feeling, not an entity.”

I think,

most people who write about themselves, are subconsciously trying to “leave a mark” of themselves in this world—this world full of many, many people. To search for some less abstract form of existence, of self.. we all do that at some point, through something. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a negative act at all. It’s like a “psychological gratification” to have an autobiography or blog, something to satisfy ourselves mentally; forming an image, dropping words about our experiences, our feelings, to physically “see” ourselves. well, the selves that we sort of “made up” with our restricted words, at least.

oh, just recalled. In one of my philosophy, well, my philosophy discussion, we talked about determinism and free will. so determinism is basically saying that everything is predetermined, but not by us, of course. For example, if you decide to go to school in the morning even when you’d rather stay in bed, it is your nervous system telling you or making you go to school/stay in bed. Just think about that, you can’t really argue against it because our brain IS the control centre, even feelings, such abstract thing, is generated from there. and this girl in my class broke out dramatically, saying “so if all our decisions are predetermined, then it’s like, what the hell am i doing here?!” yea it was pretty hilarious, especially when she looked so concerned. and my teacher’s assistant asked “so does that worry you?” “YEAA!” and with a “duh” expression.
oh, how nervous we get when we lose control over ourselves.
i think that girl’s reaction was a form of grasping her-self. Something that she believes in, that she has been building on, with properties, knowledge, experiences.

so what IF we are not what we think we are, what if we are predetermined, what if behind all these illusions and delusions, we do not have free will, and hence no such thing as the concept of self?

no wonder we do so much stuff like what i’m doing right now.