Presencing

I want to write. That’s what I’ve been thinking about all day today. So I will do that now.

I didn’t have a topic particularly in mind that I wanted to write about, but I know I want to write, so surely. What does that mean? 

Logically, perhaps I’m just trying to make real an act I have, in my head; an act that will result in a product, that is not necessarily tangible (how much of our interaction nowadays is in fact tangible, anyway?), but definitely something that is perceivable. Something solid in an abstract sense. 

That, is my idea of presencing. Making something present.  

I recently learned about the Miltonian belief of the soul and body being one from doing some close reading of Paradise Lost — the inseparableness between physicality and spirituality. To Milton, there is something very physical about the spirit and the soul; similarly, tangibility in everything around and of us is indeed very much integrated in our mind, in our spirituality. This oneness and this sense of unanimity intrigues, because it is so interrelated with what we do diurnally. 

Think: when you’re simply walking down a street. The motion of your feet in your shoes stepping carelessly over whatever is on the ground. Every blink of an eye, a slightly different frame of picture per millisecond. Turn around, and the view of what is behind you was where you were perhaps just a minute ago. If you are really thinking about this, and apply the same concept to another mundane scenario, how strange and mind-blowing is the concept of presence? It is absolutely not absolute. Presence in fact takes on an extremely inconstant place in reality. How are we ever 100% present? 

Human beings are naturally moving subjects. The ability and intellect that allow us to do all sorts of interactions with each other prove that we are not meant to be habitual to one single space throughout our lifetime; we are beings in motion. Naturally, though, we also attach to our surroundings so easily. Sickly, powerlessly easily. What do we do then? We try to live in the moment and be present. We came up with measures like time, attention levels, grades in exams, and ideas like commitments. Things that will merge our wandering selves and minds with something unmoving and lifeless. In turn, these mixtures become meaningful to us, because now we have attached a sense of significance to them, and they somehow rightfully reflect our presence. We essentially frame our presence into a stable; a concept tainted with a sense of restrain (from–either the mind or the body—being elsewhere) and self-control. However, presence is a fragile thing. Presence exists in the second, the moment—the space in time that cannot be captured nor measured. Presence represents a form of attempt in merging the spirituality and physicality of oneself, including the space one is in, together. 

Absence, in contrast, carries far more concreteness than presence. 

When something is missing, or simply not there, the actual absence, the outline of the person, object, feeling...whatever it may be, and the emptiness derived from it appears to be much more apparent and present than the memory of him, of her, of it physically being there. 

It entertains to think that we are constantly creating something, even our own presence. Presence can only be treated, realistically, in a very abstract sense. Meaning, you may probably never have my full attention, nor may I have yours. 

Now, consider this simple example of another way presence presents itself: having a meal in a group. We are capturing a sense of space and making a time that has the potential to be memorable together as individuals. The process of sharing captures it. We make present a sense of presence of a group, in which there is interaction, and of space and time. The presence of the meal, the people, and the particular time of the day is framed into one in the moving world. Isn’t this a magnificent thought? 

A Diary Entry from Nov 12, 01:26, Monday Midnight

Hi. I stumbled across a girl’s picture on my Facebook newsfeed and I commenced my stalking (standard) for the next God-knows-how-long. She’s just a girl I met in an art class in high school...we probably wouldn’t say hi if we saw each other on the street, but I guess that wouldn’t happen anytime remotely soon since she’s in Australia, babysitting, and is liking it there so much that she has extended her trip to 2 years (so it says on Facebook). 

Babysitting for fuck’s sake. And here I am, taking a “break”, which is more like my way of excusing myself from working (cramming) anymore for my essay due on Tuesday about pornography and condoms. Looking at her pictures—gorgeous person, gorgeous country, gorgeous weather—it writes youth all over her timeline. 

Somehow the first question that popped into my mind was, how long is my youth going to last? The second question that followed, just how important is post-secondary education? 

I know the latter is a question I already have a very decided and mature answer for, but why did I still ask myself then? 

Her photos made me think of the photos that were taken last year in Germany, either by me or of me. I looked probably just as youthful, if not even happier. When do I get to do that again? Why is it that I’m not doing it now? Why is it not something like a job, which we slave away but are only preparing for, that I can pursue 24-7? In a city, a country where I find beauty in its land, where the weather no longer even affects my mood, because physically being there is enough to form the foundation of my happiness. I think this might be how Hemingway, Stein, and all those American artists and intellects felt when they all decided to move to Paris in the 1920’s. 

Youth is too short. Youth is what forms and shapes life, because youth means mistakes and experiences, and youth must mean happiness, more or less. So what exactly am I doing here? When I read that she is being a nanny in Australia, I thought immediately of her future—a nanny as a career? But what the hell, why do I assume that because she is spending her beautiful years in Australia, taking care of more beautiful things, she’s only good enough to be doing the same thing twenty, thirty years down the road? Why are we wired to think so far ahead? What about now? We don’t ever make plans for life because “life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans” (pardon the cliché). Why don’t we make more proximal plans for life—proximal happiness, instant gratification, like having a photograph taken of me standing by the ocean, with the Sydney Opera House in the background under a clear, blue sky? Why is “life” always something in the future, where we are supposedly paving a way for? 

I know when I wake up in the morning tomorrow, I will continue working on my essay, and I’m going to continue university on Tuesday, with the logical and coherent answer of the importance of education and how it acts as an investment in what we call the space and time we live in as “life”. Are these current thoughts, then, a momentary weakness? Or a form of epiphanic realization, or some sort of revolution in my so-called plan, possibly changing my so-called future life? Maybe I can apply the same technique I use in determining if I should make a purchase or not on this dilemma: if I’m still thinking about that skirt after a few days of seeing it for the first time, then I will buy it. Similarly, if these thoughts about pursuing and holding onto youth, making use out of it in a way that deems to be the most youthful, the happiest, and the most satisfying persist after a few weeks (in this more serious case), then I’ll pack my bags and run and hide and giggle and live happily and no one will be able to tell me otherwise. What do you think? 

Why not question reality, actually?

The most vivid memories one has are usually remembered because they are the most vital experiences engorged with the “realest” feelings. However, memories fade with time—rotten, in fact, over time if not relived. Sometimes these blurred memories may even allow the thinker to doubt, if skeptical enough, the realness of these memories, moreover, the activities engaged in the memories. How can one persist to feel real about the memories when they become so abstract and dreamlike, which consequently brings in the following question of, how shall one remain faithful to these feelings and experiences that once felt real, in the forsaken form of decayed memories? 

What is the reason not to be so skeptical of the epistemology of the events that our memories carry? You could be dreaming this very moment and you wouldn’t even be able to know it. Something can easily be remembered as realistic events when it has never happened, and episodes of reality often occur without one’s awareness, thought-process, thus not to even expect it to make its way to the hippocampus. Reality happens in our everyday’s business and when we are asleep... or does it? Until time machine is invented, how is one able to prove the happening of something, realistically? You just can’t. 

Amnesia is a real thing. People lose memories; sometimes of proximal knowledge, sometimes—eventually for some—everything. Names, identities, moments, achievements, knowledge, meanings... How are those surrounding the forgetters supposed to define what’s real? What is real to the forgetters, then? Because for all they know, the achievements and families that they are informed to have built certainly don’t exist. “Nope, never even heard of it.”

So why is philosophy of epistemology regarded as silly and pointless by some people? Have they not once felt real and more sure than ever about something and then losing that grip of sureness? Does it actually mean anything to be certain about something? Maybe, at the moment. When people make vows, promises, oaths, and all these words to describe the gesture of guaranteeing something, either about the past or the future, they still swear by the moment. Forever perhaps only lives in the moment, when the very word is said, or when one is completely and entirely sure about what they are feeling—when they are feeling the realest feelings.