On Selfhood

In one sense you have only one self. But in another sense you have multiple selves. And yet in still another sense you have no self at all.

[From my notes. Not a complete thought but a possible theme for future stories.]

My last day at work for this year before my vacation. Tomorrow we travel. I didn't finish the book I'm reading, so it'll be coming along with me probably. Or should I take something else? something more light? Hmm...

I have read only 29 books this year. On the other hand, I did write and post more. In the second half of the year, at least. If I go on in the same way for the whole of next year, maybe a few of them could be good enough for a collection. Maybe for now, before I get busy with my travels, I will post the incomplete notes and drafts I have which I don't know what to do with.

Lost

He talked to me about others he deemed to be lost. He talked about what it meant to be lost as if there was only one way to be lost. He talked about it from the perspective of an outsider, and I pretended to be an outsider too. If I were to tell him I was an insider, that I was lost too, this would only fill him with loss and he wouldn't know how to cope, he wouldn't deal with being lost as I do. He would be like someone who lost something, which is different from not knowing the way. Being lost, not knowing the way, can be very different from loss.

[First draft.]

2022-2023 Readings

My reading plan for next year is to reread books, either different translations of some of my favorites, uncensored versions, or completing collections I hadn't before. In the words of Nietzsche according to an article I found online, those books "that spoke to me", and according to the Walter Kaufmann translations I have, it's those "proved to me", which also makes sense.

This is the current plan anyway, ultimately the moment decides for itself...

As for this year's favorites:

I think the best fiction book I read this year was Auto Da Fe, which was a mad book about mad characters, and I wanted to write my thoughts on it at the time but as always I got carried away with other books and other things. Suffice to say I wouldn't recommend the book to everyone, and I don't mean that from some kind of elitist perspective, I feel it's really a crazy story and I can't believe anyone would write such a thing. Definitely not a book I think I could ever reread either. 

Best nonfiction would probably be Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, which I raved about to people around me when I read it, and I'm looking forward to getting the Arabic translation when it comes out so I can share it around.

Timing

He died at 6:22 am. The car had swerved at 6:19. He had closed his eyes at 6:18. When he opened his eyes, still at 6:18, it was already too late. He had left for work at 6:06, so that he could arrive by 6:30, so that he could leave at 2:30 pm and be back home by 3. He woke up at 5 am.

[Edited on 28-02-2023.]

The Eyes of Others

She hated herself when she looked through the fog and was able to see herself. Only when someone liked her did she like herself; when she looked at herself through another’s eyes with the distortion of desire. This was why she did not reject those who liked her even when she didn't like them. She would resist at first, but at some point, she would succumb to their wills. This was also why she hated herself when she saw what she was doing, until the next person helped her lose sight of herself again and she was glamorized by someone who desired her. And so it goes, a blurry love that leaves behind a hateful clarity, until a new one comes along.

[Edited 20-12-2022. Wrote this a while ago and forgot about it in my drafts. I still don't like it. Needs something different. Except for the Billy Joel homage in the end.]

Being

There is no necessity to my being. I didn't have to be who I was, I didn't have to be at all; I could have been someone else and I can still be someone else. I once came across someone from a distance who reminded me of who I could have been, who I could still be; it was an eerie glimpse into one of my possible other selves. I wondered what it would have been like to meet this person who was living one of my possible lives, and I wonder now, though I don’t know if I had thought of this back then, if I was living his other possible life. Maybe I’m living other people’s possibilities, just as others are living mine.
I go on being who I'm being though, not who I am, and I don't know which is more authentic or what that even means if it means anything at all.

[On Instagram.]

A Manifesto

Let us make an art of being unable to say what we cannot say. 

Let us be masters in our lostness. Let us enjoy the sights, even those that don’t exist except in our minds, in this path to I don’t know where. 

And if we cannot write except that we cannot write then let us write that we cannot write. 

[Posted on Instagram.]

Last Thoughts

He shivered as they took him to his executioners. His hands were tied behind his back. The men who led him were not rough, they did not take pleasure in his punishment. The night was warm, and quiet as if listening to his thoughts. His thoughts were what made him shiver. He was wondering if his death would be worth it, if the revolution would succeed or if the state would win in the end, if the people would believe him to be a hero who died for them or a traitor who died for some sinister agenda; he knew it was what people did with his death that would determine whether his death was worth it or not; and not knowing what they would do, he shivered until he was dead.

Infinite Fiction

If I were to create a fictional self and that fictional self resembled me, and that fictional self would be as consumed as I am with creating a fictional self, then that fictional self would create a fictional self who resembles him, who would, in turn, create a fictional self, who would then, of course, create another fictional self, and on and on it would go without ending...

Or it would end only with my ending, as the original real self. But then another dilemma occurs to me, which is, since each fictional self believes himself to be real and the first creator of a series of endless creations, then would it not make sense for me too to wonder if I am also another fictional self in this never-ending story?

Ugliness

His physical ugliness revealed my inner ugliness. I was repulsed by him, through no moral flaw on his part, though my mind rapidly sought to find one. I wanted to justify my revulsion; I could not accept that I was repulsed by someone merely for their physical appearance. But, perhaps because I was slow in my thinking, I saw clearly what I was doing and when I saw my inner ugliness, when I became aware of its existence, I wondered how others reacted to my own appearance, and I wondered if they were ever conscious of it as I had just become. Perhaps those who were faster in their thinking couldn't tell what their minds were doing.
And I decided to forgive them for what they did not know.

[Posted on Instagram.]

Writing A Story

In order to entertain himself, a writer began to write a story. He had no plot in mind, no characters to follow, but he wanted to keep himself busy and entertained, so he kept on writing. After a while he wanted to stop, but he thought of how his life was when he wasn't writing, which he hated, so he kept on writing. He wrote on some more until he felt hungry, but he remembered how he was full before when he wasn't writing and he had hated what it was like to not be writing, so he didn't stop writing. He felt very thirsty after a while but he remembered how he wasn't thirsty before writing but he wasn't happy either so he continued writing. Until he wasn't hungry any more, he wasn't thirsty, he wasn't tired, he wasn't writing, he wasn't even living. 

Doubts

I doubted myself and thought maybe the others were right. I thought everyone should doubt themselves, that self-doubt was healthy. But then I came to think, What if the others were right in not doubting themselves? This was taking my self-doubt to its conclusion. Thus I learned from doubting myself and trusting others to trust myself and doubt my doubts. But I got into a heated argument with a friend in which I trusted myself and she trusted herself too, and it seemed as if each of us was blind to the possibility of being wrong though one of us had to be, and I remembered that this was why I had previously concluded that self-doubt was healthy since to discover one’s mistakes required questioning oneself, and so I returned to doubting myself and trusting in my doubts.


[Posted on Instagram.]

Anger

A young man got angry at an older man. I, though not knowing either one of them, felt angry at the younger man for getting angry. I thought he had no right to get angry and it angers me when someone is unnecessarily angry. I wanted to respond angrily to the angry young man, and I kept getting angrier as I imagined the angry words I would say to him, and I got angrier as I thought of his angry responses to me because surely he would get angrier at my words of anger too. The day went on, and we each went our separate ways. I don’t know if the other two still feel angry, reliving the conversation they had, but I know I’m still angry, imagining the conversation I never had.

[Rewrote this older story, and posted it again on Instagram, where you can go like it.]

What Matters

I wanted to tell you that it matters, because I thought of this instance in which it does matter, but then I thought of other instances in which it doesn’t matter and I decided not to tell you that it matters, because I don’t want you thinking of instances in which it doesn’t matter when I’m telling you that it does matter, and I don’t want to tell you that it doesn’t matter because I don’t want you thinking of instances (like the thought that started this) in which it does matter when I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter.

Words in his mouth

She put words in his mouth. She then responded to the words she put in his mouth. She didn’t like what he didn’t say and she asked him why he would say such a thing. She asked him how he could say such a thing. He didn't know why he would say such a thing, and he didn’t know how he could say such a thing. But because he forgot how he never did say such a thing, he too asked himself how he could and wondered why he would say such a thing.

[Posted on Instagram.]