Fade

"First post of the year 2015!" - I'd like to holler with that motivated and geared up feeling, but I'm just not that.

I feel like a washed out linen just riding on the wind silently from a clothesline.

When there's nothing to push you into a state of frenzy such as national exams, deadlines or relationships, you kinda just sink into a vast ocean of thoughts and reflections, finally taking a good look at your surroundings, and then retreating to the bottom of the sea which I call melancholy. Or maybe a slump.

I've just finished reading A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, and somehow I feel like fading from this world into anonymity. It's hard to explain to those who've never read the book, but the novel deals a lot with reflection, the state of mind and being, and generally philosophy. It's kinda like that existentialism phase I went through last year.

And it's a problem because whenever I go into these phases of reflection and self questioning I tend to try to distance myself from contact that would disrupt my universe of thoughts. 

It's like this:

I don't want to deal with people. I don't want to be bound by connection. I don't want noise. 

And when someone unintentionally crosses the line I shut myself in some more and get mad at the world wondering when total silence and solitude will come. 

I foresee this would be something I'd heavily regret in the future when I'm no longer strong physically, mentally and emotionally, when I start to cleave onto socialisation for support and comfort - things my naive self now would reject. As much as I'd like to think I'm different, I'll still go the same path people before me did, like how Larkin's poetry describes.

I guess this is why people like to keep themselves busy or occupied. When you stop, you realise you're in a vast deep ocean and begin to struggle with fear before sinking to the seabed. But when you have a stimulant, you are distracted from the real fear of life and are able to swim short spurts to get you further. Even so, everyone is ultimately in the same pool, trapped with the same destiny of the end - the only difference is your perception.

With this feeling of drifting, of fading off, I've begun to translate my emotions into the pictures I post on Instagram, mostly using faded filters on the photo subjects. 

Don't misunderstand. I kinda enjoy this solitude. It does make me appear to be a sad figure of hopelessness but to me, it's about finding myself. Montaigne the philosopher said To philosophise is to learn how to die. And when you do that you learn how to enjoy yourself. It's absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy her being. 

Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.