by the 8
Who am I?
According to Renè Descartes, I think therefore I am,
Perhaps I think too much — because I am at once more than enough and nothing at all.
I know I am an inexhaustible summation of all that I have heard, seen, touched, smelled, tasted, spoken, remembered, imagined, and dreamed so far,
I am at once my own person and part of a system that is many, I know my gender is fluid, my attraction beyond identity, my capacity beyond binary.
I am also pulled in between, at the centre of everything I have ever experienced, observing myself from the perspective of everyone else.
In the physical world that is not confined in my skull and is not dependent on my survival, I do not know everyone and I do not know everyone well enough in this present,
And in the future though things might change, I may never fully understand why everything that has happened has happened.
At these intersections I am existential, I am infinitesimal, I am abysmal, I am terminal.
Time is beyond my grasp, stolen by insatiable consumption that only seeks expansion,
Exposed to greater awareness of how everything works, I feel smaller and more vulnerable in my own skin, wanting to run away from all that wishes for me to lose and wishes for me to win.
Here, I attempt to absorb everything I come across from the moment I wake up, to the moment I sleep,
Here, I attempt to process everything I imagine in the liminal spaces of my dreams,
Every day I stand here at these existential intersections, questioning the decisions made by myself and my headmates, and questioning the decisions made by people we interact and do not interact with,
I question the reasons, the motives, the emotions, the ethics, and the intent of everything in my knowledge,
I can’t help but recognise, analyse, scrutinise, and philosophise every bit of information that enters through my senses,
At these existential intersections, I am insignificantly small, though many times heavier that my mass,
Here I don’t matter at all, yet am inundated with everything that is matter or comes from matter or becomes matter,
Here I am acutely aware of every fault, flaw, failure, error, and mistake,
Here I am in the direct line of every criticism, taunt, gossip, curse, cackle, and lashing,
Here I am always processing how everyone else out there is going through the same but reacting to it differently,
Here I am fawning, fleeing, freezing and fighting every unfolding of fate, wondering if everyone else is also engaged in one of these states of self-defence,
Here at these crossroads of consciousness, I loath and lament the decisions made by individuals who do not self-reflect, introspect, and restrain themselves from acting out on their thoughtless interests, addicted to a sense of power from fear and fervour of those involved in their high stakes of recklessness.
Here I am terrified of those who terrorise everyone else with their gathered rage,
Here I am wary of the othering by those who weaponise hate,
Here I am not ready to relinquish control, obsessing compulsively on every little thing around me,
Hypervigilant, hyperaware, hyperreactive to every change, always trying to stay one step ahead from the next mishap, next accident, next trauma, next abuse, next panic, next seizure, next crisis, next loss of control,
Because in a world so intricately connected, and so impossibly inundated with disinformation and misinformation, and so caught up in chaos of ceaseless, complex, intersectional conflict, I am worried for the people who suffer around me and within me,
I feel helpless, hapless, and hopeless about our collective anguish,
I feel hounded by the outcomes that await us if we don’t stop this apocalyptic descent into collective suicide, by this steep turn to anti-science, anti-equal rights, anti-inclusive sentiments.
There is so much to take in, at all times, because the world beyond my safe spaces is battered and broken by the binary,
The polarisation of the human experience pummels us towards a sixth mass extinction,
Apathetic activism is advertised as empathy, equality, and equity,
Reparations, rewards and relaxation are promised plenty, but rarely put to practice,
We are instead put out to pasture, left alone to defend ourselves against everything else,
Pseudoscientific fanaticism, fascism and greed driven injustice encroach upon our boundaries, Those who don’t care about the planet are raising borders to prevent us from exercising our rights and freedoms as they should be,
Twisting policies with policing tactics to deny us access to sustainable science for all, to pull back rights for gender, sexual, romantic, and ethnic minorities, leaving our health, shelter and sustenance to the uncertainty of a collapsing climate and the society that relies on it to exist.
But it’s not enough to be anti-racist, it’s not enough to be decolonial, it’s not enough to treat everyone equally, it’s not enough to care for all the other species we share all our resources with.
My mind says people from all walks of life need to co-create a vibrant culture that celebrates plurality of thoughts and identities, co-existing sustainably in peace with everything else in our intersectional ecosystem, exploring existence with endless curiosity.
I want to fix these fatalistic missteps, I want to help people reconnect with their better selves.
But this is just an impossible dream I have conjured. Unfortunately, science will never become the catalyst of our purpose. We will be blindsided by self-manifested entropy, at the cusp of discovery.
Because how can we even make any difference if we collectively don’t come to the same conclusions about the very core aspects of our existence?
How can we fix anything if we don’t even stop being in denial about ourselves?
How can we bring everyone together when all we do is fixate on our differences?
How can we accomplish anything if we are so focused on what we present to the world outside, and what we do to forget about all that hurts us,
How can we healthily communicate with mutual empathy if we always try to be perfect and exceptional, if we always try to protect ourselves and escape?
I ask myself these questions over and over and over again, as unconsciously and as effortlessly as my breath,
And even when I regulate what I inhale and what I exhale, I don’t feel entirely in control of all that is experienced by my headmates, and their own fragments, all that is felt by me as an extension of their conjoined selves, and all that I come across on the internet.
There are no directions left to follow, or exits to take,
All doors and all roads have led me to this junction between jungian archetypes and darwinian impulses,
I have sought answers in all schools of science and spirituality, I have accepted and abandoned all concepts of a creator, I have expressed through all mediums of art and reasoning,
I have grounded myself in facts and formulas,
I have attached myself to evidence of the evolutionary nature of existence,
I have engaged with and expressed all genders, sexualities, relationships and identities,
I have been open to understanding where all viewpoints emanate,
I have been adamant to only associate with that which equally denounces all that is wrong,
I have choreographed all possible brushstrokes to paint a picture that speaks a simple story of no woe and worry,
But, it is always spoiled, slashed, and set aflame, leaving me to gather the countless shards over and over again.
So I return to the crossroads of infinite horizons to ruminate about myself,
The endless sea under my feet is always shifting, always moving, always swirling,
The endless sky above my head is always transforming, always yawping, always whirling.
There are mountains of memories all around me, made of all those inside and outside of myself,
They are unlike me, yet they all share something in common with me,
They are also confused, conflicted, cornered, and burned out.
I disassociate myself from the human experience and fantasise how it feels like for a caterpillar to melt into a goo and recreate itself anew,
Or for an octopus to reflexively change its hue,
Or for an atom to glue itself to a molecule,
And I rue the limitations of who I am.
So here, at the quandary, I decide to go beyond all intersections of myself and ask:
Who am I when I’m all alone at the end and start of the day?
Who am I when everything that I know is stripped away?
Who am I when every interpersonal construct created by communication and conflict is absent from my thoughts?
Who am I without the things I enjoy, the things I interact with, the things I consume, the things I’ve done, the things I’ve bought?
Who am I when I have nothing new to do?
Who am I without my partners, families, friends, pets, co-workers, acquaintances, strangers, and people I know who don’t know me?
Who am I when all the intersecting, overlapping, and fragmenting social groups of professions, ideologies, sustenance and identity are erased?
Who am I without the awareness of all schools of existential science undefined by labels and language, the information I use to make sense of my surroundings, the senses I depend on to tether myself to register everything else?
Who am I when I remove myself from everything that I think is false and everything that I think is true?
Who am I when I no longer think of all that has passed and all that is yet to?
Who am I devoid of all the rituals, rules and tools we have invented to execute all the tasks and all the distractions that keep us going on?
Who am I without the concept of creation, and the knowledge of everything that has existed and everything that exists and everything that will not?
Who am I without my emotions and expressions?
Who am I without the realisation of my reflection?
Who am I without my memories, fantasies, and dreams?
Who am I when I can no longer feel?
Who am I without all that I’ve suffered?
Who am I without a purpose?
Who am I without the biases of my impulses?
Who am I without all the lies I tell myselves?
Who am I without the acute awareness of the atoms that form my inner and outer existences?
Who am I in these lucid seconds of living death?
Who am I in these liminal moments of nothingness?
Who am I in the absence of myselves?
Who am I without the concept of self?
The answer will most likely never materialise itself, I don’t know where to go from here, because I am already at the centre of my absolute emptiness,
Waiting for the songbirds of solitude to sing of stillness and silence, waiting to disintegrate into the absence of non-existence, no longer thinking, free from the crushing awareness of myself.
