tickle fight!

Why bask in loss when you don’t have to?  Why not build a healthy shield and move on and laugh and deal and transport yourself to a place of maturity and self-deprecation and understanding and all of those things that make the ground a smoother place to walk on for everyone?  

These are questions I ask other people while simultaneously questioning myself of the same things.  

When I first meet boys and like them, I stumble.  Literally.  I fall on my way to meet them.  It’s like my body’s warning.  Or not.  I don’t know what it means.  Nerves.  

I have no idea what to wear to ring in 2009.  I have very vague plans.  And few expectations.  But I am going to wear a dress, damnit.  And do not plan to drink any liquor because I am quite sick of it.  Seriously.  I’m actually kind of excited, though.  I need to release some family sadness and socialize and not worry, worry, worry.  Worry (mostly about invisibility) — the bane of my existence and the very thing that makes me question my existence.  

And I was in a ridiculously wise-assed mood today.  I miss some of my wise ass friends who get that.  

I am quite obsessed with existentialism and Camus.  Still.  And “Don Juanism” as Camus interprets it.  

Don Juan is the ultimate womanizer; his life revolves around courting and seducing a woman of his choice, having his way with her, and then leaving her for a new conquest. On a superficial level, Don Juan appears to be morally corrupt, and probably lacking in any depth, being a person interested only in the purely physical pleasures. However, Camus looks at this seducer from a different perspective: as an authentic person who has led a life being true to himself.

Don Juan lives only in the present. He refuses to accept morality, because morality is something that is eternal; as an absurd man he recognizes the irrationality of the world and thus rejects universal truths such as ethics. This gives him his freedom, freedom from the eternal and freedom to do as he wills; his ability to transcend himself. This also means the Don Juan is not enslaved by any essence of him being a seducer and a womanizer; at every moment he is aware of his choices, and makes that choice to continue being what he wants.

As for passion, one does not need to think very far to understand why Don Juan has so much of it. Passion refers to a desire for experience, and lots of experience. With the lack of eternal truths, we can no longer qualify experiences and thus seek those of “higher calibre”; one who seeks passion can only wish to seek more and more of it. Therefore Don Juan is highly passionate; experiencing his life at every passing moment, living for that moment.

Yet, mere quantity of experience is not enough; the absurd man must be fully conscious of his experiences as well. Don Juan loves every single moment of his delicate dance; from the first encounter, to the flirtation, and the eventual intercourse. He does not tire of it and go through the motions without enjoyment; every single affair is just as exciting and exhilarating. Don Juan repeats this constantly, experiencing life to the fullest.

Consciousness also refers to consciousness of his actions. Don Juan is not a stupid man, nor is he nearsighted and shallow. He is acutely aware of his foolishness, knowing that one day age will catch up with him and he may experience impotence and then death. Even as he structures his life around the act of coitus, he does not feel any fear in the fact that this “meaning” to his life will one day be gone; he absurdly recognizes that nothing is eternal and so it matters not.

When the time arrives and he is unable to continue with his quest for women, legend has it that he enters the priesthood and ends his life in asceticism and celibacy. This is not an act of repentance, nor one of melancholy; Don Juan is neither. Knowing that his past life is now over, he continues to live in a new way, still experiencing life, and finding joy in new things: “… through a narrow slit in the sun-baked wall, some silent Spanish plain, a noble, soulless land in which he recognizes himself.” (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 76) He has no regrets for his actions, and remains true to what he is and was.

This is Don Juan’s revolt, a revolt against both impotence and death. At the beginning, he refuses to let the fact that he will eventually be impotent deter him from his passionate journey. He is proud of his life, and proud of the way in which he exists, and rejects this impotency, in fact he even scorns it through his sexual conquests. Yet when fate finally catches up on him, he takes it in his stride, and continues living without a trace of remorse. Taking sexual activity as life and impotence as death, Don Juan has revolted by continuing to love life and deny death to the very end.

I could make a career of being blue
I could dress in black and read Camus 
smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth 
like I was 17 
that would be a scream 
But I don’t want to get over you.

xoxo

me