What is it? What is real? What is reality?
The year is ending, again. At least according to the calendar I am looking at — which if you really think of it, is an arbitrary count of days which we are forced to conform to. But if you had no dealings with the government or corporations, you could pick any count of days — Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, Mayan, North Korean, Aboriginal, Native American…
Or you can be the oddball hipster tripping on mushrooms without tripping on mushrooms attending a business meeting without a clear agenda — or at least an agenda that one could make sense of because the jargon/corporatese notification was just too thick.
So, the year is ending and here I am looking back… Looking backward and trying to make sense… trying to spot patterns and deviations from patterns… trying to, maybe, divine or prophecy… trace an arc from what is to what could be… regretting, hoping, reminiscing, ruminating…
All those thoughts over a large mug of hot cacao-matcha, not a single one solid enough to carry a definiteness about it… and in my head, they might as well all be like lost children looking at me — the only adult — in a strange, featureless land. Waiting for me to decide what things were, what they are, and what they could be.
Tentative. Liminal. Inchoate. Do I have to make a choice? No. Not really. Not now, at least.
It seems, though, that the thing that leads to deciding what things are is the exigency in which they are framed.
Like, for instance, if I were hungry or lonely or horny or all three… My financial app of choice would tell me if I could eat or be with someone… Depending on the numbers I see, the things in my head would begin to have a definiteness about them… Habits and daily routines as well as random, unplanned activities would be classified as either financially productive or not.
But the thing is… I could also choose not to eat… I could lose myself in the act of writing or thinking…
So, in this sense, nothing is real. There is no reality.
Just things we either decide or leave alone.