I'm back

09 November 2021, around 10:30pm

Dear Future Historian,

I’ve been silent too long. I missed you. I missed me.

It’s like I meet myself when I’m talking/writing to you.

I’ve been lost in the surrealistic realm or what people call reality.

Trapped in chores, studies, school runs, invisible-visa-monsters (that—hopefully not permanently—took away my love,) and what professionals call ‘mental health’ issues (but, I call philosophical and spiritual adventures. The Earth seams to rush every day in her self-rotation. Not really caring if my to-do list is done yet. The Sun seams to leave me all alone, in the dark, before I am ready to ‘call it a day.’ And, the moon comes a goes, just to remind me of the rarity of her beauty.

And I? I at least have my audiobooks. Henry Millers biography, ‘The Anatomy Of Melancholy,’ and the Uni books.

I barely talk to my self and to my imaginary audience anymore. I don’t know what to say to them, or you, my dear future historian, and my few contemporary loyal readers.

I was reading Miller’s ‘The Word Of Sex’ last night. Before going to bed... alone.

Alone.

After so many years of having someone to hug. Last thirteen years my kids. Last 6 months my love.

Alone again.

Back to the eternity that my childhood/adolescent’s loneliness was.

Back to stories, fantasy, wishful thinking.

But where am I in all these?

How can I feel again so alone, given the fact that I am divided in two MEs? And, we are both so lonely.

Who am I? This is the ultimate question.

If there is a God or not; that... that is a secondary question. One that matters little to the severity of the quest for self-discovery.

It is not by chance then that at uni the first book is about the self and the religious questions come only in the second book.

I took philosophy last year too. But, I ended up giving it up (I deferred the module.)

Now, I stated again. Last year I got a very low mark in the first assignment.

Now, I’m still waiting the results of my second attempt.

I rationalised it then, trying to convince myself that full time studies (I finished the creative writing module last year, as you might remember,) a breakup, and two autistic kids, are just too much to ask of myself.

My study skills support tutor informed me that the problem possibly was that I thought that philosophy in undergraduate level was... philosophy. When in fact is just what ancient Geeks called sophistry.

Apparently, no one cares about my opinion, at this point.

Tutors want to assess if I can understand the materials given to me, and if I am able to argue an argument on both sides. And, they are not interested in me solving the questions of existence by applying reason and knowledge from other books (even of other chapters in the books they give to me,) or personal experience.

For that I have you.

So, this year I will talk a lot about the uni assignments subjects, and my personal views on the matters discussed. To make sure that I will get them out of my system, and I won’t get tempted again to put some ‘flavour’ in my essays-to-be-assessed.

The Self. That was the first book.

Locke—whom had no idea about the discovery of the subconscious—that restricts personal identity to memory.

David Hume, that was just an automaton, and mock anyone that had even the slightest taste of free-will.

Derek Parfitt, that things we have a succession of selves, each with the life span of an insect, thus we shouldn’t worry too much about our own deaths, since it won’t even be us that will die, just a related-to-us being that is not us at all. So, why bother to work on any future goal? (Even if he claims that this is not what he means and he also makes a huge ‘kangaroo jump’ saying that his philosophy made him a better person. It seems to me that this philosophy can equally make someone—with a different idiosyncrasy—a criminal who won’t be afraid of punishment, since it won’t be him in the future that will be punished.)

And Charles Taylor, whom I loved before I even knew his existence.

I was talking, last year, to my mum about that assignment—before I reached the last chapter with Taylor’s ‘Narrative’ theory—and I was telling her that Locke, Hume, and Parfit seem to me to completely miss the point of personhood.

I believe in Narratives, I told her. And, I thought it would have to be me to explain that to the word.

Next day I read Taylor’s chapter. How solipsistic!

Hmmmm.

I guess there is nothing new under the Sun.

I guess, maybe, the word doesn’t need me to explain anything.

Me.

Who is even that ME?

And how I have so many moments of arrogance that I know anything to explain to anyone?

And yet, since I was little, I feel destiny calling me to show to my readers what is obvious to me, and obviously unseen by the society I live in.

What is that thought? It keeps running threw my fingers, every time that I think I grabbed it.

I’m definitely not the writer that I fantasised to be when I was little.

Not even the writer that I thought I wanted to be at a teen.

And, definitely not the writer that I hoped that I would be in my 20s.

What am I? What is my message to the world?

Yesterday I read Miller say:

‘There was nothing left of the writer I had hoped to be, only the writer I had to be. ... The part of a man which belongs to God striving to fulfil the demands of destiny, which are unstateable.’

This came right on time, as yesterday my mum (typically) was amazed (as mums are usually, thus untrustworthily) with ‘my Sermon on the Mount.’

 

10 November 2021, 11:08am

Well, yesterday I didn’t manage to finish my mumbling.

I was saying how excited my mum was with my Sermons, and how not excited I was.

I wanted to be writer with fascinating plots that keep the interest and curiosity of my readers. Someone like Tom Robbins and Douglas Adams, to make them laugh and think. Someone like my friend and love Jay, that I laugh my arse off when I read his novels.

And what kind of writer am I instead?

Most of the time, just philosophical and autobiographical mumblings without cohesion.

But, Miller made me think. Maybe I am the kind of writer that I’m meant to be. Whatever that means. Maybe it is ok that I spend my life so far to create a narrative for my existence, become a work of art myself, as Miller was advocating. And, maybe now it’s time to share that narrative without carrying the inherited guilt of not being already a successful writer. Even if I’m forty already. Even if when I was ten, I thought I would be successful by now. Even if I spend my life fighting internal and external dragons so far, instead of having merchandise about dragons from my stories in supermarkets.

Who am I? How can I reconnect with my selves?

That is what I need to focus on for now.

I need to go again. The kitchen sink dragon is roaring again.

Hope to talk to you soon. Because I need you and because I had this stupid idea of trying to pretend that I’m clever with my ‘Dear Future Historian’ titles.

After ‘Summer 2020,’ I did the ‘Autumn 2021,’ which means by the end of Winter 2022 I need to have the next one ready. That will give me, hopefully, the chance to work n my unfinished novel next summer and then finish my ‘Dear Future Historian’ collection (at least the first one) in Spring 2023.

Random photos from the Canterbury Cathedral grounds and unsophisticated chalk art: