UNTITLED PROJECT #22

30/04

If I were to name every year I have lived thus far with some absurd yet fitting title, I would have 22 (with #23 in progress) projects. Or rather, let’s call them ‘selves.’ Twenty-two project-selves. All that I have been, and ever will be, neatly categorized and placed on decent-looking shelves. Except it’s nothing like this. It cannot be.

I have had the same heart all along; making everything permeate into everything.

Heartbeats, beat, beat.

B e a t B E A T b E a T

[ʇɐǝq]

A message came in the letter tonight: who you are is not measured by what you become. But I have grown quieter in the magnitude of the chaos of this city, so I raise my voice. If this is the same heart, you will hear it BEAT.

Are you listening to me now?

I think about my future selves, tucked away in a pocket of time accessible only through dreams of cliffs and deep waters. I have thought about my current self then, I know it because I asked myself this once: what are you afraid of? And the elderly woman pulled me out of the water. If that signifies something somewhere, whether I am 22 or 72, it is still the same heart.

To be frank, though, twenty-two sounds a bit too serious for my liking, and I dislike it especially because I will never be here again. I am borrowing from the past and stealing from the future to create some semblance of a present; neti-neti. Not this, not that.

Then? Tat tvam asi. That thou art.

I am existent, even if I will never be here again. If I wake up tomorrow, having forgotten everything from this life, and replete with memories and features of another ‘unknown’ reality altogether, what would I have learned till now?

Well, per my (limited) knowledge, this is a one-time occurrence and quite possibly a dream. Let me explain myself; the former because while history repeats itself and generational patterns remain tightly wound in our net of ancestries, these experiences are unique to me. While my soul has continually rebirthed itself in forms and beings across timelines and lifespans, there has never been one exactly as me, and even you, before (no two distinct things entirely resemble one another). The latter, because often I lay awake at night thinking about how all our lives could be a simple dream bestowed upon a puny God’s mind that remains beyond the reach of our intellectual capacities.

More importantly, the setting of my life as it has turned out so far seems rather bizarre in hindsight. At any given point in these past two decades, I could have made an alternate decision or landed in a situation that changed the trajectory of my life in a completely different way from what I know now. Of course, there is no need to grieve over the fantasy or illusion of a past that never existed. What I can say, however, is that it was often the most seemingly mundane events that pushed my life in the direction it needed to be pushed toward.

Miranda House has ultimately been the biggest show of this cause yet. I had some reasonable doubts about getting a degree in philosophy (like who the [redacted] is going to give me a job?) but I suppose I was excited to begin anew in something again. There is a certain relief in giving into what you do not know; the spiral opens up and engulfs you whole. Say goodbye to the life you once knew, for the path to knowledge is often tragic. But rewarding.

In bouts and pieces.

Once you’ve finally figured it all out.

And who knows how long that will be?

I’m graduating tomorrow and it seems incomprehensible. I do not know where the time went. Where do I look for it? Buddhist philosophy takes time as an illusion, as varying scramblings of the same message across dimensions and beyond, as an affirmation of the idea that nothing really changes but that everything becomes everything else. This idea of constant change is as enticing as it is dangerous. If I am part of the absolute and am but an expression of a higher being, are my creations restricted to the capabilities of this God, or can they transcend Him entirely?

The idea is such: if I were a lonely being, stranded as a hoodlum in eternity, cursed to remain perfectly present in all yet devoid of all, how would I experience the universe? As an omnipotent independent creator having a necessary existence, I would litter myself amongst my creations to know everything. According to Jain schools of thought, the relativity of views or anekantavada enables us to look beyond singular, isolated perspectives and consider the qualities of differing views.

TO KNOW SOMETHING IN ITS ENTIRETY MEANS TO KNOW IT FROM ALL POSSIBLE PERSPECTIVES.

Now then, enough about time and God. More about me. The experience of the droplet over the wave, over the sea itself. Why? Some accounts of blasphemy allow us to make our Gods more real. The truth is, my measly existence is nothing in front of this ancient giant that hails from beyond the fabric of time and decidedly away from my (our) scope of understanding. Nothing I say can make me fully grasp what is so intangible. That is not to say that I do not believe in God, just that I am more accepting of the idea of letting go of unchanging answers and seceding from the encumbering task of connecting my receding ₮ł₥Ɇ here.

I do not know what I will build next. But the possibilities are endless, as are the expressions of my mindscapes, and the sense experiences that have created this character thus far. I do not care for achievements if I can live my life whole and do something to be remembered. God only knows what. I do not wish to ‘improve’ myself on this quest, rather I’d like to see myself change through the years.

RISING, RISING.

Will I remember today when I am dying?