Frame: The Anti-Solipsism

squash blossom, if you couldn't guess

I’ve been trying to get into a few new books lately, but they’ve all sort of fallen flat for me. If I don’t get into something or someone right away, I generally lose interest and it/they become just a placeholder in my bookcase. To right myself (as far as books go), I’m re-reading one of my favorites: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman.  I first read it six years ago, and already I can tell Klosterman’s outlook – as an emo, 30 something single guy-  is going to resonate much differently this time around.

On Pop Culture:
In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever really “in and of itself.”

On Non-Retarded Americans:
Whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living.  And someone needs to take the fall for this. So I’m going to blame John Cusack.

On Being Comfortable with Silence:
There’s not a lot to say during breakfast. I mean, you just woke up, you know? Nothing has happened.

On Love:
 I want fake love. But that’s all I want. And that’s why I can’t have it.

On Life:
There are two ways to look at life.
 The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherently connected, and that the only driving force in anyone’s life is entropy. The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected, even if we don’t realize it. There are many mornings when I when I feel certain that the first perspective is irrefutably true: I wake up, feel the inescapable oppression of sunlight pouring through my window, and I am struck by the fact that I am alone. And everyone is alone. And everything I understood seven hours ago has already changed, and I have to learn everything again.
I guess I am not a morning person.
However, that feeling always passes. Every new minute of every new day seems to vaguely improve. And I suspect that’s because the alternative view- that everything is ultimately like something else and that nothing and no one is autonomous – is probably the greater truth. The math does check out, the numbers do add up. The connections might not be hard-wired into the superstructure to the universe, but it feels like they are whenever I put money into a jukebox and everybody in the bar suddenly seems to be having the same conversation. And in that last moment before I fall asleep each night, I understand Everything.
This is why I will always hate falling asleep.