On Digging – A Review
Do you remember it? Those moonlit nights, my paranoia reaching critical mass. Our lies playing off each other’s. Our ingenuity playing off each other.
We got drunk on the sound of rushing water, trumpets and violins, the Spanish guitar. They tricked their ways into our rhythm as we folded scoop after scoop over our shoulder.
We were young. Immune to casualty.
I had no sense of self and neither of us knew it, but neither did you. Weirdly, in our firm grasps of each other, that got put at ease, I guess.
I’ve picked up a lot from you. And I’m not sure it quite fits yet. But I know it feels right. There’s a whimsy to me now. And while the paranoia is still there, its been overwritten like saved files and is a hazy background to the cacophony of the real trauma.
I want to know if you ever got there. To the root of it all, I mean. If you ever found what you were looking for. Or were you stuck like I am still.
Now, here I am catching myself reminding me that it’s not for nothing.
Let me tell you what I’m reading about. See. There’s a joke philosophical theory created by the Czech writer Ladislav Smoljak called Externism. It holds that there is no self, there is only the world around the self. It just seems like something we’d convince our friends we actually believed in.
It’s the opposite of Solipsism, which in many ways is also a joke. Just a different kind. Solipsism is the belief that there is only the self. The world, others, none of that is real. The idea is used to prove that anything “outside” of the mind is unsure. That you have to approach anything not of yourself with a degree of supposition.
Both ideas are absurd. But in reading about Externism (A fake philosophy made up by a fake philosopher for a play), I can’t help but apply it to our previous indifference to ourselves.
We had a sense of what “a” self was, but couldn’t apply it to us. So instead, we played pretend and lived as strange altruistic hedonists who followed any breeze that came our way.
I never figured that part of me would go away. And it hasn’t. It really hasn’t. But it feels like its supposed to. A lot of things have felt like that lately.
And maybe, I’m putting words in your mouth now. And maybe none of this applies to you like I think it does. Maybe its just me.
Speaking of me. I finally realized one of the problems. Part of me wants to erase it all. To start from scratch. To lose all standing and try to earn it all back.
A clean slate. I guess.
I used to dream of that. A way to begin from zero. A way to erase all the problems, but also all the progress. To do it right. So that way maybe I could figure it all out from the getgo, instead of sitting here at 11:34 at night questioning my decisions and wondering if its too late to fix some of this muck I’m in.
But, in a lot of ways, you got that. And you definitely did it better. Just like always, here you are beating someone at their own game.
If I could start over. There’s a lot I’d do again. And regardless of the blisters, the headaches, the fear of being watched. I would grab that shovel every time I could.
There’s a lot in this world. So, you can’t let yourself get stuck on what’s missing. It’s not the hole. It’s the dirt you’re taking out of it.
Thanks for reading. I’m gonna fix it. Just don’t let me forget to.
-Connor
Post: A lot led up to this. I was writing a blog on this line
"Charging an army, while
All the world wondered." (ln 30-31)
From Tenyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade.
Also was listening to these few songs on repeat because, well, they're good
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5DiAwkYwWRQGoiNBf3X6aL?si=w1y-qqqYSkC-iWbT6NJz6Q
But they also make me feel a lot of things.
I just want to give credit to where its due. Obviously also to the memories I shared with all of my digging partners.
