immutable

your glassy eyes betray you

Started my week, with a philosophy lecture at school. Dr amitavo, an individual with the oratical skills and charisma of a garden snail on heroin, actually attempted some sarcasm , " today we shall examine the lighthearted topic of death." I was sure his veins would rupture and his body would be rent in flames right there and then in the lecture theatre.

I met my family in the evening. They just arrived in sydney and will be here fer a week. My mum was her usual silly socially inept self, saying things that display a brave abandonment of conventional logic or rationality. I used to be embarassed when i was younger, but now i just find it endearing. My dad was his usual stoic self. Left them and my sister at the hotel, and took a bus back home. I have a longer amnesty period to clean my room of incriminating evidence before the inquisitorial inspection.

Whenever i meet my parents i feel guilty. Guilty for not making more of an effort, to get to know them , to call home more often, to be there for them, or even bother to find out how the are doing from time to time. Years sometimes punctuate the conversations i have with my eldest sister, but i know shes got her own life, i just found out shes having a kid next april. Its different with my folks. My mum spent so much of her life raising us, and now we're all away, and too self-absorbed to make an effort. I know my mum spends alot of time alone in the house by herself and gets so horribly lonely she, talks to her plants and names the sparrows she feeds in the morning.

Whenever i feel terrible about these things, i draw away even further, and tell myself that there'l be enough time in the future for these things. Everytime i see them they look older and older, and i realise one day in the not too distant future they will be dead. two decades? one and a half? twenty septembers from now, my parents may cease to exist. and what then. My dad leaves me his temperament and my mum leaves me my physical appearance and then they go back to what they were before they were born. Does death make life seem sad or does life make death seem sad. i wonder what it feels like to have death close by. Not as an option you can step back from when your young, healthy and safe , but as an inescapable ineveitably that no amount of decision making and good luck can change once youve reached the end of your tether.

Im afraid. of becoming old and defeated. of being old and alone. of being left without options, of having cold and emotionally detached children like myself. Just because something has to end doesnt render it pointless does it. course not. The postmodernist leftovers of what used to be my brain cant accept objective meaning presented to me on a platter. unfortunately all the meanings i derive myself seem trivial and transient on a long enough timeline. i'd like to think theres more to life then a dialectic of pain and pleasure. What about experience and personal growth but how can they matter at all if i dont have a soul. I envy religious people, and people who have the capacity to act on faith. How wonderful it must feel to go to bed at night safe in the company of your beliefs. Im glad my parents are christian.