peripetia. the moment when you realise that everything you knew, thought, understood uptil now was wrong. Alyssian. Miasma. Does it come to everyone, or is it reserved for the greek tragic heros. A tragic hero - larger than life, heroic proportions, with one tragic flaw that brings them to tragedy. Do we all hide one inside? Political correctness. Public support. Friendship. Popularity. Oratory. A way with people. The herd mentality. A wish to please. The the mind of the mob. Sometimes I wonder, do I hate man, or just the common man, or just the common in man? Or just his stupidity, his ignorance, his crassness. his narrow minded, limited, parochial, middle class mind ... or is it all the same?
but are any of us any better? is there any such thing ad the individual. his ts thought, the individual thought. his creation, the individual creation. his opinion, perceptions, reactions and actions. the individual. is there any such thing? or is it just a fragment of his self delusionary imagination? hallucinations of grandeur.
all the days i have lived, all the things i have thought about, everything i have understood, or thought i understood, all my observations, perceptions, opinions, likes, dislikes, hatred, repulsion, admiration, affection, sympathies, empathies. alll my learnings, understandings, ponedring, all my writings ... what will happen to everything after i am gone?
no doubt someone will give my books away. someone will come along and go through my whole collection, my whole life ... perhaps ma will keep them outside, in the balcony, in big cardboard boxes, covered with plastic. 2 big boxes of the leatherbound and hardcover ones which she bought before i was born (did she have some uncanny permonition?) the classics, the encyclopedias, the biographies, journals and letters of famous people, the dictionaries, english, french, german. then a few boxes of the moth eaten ancient leather ... the ones i picked up here and there, from other dead or dying people, knowing probably that i wouldnt read them (house remedies of the victorian age, for example) but unable to see a book orphaned. then boxes and boxes of the books i have collected as i read through them. i always buy. bought. if i got it from a library, or a friend, and i liked it, id go out and buy it.
my movies ... the tiny sony betamax cassettes, regular cassettes, the vcds, the dvds ...
my music ...
looking through it all i feel like thats all i did for the last thirty years. collect. my two drawers full of diaries, random writings and jottings. poems on exam papers, toilet paper, paper napkins, hand made paper packets from the grocer, brown paper bags ... and all safely stored. never looked at again. will they go through it all after im gone? but that cannot be ... i must destroy it all myself.
but how can you do that? burn, tear, shred, throw away the footprints ur mind left as it lived and grew? the recordings of the pain, anger, humilitions, joys, discoveries, betrayals ... thrills.
but that is the basic questions thats on my mind today. all these years thats all i thought was important ... what i thought, what i read, what i learned. now, along with the books read, the words scribbled, the music heard, the movies seen ... will my thoughts, my mind, my understanding, my feelings, my perceptions ... the net sum of my existence ... just dissapear? melt? fade without an echo?
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