Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

Sitting on the shore of a semi-deserted beach, watching the sun rise over another day of concealed chaos, wondering if I can turn the wonder off long enough to enjoy a loud silence apart from myself. Listening to a voice I know I will never know is there, knowing it probably isn't; allowing the heaviness of the meaninglessness to seep in to scurry off the naivete, without allowing it to stop my breath. Trying to reach the impossible balance in a place that doesn't exist wherein "I" stop--language stops--thinking stops--consciousness stops--where it fades into a backdrop with no center--the Idyllic with no Idea.


Thinking. Language. Thoughts.

Representations. Concepts. Intentions.

Wandering back to the Smoke-Filled Coffee shop so as no to too get lonely, only to find myself resenting the bodies all around me. I unexpectedly ran into friends--good friends--the kind that involve memories, laughter, smiles, and nostalgia. We sat. We talked. MP, TL, and LN were in good form, and soon the conversation led to "things of meaning."

I told them, "Religion and philosophy are concerned with Presence and Time. We desire--long for--hope for a time when time will cease--when it will stop--hold still--and "I" will be present. We long for that time when the world disappears--when thinking--language--representation--concepts--all stop and me and myself are finally one in a way that no longer requires process, development, or further journeying. We want time to stop, but we want to be present when it does."

MP took a bite of the full breakfast he had ordered: "HMMMMMM. Oh yeah, ohhh. It's good."

We ignored him.

TL chimed in, "I think you're right. This is what the myth of love is about; this is what the mythology of sex describes. We want to find ourselves in one--find one that can make time irrelevant--hold our identity stable so that there is no flux--no danger of it being taken away--permanence. In sex, the world disappears for a moment, or a couple if you are lucky. The room spins until it finally no longer exists. Time wisps away until you don't know how long has passed. All that you know is your body and their's--you are present only to them, and thus, to yourself. Time and space cease, the world liquidated into the breathing, feeling, overhwelming pleasure--and the climax. You are dead. There is unspeakable--inexpressible--silent experiences that transcend time and space. In those moments, there is no thinking--no language--no "self." No, the self ceases and thus, for a few moments, you are free to become your true "self".

"The problem," LN said, "is that it is always fleeting. Eventually, the room comes back--you see your shirt on the lampshade, your partners knickers on the windowsill, and you stare at the ceiling as the world, as language, as time, and space filter back--forcing yourself to vanish once again. You stare at the ceiling, breathing heavy in someone else's arms, wondering why it can't last forever and why the stopping always has to stop."

"It's the same with death," I said. "Death brings the end of language and yourself. Death, sex, love, and union with God--they aren't all that different. They all long for an experience of self--a permanent, whole self--in a phenomenon that requires the self to die--to cease--in order to experience it. And you know what else: they are all solitary endeavors."

I told them how Buber and Levinas taught me that love requires two people to ignore the rest in order to enter into a worldless vision of their selves. I told them how Heidegger taught me that death is always only my own--and thus, I am always alone. Mystical visions--union with God--are solitary journeys that involves one single soul.

Why does self-presence require the death of the self--the time where language--consciousness--thinking are no longer? And, why does it always involve the disappearance of the world--why does it have to be so lonely?