Last week I conducted a thorough interview with my 18 year-old-self and presented the first installment. Here is the conclusion.
(from part 1:
DS: Yeah, existence on earth continues because it can prosper in both extremes. I think it's more important to be fluid and expect more of yourself than of other people.)
NS: That's another rabbit hole though -noot simply being and always wanting to become or be something else. That's something that Krishnamurti said was the very root of our problem, isn't it? Because we believe in time and thoughts exist in time we participate in this perpetual permutation of the state of existence that is already whole and perfect.
DS: But is it perfect? What is perfect about it?
NS: Of course it's perfect. It's self-sustaining and huge and full of every single experience that we'll ever have! Ferlinghetti got it, "the world is a beautiful place to be born into," we can find people and things to love and make art and be understood and understand and hear music and travel and change and heal and like, really love someone else and feel peace and work together. It's perfect because someone can hate all that stuff while I, or someone else, loves it, and both have a right to live in the world. The world is perfect because it's just and returns what we give, of course it's perfect.
DS: What about disease, old age, and death? What about being born into all of that?
NS: All of that just makes us appreciate the wonder more.
DS: Not with 100% effectiveness, for one, and that's not a solid definition of perfection, which is relative anyway, between us. I've read that perfection is the state in which a thing or person is in wholly realized ipseity.
NS: What's that?
DS: Identity.
NS: Why do you have to use that word?
DS: Because the adjectives that people and I have used to describe my identity have distanced me so much from what I feel I am that another word has to be used for it. No word that's been used to describe my identity like "baby," or "loser," "intelligent," "skater," "stoner," "boyfriend," and "asshole" has either a) continued to be the case for a prolonged or even existentially relevant duration of time nor b) come truly close to encapsulating, in it's diminutive ephemerality, the phenomenon of my ipseity as I glimpse it now. The words have changed, I don't call my dad "son" though he is one, coz it's not so close to identifying him to me as much as "dad" is.
The point I'm trying to make is though I am still the same "I" so many different and even contradicting words have been used to describe me, and even by people who know we well.
Why define perfection without or before understanding who I really am.
NS: Because you're not the center of the word, some things just are regardless of whether or not you agree with it. Love is beautiful, peace is beautiful. There are amazing things that make life worth living and just feeling that dynamic nature is overwhelming and it's perfect that we get to go through it.
DS: Do you think that the sun is perfect?
NS: Yes.
DS: How about a fish?
NS: Is it perfect? Yeah.
DS: How about a dock that runs over the water where you can look over the water, is that perfect?
NS: I don't see where this is going and won't answer because I feel like you're leading me on into some point you've already made to yourself.
DS: How about a fish flopping on a wooden dock in the sun?
All those things are perfect but if you don't understand the ipseity of a fish, which generally thrives in water, you can find the sun perfect as you want but the fish won't cause it won't be able to breathe.
You can also drug the fish so it doesn't feel so much pain and even splash some water on it here and then so it gets a taste of relief but that situation isn't perfect.
NS: Okay, so where do we belong.
DS: Here, according to you. It doesn't matter now, I just wanted to talk briefly about that. Do you have any questions?
NS: Not really about these argument volatile subjects. What are you going to do tomorrow.
DS: I'm going to a bonfire at John's house.
NS: What!? You still hang out?
DS: Yeah.
NS: That's so sweet. Wait, why at his house?
DS: We're gonna burn stuff.
NS: Why and what?
DS: It's an offering to all the good that's happened in the past and the summer. I'm burning a plush toy someone gave me.
NS: That sounds like a petty offering.
DS: It's what's inside that counts.
Anyway, tell me something before we conclude. What do you think was the most critical moment of your life?
NS: Hmmm...probably writing that first poem.
DS: How come?
NS: Because it's not like any other thing that I can imagine like my first memory of getting sand kicked in my eyes upon sliding face-first down a slide by a girl who laughed, or like, the time in the forest down the street or learning how to ride about bike because, like, I feel like what I did was like, caused by something outside of me, you know?
Like, I cried because I got sand in my eye, I went in the forest because I bored at home, and I learned to ride a bike coz my mom got me one, it's all I guess typical or reactionary in a typical way.
Writing that day wasn't like that. Like, the normal reaction, or common hormonal reaction when you like someone is to talk to them, and I'd always been like, chatty, you know, but that day, I dunno, I just wrote down what I felt instead of blurting out a "hey" or some other word that I don't think would've even come close.
Actually, it's sad, in a way, because it was the first time I felt like I couldn't be understood.
DS: I'm glad that you didn't let that stop you though, that instead you made a new trail for yourself.
I really appreciate that you did, actually.
NS: [Laughs] Yeah dude, sure.
DS: Alright. I guess I'll like, think of you around.
NS: Don't be weird.
