I have thought long and hard about this. This simple fact has given me a lot of trouble. I have been doing some traveling recently and have seen some things in the extreme. I have talked with inmates in a latin american prison, watching children born into a penal system. I have seen the sunrise on top of the tallest mountain in central america. I have walked through the fog of chinese ghettoes, driven a pedicab through broken streets, and lived with daoist monks on top of a mountain.
I am not trying to impress you, I know it looks like that. I'm trying to establish that yes, I have seen some things that are very pleasant, and some things which are not. I'm sure other people have seen better, or worse, but my point is not one of dick size. My point is I have had to think about this, this description of the undescribable.
At first it simply put me into mood swings. After a trip through a latin american hospital I was horribly depressed, felt like all of our modern problems had just became my fault. I felt the attack of stranger's eyes saying you brought us this science and disease and expensive medicine. If only I could find the right adjective, everybody would see my point.
After a train ride through rural China, smiling happily and playing cards with workmen who did not speak my language, and me ignorant of their's, all of us just spending the time together with smiles made me think this thing we live in is great. Wonderful. I love it. I'll write a poem.
It is very hard not to be guilty of it. Seeing a wonderful sunset makes you want to say damn, that shit is sweet. When you see something remarkable, by definition, it makes you want to make a remark. I did not know what to do because with very little thought, I realized that life is not moral or immoral, it is not good or bad, it is amoral, it is neither. Saying life is good or bad is silly, it is pushing our ridiculous (and transitory) notions of morality on to something that is entirely other.
But I still want to say something. The sunset is still remarkable. It made me envy the lake reflecting the flawless mountain horizon, if only I could do that, if only I could show the world what I see so perfectly. I've tried most mediums. Painting, writing, photography (I can't play an instrument). Nothing works.
Photography went first, I started refusing to take pictures of things. What's the point of taking the picture of a sunset? It defeats the purpose, they're different and wonderful every time. A picture just captures the memory. I eventually just gave up on composition, standing on top of the Great Wall I was overcome. How can I capture a veritable ocean of mountains surrounding me, waves of granite and so big they just won't fit in my camera... I just started shooting, not even bothering to look through the viewfinder. It doesn't matter. It all serves the same purpose in the end.
I tried painting, but I've never been really trained, I've never been able to draw very accurately. I mainly like to doodle with paint, call it bad or abstract I don't care, I enjoy it, and I quickly stopped trying to capture a situation with paint. For obvious reasons, it didn't seem to work for me.
Now writing I've always been good at, and for a while it seemed that maybe this would work, maybe I can show people what I see with words. The problem here is that people liked what I wrote, people thought that it was good. But I knew what I saw. I knew that it didn't do what I saw justice.
See the problem with any medium, The problem with people who think life is inexpressibly beautiful and try to express it, is that no matter what you do people can not experience what you experienced. They can only hear your words, see your pigment. They can only judge your description and are forever blind to you what you are describing.
Like I said it is a problem I have wrestled with for a long time, I did not know what to do, did not know how I could show people what I saw or felt. The conclusion I have come to is gibberish. I cannot stay silent when I see something remarkable, some people are strong but I am a weak man. I must say something, but if you try to capture an image with words I can fail, I will fail, so I am left with gibberish. I do not draw a man because I am not very skilled, instead I doodle with paint because in that I can make something interesting. Likewise I decided I must doodle with words, with that I can say something orally interesting but because I am not trying to capture an image I cannot be wrong. I have nothing left but a terrible case of verbal diarrhoea.
Plastic Mandible Explosion.