Rochdale Canal

Overlooking the old industrial waterways of Manchester from the thirteen floor at the Hilton Deansgate. I had to switch off the lights to align my thoughts after this first day of intense academic activity.

As I down a glass of chlorinated water I realize how difficult it can be sometimes, that whatever dreams I had they are being tested by time and my own inadequacies. It is not like I no longer believe, or remain idealistic, it is rather that I recognize, time after time, how difficult communication really is, how easily we give in to ontological insecurity and how uncertain all our futures are.

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“simply being was easy, just having you there”

There is a certain defeatism in saying that all relationships that are truly worthwhile must end. That “being” in itself ultimately will not suffice, that human beings are after all consumables, that with sufficient intellectual and emotional integrity comes the inability to love over time.

I do not say that it is like that, nor that we should not try our best to extend these aesthetic moments of “simply being”, only that I fear what we could perhaps call the Anna Ternheimification of my soul.

Something in me vehemently objects to this. That instead of reducing human existence into aesthetics, we should think of it as pointing towards the eternal, that it is only a lack of sensitivity that prevents us from experiencing the transcendental in the eyes of those we love. Yet, true as this may be sub species aeternis, we still have our everyday lives, we still go to IKEA, collect airmiles or walk dogs, or laugh at that somewhat inappropriate joke, we are humans, we are not only spirit but also flesh, and we cannot demand others to acknowledge our own concepts of transcendental purity. But if that is so, then we have to accept the flip side of the coin, namely that at the end of the day we might ourselves be considered expendable and, what would be even worse, simply “boring”.