It’s always hard to tell when or why it happens… It seems even harder to describe it, but a ‘temps-mort’ is what it is, really: when time seems to have stopped while at the same time it keeps rushing forth… but for you, your person, your own perception, it no longer does. To you, Time has died, somehow.
I can look around me all I want, nothing makes sense. I suppose the mind is a good illusionist… It can trick a person into creating their very own meaning on everything. Isn’t that what we all do every single day that we live? We create for ourselves meanings for all sorts of things because if we fail to do it, suddenly there is that giant void to be faced: the one that shows you there is in fact no meaning at all. Only the one our mind creates.
Immersed as we are in a subjective vision of the world and its endless possible ‘meanings’, it’s no wonder we never get on and clash all the time.
What would happen, what would change in the reality we are shaped to take for granted from the moment we are born, if we were to follow only absolute meaning?
But of course first we need to find out what exactly constitutes absolute meaning, and I guess that’s something thinkers have been busy doing since time immemorial… Searching past all the flawed visions based solely on our subjectivity, the very ones heralded by all societies. What are societies but a collection of the majority’s viewpoints? A majority decides on the right and the wrong, on directions, on what makes sense and what doesn’t, and that is exactly why history then shows us that what was believed yesterday could just as easily become obsolete tomorrow.
Is that really evolution? Isn’t evolving supposed to mean getting better in some way? Closer to some ultimate truth, perhaps? If all we can do is go back and forth between a majority’s viewpoint at a certain time and place, then where is the growth toward that ultimate truth?
Here I stand, on the verge of a world I never fully understood - because all I can really fathom is what makes sense, and the world just doesn’t make any sense. It is immersed in flawed and limited perceptions. I’m not talking about the detail, of course, but the whole. I’m therefore not talking about the exceptions to the rule (the few people who seek to apply true meaning to their existence) but the majority that imposes such flawed limits on us all.
In the Truman Show, the show’s architect says at some point that an individual simply embraces the reality that is presented to him. These few words hold a world of meaning, here. Truman simply accepted the reality he was born into, and how could he not do so? It was only when cracks began to show in the reality he was presented with, and which he took for granted from birth, that he began to question that reality. Had there been no clues or cracks in the smooth running of the man-made reality created just for him (the show), it is easy to venture he would have carried on living his little life oblivious to the deception till death.
Well then… I can see what happened to me, in a way. I was but a child when I began to notice the cracks in our own reality. I refused to take anything for granted, I questioned everything all the time and the lack of clear answers - worse, the sheer amount of constant contradictions - led me to classify our accepted version of reality as flawed and illusory.
That’s only the first step to True freedom, though… The next one is, and always will be, the hardest one to take. It is the one that requires escaping what is false to reach what is true. I guess that is why I have now reached a ‘temps-mort’, then.
There is no telling how long the latter will last, but while it goes on, I can assure you that my quest to true meaning, and absolute reality, will never cease to go on.
In moments of quiet contemplation, I remember verses of another life. The very ones that awakened not just my senses, but thoughts from deep within, and emotions - raw and untamed, intense. A teacher of mine once said to me that reading Rimbaud could have that effect. He broke all the rules and made the Word his own. To me, he remains forever l'enfant terrible of French poetry in his search for sublimity through words and pure beauty.
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