The chaos of life

Sept. 23, 2013

Stark sunlight stings my eyes as I sit in my car against the cool air outside. Hoboken’s north side is bathed in the color of brick.

This is Tuesday, a ritual I have lived with for nearly a decade and still can’t quite get used to it, more painful as of late, but never comfortable.

We all live in this industry of life, churning out produce for the ultimate goal of survival – and if we are lucky, wealth.

I am grossly irresponsible in that I value money less than I ought and somehow stumble along less concerned with fortune than in my need for something else, something I can’t always define.

Life – other than basic needs – is an illusion, a mock image we manufacture to stand out against the crowd, something this town makes obvious each time I come here, this place filled with self-created people who pretend we are more than we really are in order not to feel as small as we sometimes think we are – when both extremes are an illusion.

We are always less than we want to be and more than we ultimately conclude we are during those times when we can’t get a grip on something we strive for.

We are told from early life we ought to be something, turn out some way, produce something that will win us significance, and we take it all to heart when we don’t get what we expect, and accept less like an albatross.

I have always seen people as more than they pretend to be, shoving aside the curtains of false pride to find the core of the person – which indeed when and if I find it – proves more special than the surface, and more significant.

But then, I had fewer assumptions growing up. Nobody told me I would be great or even that I should be, and perhaps this prepared me better for what I might not have later, or made me realize that nobody gets exactly what they want or even sometimes when they truly deserve. Instead most of us get what comes our way and what we made of it.

The guy on the radio yesterday was right when he talked about entropy and the tendency of life to degenerate into chaos, and how art is the struggle to making something out of all that, and if we succeed in making something that lasts, then we are remembered, if not, then someone else might.

I guess that’s why I love the arts and the artists so much, hoping that if I can’t make order of this world, at least I have rubbed shoulders with someone who has.