What makes us who we are?
I am a compost bin. The waste of years is rotting inside me and I have the hope of emerging a new man. A better man. It will take time, and many more new people, conversations and relationships will get thrown in, even as the old ones ferment. I have learnt to live with the stench. It has become a part of me. When they ask me who I am,I tell them, a dull fragrance of changing sameness. They don’t understand. I am them, I tell them. Unknowingly they are shaping me. As if I were a mound of prostitute clay free to be moulded by one and all. I have been twisted and turned to fit varying designs of expectations, and every cast has found me wanting.
I know now I shall always be inadequate for the ‘I’ is ever shifting.They tell me about essences. That’s what we are. Some unchangeable core that withstands time’s machinations. That is what I must get in touch with if I am truly searching for my identity. Excavation is the philosopher’s realm, and they tell me that I must dig deep for the answers I seek. But what if I am here merely to posit questions without the burden of having to look for answers?What if it is the questioning that is the most important, what if I have given up on answers which are at best rudimentary and consolatory? They say then I haven’t probed enough, and that I am afraid. I tell them, as politely as I can, for rage seethes within at their incomprehension, about my need for questions.They brush it aside saying peace will come with answers. Questions are bilious. And with that they erase my existence, for to me what else am I but a bundled series of questions?
I don’t need to be disentangled with your explication nor forced into a state of false supplication as you try to measure me out against compartmentalized tropes that we are taught to aspire to. I rebel against the singularity of being you ascribe to me. I am burning the map you gave me to chart out my life’s course. They smile, a frustratingly long while, before they speak. There is yet an orthodoxy to rebellion, and in burning one map you have merely decided to subscribe to another. Every course of action, every line of thought is always already taken, they tell me. Who am I? That will always be a cumulative disguised as individual.
And as everything decays inside me, I walk in an odorless silence, towards boundaries that need crossing. I will follow my questions into oblivion and become part of some other compost bin.
I know now I shall always be inadequate for the ‘I’ is ever shifting.They tell me about essences. That’s what we are. Some unchangeable core that withstands time’s machinations. That is what I must get in touch with if I am truly searching for my identity. Excavation is the philosopher’s realm, and they tell me that I must dig deep for the answers I seek. But what if I am here merely to posit questions without the burden of having to look for answers?What if it is the questioning that is the most important, what if I have given up on answers which are at best rudimentary and consolatory? They say then I haven’t probed enough, and that I am afraid. I tell them, as politely as I can, for rage seethes within at their incomprehension, about my need for questions.They brush it aside saying peace will come with answers. Questions are bilious. And with that they erase my existence, for to me what else am I but a bundled series of questions?
I don’t need to be disentangled with your explication nor forced into a state of false supplication as you try to measure me out against compartmentalized tropes that we are taught to aspire to. I rebel against the singularity of being you ascribe to me. I am burning the map you gave me to chart out my life’s course. They smile, a frustratingly long while, before they speak. There is yet an orthodoxy to rebellion, and in burning one map you have merely decided to subscribe to another. Every course of action, every line of thought is always already taken, they tell me. Who am I? That will always be a cumulative disguised as individual.
And as everything decays inside me, I walk in an odorless silence, towards boundaries that need crossing. I will follow my questions into oblivion and become part of some other compost bin.
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