i have been reading sartre's nausea and man if that doesn't hit home! i have had similar feelings where the whole world seems to swirl and dissolve into its conventionality and i lose all sense of meaning. it's quite bad when it happens and i'm talking to someone cos all their words become detached sounds - very strange! anyway - i know a little about exitentialism - and from what i gather it doesn;t shy away from seeing an insoluble void at the centre of our reality - like if you analyse too far and too deep you will eventually come up with nothing. but i can't help taking this in an enourmously pessimistic way. if there is no aboslute ground and reality is a malleable as convention then - why? bill hicks (great philosopher said "it doesn't matter, cos: it's just a ride" but being stuck on a rollercoaster for eternity doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me!! at the end of nausea our protagonist does come to a reaffirmation of life and its practices but with much less vigour than i expected. he seemed simply to be saying, oh well, why not? this thing is here i might as well get on with it. fair sentiment but hardly volcanically conclusive! and of course: "if you stare too long into the abyss - the abyss stares back into you" - Nietzsche what does anyone else think about this?
I get a good feeling from it. Even if the materials are all the same, you're the artist perceiving and putting it all the way you want. From the worst to the best. There's nothing to hold on, just go with the flow.
The next worst thing, in my opinion, would be being buried alive and no one knows you're there - suffocating in a coffin 6 or 10 feet under the ground. Horrible thought. However, in such a case, you could embrace the thought that death is the end. But what if it is'nt? Not that that has anything directly to do with Sartre's book
key to this view of world as malleable void is to find the most resplendant joy in the utterly mundane. if you must have a constant zip-bang of climaxes to amuse you, you are bound to be disappointed. but if you can stare at nothing, and laugh out loud, well, you'll hardly be lacking for amusement or joy. of course, many people will be quick to label you insane. much love
