04-17-2018, 10:03 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-17-2018, 10:03 PM by RiverNotch.)
The End of History: An Accident
Are we here, now, and has history ended?
What do you mean?
Have we moved into the future at last -- or does the very saying root us in our past?
Nothing lasts.
What about something? We're something, aren't we? What we see, what we hear, what we feel: they become memories. But what remembers the memories? Who beats his chest, reads his words, watches the moving picture?
Something has not been proven to last.
Why believe in what has not been proven, when what has is not is, and we know very well has does not last?
But what do we know? What we learned then, we learn not now -- we only remember, and remembering is not knowing. The knowing -- the knowing is fleeting. Perhaps the knowing is even synonymous with nothing: if what we see, what we hear, what we feel, they become memories, then why not our thoughts, our insights? Are they not flashes of light, too, or bathtub screams of "Eureka!", or tingles of excitement down our spines?
Why must remembering not be knowing?
Because I didn't really know you, my love. Otherwise I wouldn't have loved you.
But you know that you did love me?
I remember I did -- perhaps I knew -- but I don't really know. What we remember may have been warped by how we felt, or what we heard, or what we saw: it's easy to gaslight the self.
But does the knowing really matter?
It does -- it does! Knowing is having faith, is believing in the power to know, is believing in that which is known. If I do not know that I loved you, if I do not continually know that I love you -- if the flash of light does not become an image, or the bathtub scream does not become a song -- then what does that memory mean? Nothing, as the knowing is nothing, and if it becomes a foundation for something, that something can easily crumble into dust.
So for you to have loved me, you must still love me?
I must not look back at that love, and see it as an object to be cherished -- it must not be transformed into an object of the past, an object solely to be remembered. It cannot have been the knowledge of something if it was an object in the first place, especially not of love. Yes, for me to have loved you, I must still love you: and it is not the knowing that transforms, but the love itself, just as we grow and develop. Just as you become you, and I become I, and we are always here, now.
So do you still love me?
I don't know. I don't even know if I've become myself, in the moment that passed since we began this conversation.
What do you know?
That nothing lasts.
Are you sure that you aren't just gaslighting yourself? Perhaps what you see as nothing is just you blinding yourself with that damn lamp of yours -- let me see that lamp of yours. What is it? It's not love, surely, and not faith either. Is it knowledge, or the knowing, or the want for the knowing? Is it history, or the end of history, or the end of history transformed into image? What trauma transformed your history into image, your conception of time into something that wasn't, isn't, and willn't be, but is? Why do you compound our conversation now with conversations years back, with our first meeting years back, with you dancing me down some aisle and me hugging you near some gas station?
Hope.
Hope for what?
I don't know. I remember hoping that you would love me, love me the way I loved you -- then I became someone else, myself perhaps, and now I remember that I hoped I would be loved as I loved you -- and now I remember that I had hoped I would love again, as I loved you, as I would be loved like you. But now I don't even hope that, just as I know only that nothing lasts.
But then, my dear, your lamp is no longer hope, but the lack of it.
No, not the lack of it, but the face of it.
Ah! Despair, the bringer of hope, the archangel of death. Surely you do not wish to return to that question again?
But you asked it first: "Are we here, now, and has history ended?" You opened our conversation with it, even as we first met. And the answer, I know now, is obvious: yes, we are here, now, as we will be, as we die each moment and are born each moment, as we kill one moment and give birth the next, but the fact that we live and die and murder and create means that no, my love, history has not ended. History proceeds as it always proceeds, and history is nothing: nothing lasts, and only suicide will end it.
But even then it will not have ended. You said so yourself: "as we die each moment, we are born each moment." And besides, you know full well, your despair only clouds your judgment: it was always hopeless between the two of us. We were not conceived of as tragic lovers, but as two strangers, meeting again and again by accident, not like a dream but like a chronicle.
...I didn't say that.
Or so you remember, but I know. Now enough: you have answered my question. Time again to go.
Are we here, now, and has history ended?
What do you mean?
Have we moved into the future at last -- or does the very saying root us in our past?
Nothing lasts.
What about something? We're something, aren't we? What we see, what we hear, what we feel: they become memories. But what remembers the memories? Who beats his chest, reads his words, watches the moving picture?
Something has not been proven to last.
Why believe in what has not been proven, when what has is not is, and we know very well has does not last?
But what do we know? What we learned then, we learn not now -- we only remember, and remembering is not knowing. The knowing -- the knowing is fleeting. Perhaps the knowing is even synonymous with nothing: if what we see, what we hear, what we feel, they become memories, then why not our thoughts, our insights? Are they not flashes of light, too, or bathtub screams of "Eureka!", or tingles of excitement down our spines?
Why must remembering not be knowing?
Because I didn't really know you, my love. Otherwise I wouldn't have loved you.
But you know that you did love me?
I remember I did -- perhaps I knew -- but I don't really know. What we remember may have been warped by how we felt, or what we heard, or what we saw: it's easy to gaslight the self.
But does the knowing really matter?
It does -- it does! Knowing is having faith, is believing in the power to know, is believing in that which is known. If I do not know that I loved you, if I do not continually know that I love you -- if the flash of light does not become an image, or the bathtub scream does not become a song -- then what does that memory mean? Nothing, as the knowing is nothing, and if it becomes a foundation for something, that something can easily crumble into dust.
So for you to have loved me, you must still love me?
I must not look back at that love, and see it as an object to be cherished -- it must not be transformed into an object of the past, an object solely to be remembered. It cannot have been the knowledge of something if it was an object in the first place, especially not of love. Yes, for me to have loved you, I must still love you: and it is not the knowing that transforms, but the love itself, just as we grow and develop. Just as you become you, and I become I, and we are always here, now.
So do you still love me?
I don't know. I don't even know if I've become myself, in the moment that passed since we began this conversation.
What do you know?
That nothing lasts.
Are you sure that you aren't just gaslighting yourself? Perhaps what you see as nothing is just you blinding yourself with that damn lamp of yours -- let me see that lamp of yours. What is it? It's not love, surely, and not faith either. Is it knowledge, or the knowing, or the want for the knowing? Is it history, or the end of history, or the end of history transformed into image? What trauma transformed your history into image, your conception of time into something that wasn't, isn't, and willn't be, but is? Why do you compound our conversation now with conversations years back, with our first meeting years back, with you dancing me down some aisle and me hugging you near some gas station?
Hope.
Hope for what?
I don't know. I remember hoping that you would love me, love me the way I loved you -- then I became someone else, myself perhaps, and now I remember that I hoped I would be loved as I loved you -- and now I remember that I had hoped I would love again, as I loved you, as I would be loved like you. But now I don't even hope that, just as I know only that nothing lasts.
But then, my dear, your lamp is no longer hope, but the lack of it.
No, not the lack of it, but the face of it.
Ah! Despair, the bringer of hope, the archangel of death. Surely you do not wish to return to that question again?
But you asked it first: "Are we here, now, and has history ended?" You opened our conversation with it, even as we first met. And the answer, I know now, is obvious: yes, we are here, now, as we will be, as we die each moment and are born each moment, as we kill one moment and give birth the next, but the fact that we live and die and murder and create means that no, my love, history has not ended. History proceeds as it always proceeds, and history is nothing: nothing lasts, and only suicide will end it.
But even then it will not have ended. You said so yourself: "as we die each moment, we are born each moment." And besides, you know full well, your despair only clouds your judgment: it was always hopeless between the two of us. We were not conceived of as tragic lovers, but as two strangers, meeting again and again by accident, not like a dream but like a chronicle.
...I didn't say that.
Or so you remember, but I know. Now enough: you have answered my question. Time again to go.