predicted profundity
experiences —> memories ——> ?
… and i couldn’t help but wonder: what do experiences matter if they’ll just be things to look back on? and what when that’s gone too?
(sorry for the sex and the city quote)
trying to reckon with the issue of experience. i feel bored lately, by the idea of experiences, and resentful of the idea that the reason i’m here is to “experience” things. what does that mean? cooking classes? road trips? sex? often when people talk experience, they mean travel. which, at the moment, i’m done with. i’ve lost track of the appeal—the body’s overwhelmed by jet lag, it costs a fortune, always more than you expect it to, language barrier’s embarrassing, frustrating, you see one block of a city and you’ve kind of seen it all. go for the history, sure. but history’s sometimes too surreal. had a hard time recently, being told to pause, have a moment of grand profundity, carry on. can’t really flip the profound tap on and off.
and maybe i just haven’t found the place yet that’ll change my mind. or met the people in that place that’ll change my mind. but i’ve had a hard time understanding how people are really any different there, as opposed to here.
that’s the other thing people mean when they talk experience, they mean that it’s important to experience other people. which is really a wonderful intention, i do think that. and i felt that i had that intention for a long time. to connect, to learn from, etc. but i don’t know. i almost feel, now, that for much of my life i’ve given people too big of a stage on which to wow me. everyone i met, i’d assume they had something wonderful and insightful and life-changing to hand over to me. and being that open-hearted type, i’d take it, of course, it gleaming and glowing in my hands, and i’d take care of it, i’d remember it forever. i used to feel more romantic about things.
when i did meet people, when i did give them that stage, no matter what they said i took it to heart. or i let it feel profound. (i would say, “now that i’m older…”, but i’m under no illusion that i am leagues more mature than i was at 16, 18, 22…) nowadays, maybe i’ll let people sneak onto that stage, but i find most often that they fall flat. i think i expect too much from people, i want people i meet to introduce me to something new, wholly different, truly life-changing! something profound. and rarely does it go this way. maybe i have watched too many movies?
life, as it seems, is not Owen Wilson walking down a Parisian street in the 2010’s and stumbling into the 1920’s. unfortunately and to my ultimate surprise, i may not find myself being led into a bar lit all yellow, Dali and Hemingway waiting for me to join their table. waiting to talk shop.
to get back to it: what i do enjoy is looking back at photographs from things i’ve experienced. meals, skies, bugs, cocktails, friends, small pieces of paper taped up on the walls, oceans. sometimes the looking back is more evocative than was the moment itself, which i wish was not the case. but whatever complicated feelings may have perforated that experience, in that moment, at the little least i have a pure and unchanging souvenir. oftentimes a good one! i enjoy leaving with good pictures.
but what does it mean, if this is what may be most enjoyable out of any given experience? what good will memories or photographs do me in the long term? i used to, growing up, feel such attachment to my memories, to the idea of them, to the creation of them, i felt my whole life was to be centered on the having of memories. now, i think, for what? instead of feeling so elated, or romanced, or giddied by thoughts of the past i mostly feel sad. so much has gone by, so much is not to be returned to. i expect this feeling will only grow as i do. so all these grand experiences i am supposed to want, these things that last only moments and are to exist in the mind from then on, i just don’t know if i want them. all these big things, even some of the small things. those “profound” things.