How Can I Give This to You

The idea of existentialist individuality, and many of its attending struggles, must have been first imagined by a poet. Or, perhaps, a logician listening patiently to the quasi mad ramblings of a good poet friend.

Who else other than a person in the near ecstatic throes of simply enjoying their experience of the world, seeing the sacred transformation–the transformation of the mundane into the sacred–of the accidental accretions of nature touched by the mind of an observer.

No molecule ever looks at another and says, "You're excruciatingly beautiful. It would hurt my very will to exist to see you marred in any way."

No grain of dust holds the slightest quanta of passion. But a mind can run into any of these things, and then the outflow of contemplation, expression, and joy may never cease.

Up on well organized, elevated planks of wood. Seated on orderly acrylic covered lines of metal, a raised surface of transparent silicon before me, I think about the peace of the world around me. The is set. I take a breath and look around. The experience is sprung.

I am so lucky. I can just be. In a forest tailored now to offer me comfort, I sit in a comfortable chair, on the deck of a house deep in the woods. I can breathe deep of clean air and vibrant greenery. No one is demanding my attention. I am the only person I can see, but I know that plenty of humans are close enough to save me should I be harmed in any way. I can look about and simply revel in the appearance of things. The tranquility of my minuscule fragment of the universe. I can marvel at the bright line made by the upper of the deck's railing as it cuts across my field of vision. None of it has any intrinsic meaning, and so it can be a treasure of immeasurable worth.

Suddenly I wish I could share this joy with someone else. Not just bore them with words, as often happens when we try to recount an exciting dream to others. I want to bring others here. I want them engulfed by the same flame of brilliant perception. Consumed as I have been my the mystery, wonder, and beauty of being there and experiencing that thing. Would bringing them there physically even work? We must angrily expectorate a "No!"

Suddenly, I want my friend to be here and, because he is dead, things get even more complicated. More vibrant. More poignant. Now I am experiencing life unfettered and perfectly filtered, but now I know I can never share this with anyone. Existentialism strikes without mercy. I am flattened. Ironically, doubly so, as this realization adds a melancholic beauty to the experience.

Magritte was correct, but not forceful enough.

L'enfer, c'est expliquer une pipe au autres.