...Insane? Ah, you are quick to demand that I qualify my terms...you are intelligent. I could tell there was something about you, undoubtedly why I've chosen you to start speaking to. I typically use 'insane' to describe a state I have become familiar with, such characteristics as...embracing my imagination much more fully even when out in public; beginning to intuit people as mere complicated objects/surface images with meanings I will gladly impregnate them with at a mere glance....a heightened affectedness by the paranoia of being judged by others as I am constantly judging them, an inability to look others in the eye for longer than a few moments as a result of this affectivity, a much more judgemental and articulate version of myself in sum; one that continuously makes statements in an ongoing inner monologue in such a way that at times becomes irritating. Irritating for who you ask? Well, for me I guess. I, me, yes, the voice is my own, so I get irritated by myself then...I annoy me, really isn't that strange when I say it like that is it? Now, that we've sorted out 'insane'....at least for now? How's about paranoid schizophrenic? Okay, fine, we'll say that I sometimes feel like that if that suits your fancy. Though I'm not sure I meet that description all too accurately, if it helps for you then all the same for me...For I'd really just like to continue talking...your understanding is vital, but I'll presume you do so long as you keep quiet enough without saying anything that'll ruin the version of you, your eyes are telling me that are-someone who can comprehend.....Good, a nod, you are smart.
Well, where shall I begin?....How about today...okay....I've been awakening past two pm as of late, and today was just the latest in what feels like a long succession of days. Unable to pull myself away from the pillow and the more and more I reflect upon this inability to move I am led to conclude that there is some kind of depressing intuitive understanding within me that is choosing sleep over wakefulness.Tes, Schopenhauer's will?..I'm familiar with it...Sure, but keep quiet. It occurs to me that I look forward to falling asleep much more than I do waking up; this has clearly not always been the case but most certainly as of late there is a plasure in consenting to darkness that I previously had resisted. In the moments of wakefulness in the morning when I have been awoken by something sudden I have recounted what was last occurring in my dreams and in almost all cases there is some sort of detailed organization of, or investigation into some kind of trivial matter that I am taking great pleasure in sorting out in my own coherent yet demented way. This morning too, I was logically organizing, figuring out tedious things in what seemed like a rigorously scientific manner. This morning when I awoke, I recalled that the subject of my enquiry was a man with coins, some in his hands and some on the counter in front of him and I, bearing the specific question of what stimuli would make this man smile. I was organizing what subtleties would make him smile, as if categorically placing a stamp of 'yes' or 'no' upon each new potential, and then also somehow accounting for what contingencies would alter the outcome of the experiment.It felt like an inner monoluge speaking much faster than I am capable of re-producing in consciousness. He was standing behind the counter of a newsstand if I recall correctly though I can't recall his face or whether nor not I was even looking at his face to see if he was smiling, only the coins in this hands; perhaps they were my tool of measurement. It all made sense...surely you know what I mean? Yes, I know, dream stories are all so boring....You weren't saying that? Your eyes were!
Well, I woke to the cat scratching at the door and this irritated me quite a lot, for I found myself filled with a desire to return to the meticulous sorting. No longer fatigued or in need of more sleep in any way, I was simply addicted, drunk on the feeling of figuring things out in my own intuitive way, the feeling that all of experience could so easily be made sense of and sorted into categories; as if a warm gloss of pleasure was coating my brain and had been left behind by this illusion of progress, I wanted only to return to my dream life to continue layering the varnish...to close my eyes and return to the unity of understanding.
To live in a dream, does not every mad man or creator live out their days as such; it all makes perfect sense to the mind who is processing and positing a unity between all sensations, an indescribable coherence that can somehow become expressible, even if only to the mind of the mad man, or the one who sleeps. Fleeting and immemorial is this knowledge, it still gives a sense of pleasure. There is always pleasure in what unifies; did the homeless man with the deck of cards at the library feel the same way? Was he not talking to those cards, stringing words together as you've never heard them strewn. I believe he knew exactly what was going on-his laughter was at once joyous in his pursuit, doubly mocking toward the children who thought he made no sense at all.
The moment I step out of bed at two pm I am driven by a desire to be outside as quickly as possible, to seize whatever daylight might still be left, but I am relentlessly thwarted moment to moment by my bodily/daily living requirements. I am Sisyphus in the morning, afternoon and evening; brushing my teeth, washing my face, taking a shower, eating some fruit, walking to the metro, riding the metro, making the transfer, getting back on the metro, off the metro, up the escalator, buying my coffee, opening my bag. I could describe each step in much more detail but I'd rather not, such descriptions seem cliche and I can think of any number of movies that have endeavoured with more aesthetic originality than I am capable of achieving in describing how mechanical life can be. Not to mention that I find doing so rather unpleasant...also there is the needlessness of accounting my own individual mundane doings, for surely, every single person has their own daily robotic motions, and feels absurd in some form or another when going through the motions. The question is whether or not they are awake at all though, as awake in the present moment doing what seemingly extends throughout eternity, are they aware of how tragically funny they would look if on filmed on a relapsed shutter speed?...As the clouds move before our eyes in nature shows, there man stands, brushing his teeth, two to threee times a day, in the very same spot, over, and over, and over, again...the act of brushing man's teeth, merely the monkey filling the role in this moment in duration. Take it back to a shot of a monkey using a stick to pick his teeth...do they feel the weight of eternity upon them as they brush their teeth? Does it fill them with a feeling of insignicance?...excuse me for getting excited there...I realize that emotion can affect my clarity....But, I am agitated....almost an hour of my already-wasted-day lost before even beginning; lost in the daily routine of cleansing, eating, caffeinating and tram.

In sleeping, I suppose I find escape; staying in bed prolongs the stay of freedom within the boundlessness of imagination. I stay in the world that makes sense and requires no robotic form of maintenance. For I know, that in getting out of bed, I'll only leave the house to come sit here, in a cubicle reading texts while trying to figure out/remember ways of retaining ideas, of building structures in my mind-in sum, how to oversimplify words so to reproduce them. How to make sense of what makes little sense to me at first. While always suppressing the underlying thought that philosophy is a general waste of time for the very reason that it requires so much of my mind; a heightened state of awareness which seemingly I am incapable of maintaining for any longer than a few minutes anymore. Back when I had heart I was living and breathing whatever words it was I was feeding myself; I took ideas more seriously than I did people. But now I don't think so much...its not so bad! And, I actually like to live and breathe as odd as that may sound. I've even come to appreciate the importance of not thinking sometimes, not only have I learned to appreciate it, but I think I also re-understand that its perhaps even more important to not think, than it is to think at times, and this conclusion comes even after considering ethical motivations too. That is to say simply that, if I rationally or speculatively deliberate upon the matter of whether or not thinking is more valuable than not thinking, that is, “To think, or not to think!! That is the question”....I have clearly concluded that not thinking is, at least some of the time, more important than thinking. Testament to the power of the human will is all of this, I overcame my condemnation, and was able to return to the realm of 'not to think', not only return to the realm momentarily, but to return and to embrace it as my own meaningful world. To 'play'-how key this word is, within it lies all of the answers to solving the scholar's plight. There was hope for Faust, Kierkegaard, those tormented intellectuals...if they could only remember how to 'play'.
Not to remember how to play, but to simply, play.
I had forgotten....to play what you ask? Life! that is the game you must play; choose a role, but play with sincerity! Get swept up in the competition of sport. It is just a sport? It is just a drama? A comedy? No?...there are many games to play in this unity....I even taught myself how to stand in the hallway of doors to each arena....as if each entrance were labelled with its own neon sign representing a context. Calm the nerves I became upon reminding myself, that contexts are best understood when subsumed by them, and not when rendered intelligible so to then opt for getting picked up on a wave. We can not stand in the hallway and recall what is required of us upon entering a door, we must simply enter the door and remember our part by getting lost in the motion, or subsumed by the rythm. As one simply drifts in the ocean, they can not pick what waves they drift along; there movements only make sense in the water...consider how foolish a man looks when trying to learn to swim on land? This is the state of the man who forgets how to play; condemned to dry land, when the truth of life lies in the ocean.
I was able to stop judging....judging who? Well, others...shh. My judgement was ill...for it lied in my own illness, my own sickness was the true target of my scrutiny. My judgement of others always made from on a perch, below me, lied myself, and them, spitting upon their forgetfulness; I was bitter because of my own unwillingness to stop thinking. My restraint, my conviction to hold fast to a thought was where my disdain found a home, a target in others; for no-one else was ever thinking about anything and this is what I resented in them; my own ability to not think about anything other than myself...a capacity I had spent so much time trying to kill out of guilt. 'Guilt' you ask?...
Yes, guilt, for my own embodied awareness that everything I wished to believe in was far too phantasmal, that humans were fornicating fuckers who forget. And that I was one of them dammit....Guilt, despair...feelings felt toward the nature I had suppressed...to try to overcome my plight. My need for memories of perfect things, non-existent things. Ah, dear friend, I digress, perhaps I shall explain in greater detail later...no need? You already know what I mean....yes, it is a tragic thing to forget isn't it?...I couldn't agree with you more. But, you see, deeming it as such will make you weak; so do so at your own risk. The strong are those who forget, those who live for debauchery; so burnt out and drunk that sentimentality becomes a mere mask they sport to attract more attention to themselves. Numb at heart are the debaucherous, even when tearing up over sentiment; they know not why they are crying, for it is not for what has been lost, for that has already been forgotten or can easily be forgotten with a few more sips of the poison; you see, they cry, because they are so numb, and because there's always a crowd to soak up their tears and drink up every drop as if it were the nectar that pours from sincerist of the sincere. But, there is no sincerity in the forgetful, I know this because I am forgetful! There is momentary acts of respectfulness, kindness for others? I do so condescendingly...always motivated by the belief that I am better than the one I am helping... do not think for a second they will not laugh at you later for the kindness in you they appraise. But what a fool I was!? Good deeds are a point of weakness-give a man a dollar, and he'll tell his friends you sucked his dick. In sum, good deeds are never good deeds. I can't accept without knowing how superior the other person feels, how they'll tie their act of kindness to a positive judgment of themselves and a negative one of me....it's all so contradictory you see? And me doing good deeds?...the regress is infinite, just consider if they thought of me as I think of them....you can't win against judgement. Judgement day is everyday.
Ah, forgive me friend, I lose track of thoughts...I too have my vices, one of which clouds my thoughts upon this day, yes to live in a fog, quite a feeling of peace it can be....to wake with smoke still filling your brain...
But, what I wanted to say...there is something youthful about sleeping until 2! Yes, thats what we were talking about...For, I did so as a teenager; slept all day that is....but now when I do so, I wake up feeling angry for having already let the day slip away; but the youthfulness still lies in the state of mind that sleeping so late creates; an undeniable urge to go is born from this sense of missing something...to get moving out the door, 'you've already missed the bus, better catch the next one!!'...in this sense, there is a feeling that I am already too late to catch the day; already too late we are always though you see? Hence, the beauty of this illusory possibility for missing what is always missed, for there is never anything to attain!....just kidding.....But, I am filled witht he thought that I have missed what might've been a momentous morning; and now I ought to get all my shit together and get out there before I miss anymore of the action. There is a feeling of anxiousness and an anticipatory illusiveness that something is slipping through my fingers the longer I allow the angels of sleep to drag my back down to their cloud..... But, then I come here where I sit speaking to you, and question just what it is that I've chosen to do with my time; I am alone upon entering the street in the mid-day morning, the same as every other day. Alone on the metro and with no desire or requirement to close the distance between myself and the surrounding world of others. I lie, I do feel the need to socialize, but only because I know that I am enjoying my time on the inside far too much, and with time I will grow much more fearful of the world that lies outside....I wake alone, and take to the streets as an anonymous wanderer in a big city, still all too aware that I am clinging to a dream that I don't even believe in; no, not the kind of dream we've been talking about, though that is perhaps where such dreams will find their actualization....not here....'simple selfish beings we are driven by our genes'...in so many words, this just seems obvious to me you see, but a paradox as I have tirelessly struggled with and already mentioned here and always mention no matter what I am thinking of. The paradox of the eternal and the finite, romantic and biological...its all bullshit you see...the story book about the apple on the tree? You know its only perfect prior to being plucked, so then its not perfect at all?
Seems I can't take a breath without this duplicity entrenching me...comic book romance/the years of monotonous marriage after the high school dance...either/or is simply IS....a broken dream rendered by reality. If I wake for love, then what makes sense? What kind of love? If I hold certain convictions, then how are they alive in my existence? The fairy tale is for her mind only you say? Hmm interesting...and it's my job to straddle realities so to create the prettiest picture within her mind?....I have thought something like this myself....but when does my aesthetic pleasure get to have its turn, for even in my speculations as to what she may be thinking, I can not ever forget that she is not as passive as her prettiness might lead me to believe, she is not naive, no, she is a thinker too, and I am always being judged, even when painting pictures for her she is cunning to my ways.....ah I see what you mean though, that such knowledge can only assist in my endeavours to paint for her....but still, what about me.....The answer is apparently simple? Accept the duplicity, be selfish, love only yourself, be an ape, be an artist, be a liar, be a lover, perhaps in being able to laugh at the lies within yourself, it becomes less difficult to bare the laughter of others, for they can always be seen to only be laughing at themselves. They are the liars, just as you are, just as I am...only you and me, we can see and thus have the right to laugh, for at least we know we are at all times, both virtuous and sinful, an artist and an ape, both violent and passive..without ever any clear guiding conviction to tell us the right way home...wanting to make a cruel joke to the bum while you give him change...loving her with real desire while thinking of yourself as some kind of sage, this moment a portrait you could find on the pages of some romantic tale....Lord Byron was full of shit and that's all there is to it; did he really believe in all that imagery or was he just doing it to make girls think he thought that way?.... So why do anything if your split, always divided? No answer for that!...Perhaps because its all quite good for a laugh.
How does this tie in with the question of thinking or not thinking? Well, it's all the same you see, never once did I stray from this question. You can never stop embodying the duplicity that plagues you, thus, what is required is an acceptance modification; embrace the entirity, the unity. The one who judges is always judged, the one who does no judging is less aware of the other's judgements upon him, but these are unimportant considerations...laugh at duplicity, accept.... sure, strive to be something better...be virtuous! be a romantic knight!...or go the other way, be a sinner, be a forgetful fornicator....you will see; you are always divided my friend....the sinful within you allows for virtue, just as the fucker in you can allow for poetry.