Although I do firmly believe that there is a shred of some great truth I'm trying to express in the following passages, it should be noted that I am writing this while becoming more progressively inebriated. Readers should be warned that this narrative becomes more and more abstract. However, the careful reader will be able to see past the ramblings as the theme of this narrative intends. In the same vein as Shakespeare, I play the fool such that I might reveal something of grand importance. Happy New Years!
My name is Miles Dupont, a relatively unimportant figure in your histories but rest assured once I’m done narrating my story the very concept of importance will lose all meaning to you. I was born somewhere in the French Riviera to upper middle-class parents, who bequeathed upon me all the expected mannerisms and education incumbent on a child of my station. Nothing in my childhood was particularly that interesting to note here. I did spend some time in the Middle East, but then again, the lure of the Great Deserts was strong back then, especially for men, who by the strength of their backs and great courage, sought to wrestle control of the world from Atlas himself. My adolescent age on the other hand was far more interesting. Innumerable vices of every kind were explored, and the black depths of depravity were embraced. Now, your condescending summary judgement is noted, but at the lycée I remained a student par excellence. If you still wish to smite me with the divine light of the heavens and have me renounce the manifestations of the Devil, I say unto you as Voltaire did many moons ago, ‘Now’s not the time to be making enemies’. At university I read philosophy, a lost tongue now indecipherable to modern man. I was no fool of course. Unlike the vast sum of the sludge that we call humanity, I have always been able to clearly discern the rules of this absurd game we call Life. It’s simple. When we are born, we are come to this great stage of fools, cursing our Maker with vengeances, as yet unknown, but ensuring that they shall be the terrors of the Earth. I later learned that the shape of my vengeance would be a gift to make ludicrous sums of money by pressing a few buttons. Once more, before you dispense Azrael’s justice in the form of metal and cutlass, I implore you not to be one of those fools on stage, but rather witness the entire comedy in the stands with all those with formless vengeance. This brings us to the present I suppose.
The Canary Islands
Fresh ocean spray styles my hair as my linen shirt billows with the dance of the Spanish coastal wind. I am reclined on an outdoor sofa, a privilege previously granted only to Roman nobility, smoking a cigarette with a whiskey sour mere centimetres away. I have no job, yet during the bleakest of Paris winter’s my face is being kissed by the golden bliss of unfiltered sunlight. I press some buttons on a miracle of modern invention and now I have the resources to stay in Spain for a year should I choose. The point of all of this dear friend, is that there is no point. A touch of math, some pattern recognition, and analytical wizardry should not the meaning of life constitute. And indeed, it does not. It is all an abstraction of an abstraction. The source of the fountain does not exist, nor do we need it to. From vengeance alone we are able to defy the Gods and live truly nonsensical lives. This is not a tragedy, not an epic, not poetry, not drama, not even a cohesive story. It is comedy. Absurd comedy.
Just think! Step off the stage for a moment. View life as the Gods would, from above. Are we not all silent Sisyphus’, rolling our boulders of apparent meaning up some apparent Mount Progress? What a joke! Now the astute saints among you might profess that I have fallen ill to some form of bourgeois illness. How dare you undermine the divine suffering that humanity is subject to! We come from dirt and to dirt we shall return! Meaning is bestowed by the divine and to each it is individuated!
Dear friend, is it not plain now? Our lives are a cruel comedy of errors on a scale Shakespeare could only dream of. I think my life perfectly exemplifies this. There is no predestination, no Grand Order, I simply know how to push my boulder better than you do. This is not due to divine meaning (frankly that will be an even scarier prospect), but rather due to random chance. We are cursed to be free. I see that you still do not understand. Perhaps another example then. One less philosophical maybe.
Canary Wharf Driving Range
On holiday in London, I visited a golf range overlooking the silent sentinels of commerce in Canary Wharf. Hour upon hour I struck tiny balls into the nether night, feeling a sense of accomplishment I suppose, as Sisyphus no doubt would have felt during his first journey. But why? What is the point? Look at you! Looking for a point yet again. What is the point of comedy? What is the point of laughter? THERE IS NONE. The boulder, the mountain, the act of pushing, these might all be absolute realities, but the only point, is the perspective you bring to that inevitable act. Whether you are happy on stage, successful, depressed, a fool, or one who seeks vengeance, that is entirely up to you.
I do not mean to deprive you of your beliefs dear friend, nor do I mean to plunge you into a vortex of despair. All I ask is for you to examine your life as I did mine and see that it is nothing but funny. Nothing is important, all is comedy.