Sorry, no story

Dear reader, dear listener,

I haven’t written you in half a year and the reason is I have had nothing to say. Egocentric as I am, I have spent a lot of my time observing and scrutinizing my own attention… I guess I wanted to find out what I’m really up to. I must admit that what I learned isn’t pretty. Egocentric as I am, my attention, it turns out, was almost uniquely fixated on me. Go figure.

One might wonder why meanwhile I haven’t come up with a story. I wondered why I never come up with a story. But now I actually think I get it. It’s all a result of my lack of attention for what surrounds me. I don’t see the world I live in. I don’t explicitly refuse to see it. I just don’t. That’s why I have no story to tell. All I have for you, all I have ever had for you, is rumination. And I just want you to know that I am sorry. Ruminations are like atoms. They are like the story without the structure. They are elements you can zoom in on but without connection to the broader scope, it is all they’ll ever be: elementary, but meaningless. They are not alive but they do dwell inside of you and they take up space.

Anyway, I have no story. For example: I went running yesterday. I went running on many other days as well. Same trajectory, or practically so. Yet I couldn’t tell you the name of two streets I ever pass by, the types of pavement I lay foot on, or the view across the river that guides me from north to south and back. I wouldn’t be able to describe any of it, even though I know many words. A tremendous amount of words… In fact, I know the best words. I really do.

I wouldn’t be able to describe you anything, if you held a gun to my head. I don’t do well under pressure. However, I wouldn’t be able to describe it if you asked me ever so gently either, because I simply don’t register. I’m the videocamera you thought was on until you press the button to turn it off. Because that’s when you notice you actually just turned it on. So it must have been off the whole time. No matter how closely you were looking through that lens, no matter how steadily you were zooming in on things… you weren’t recording. With this kind of gear, all you ever end up with are intermittent fragments and thoughts. But no story.

And that is why everything you just read or listened to, makes no iota of sense.