For the past month, I have been bitterly trying to reset my existence in the hope of escaping the nightmares (sleeping) and sense of displacement (waking).
In the absence of a button which can be depressed to implement starting again, and in the absence of suicide, I am condemned to fret around the edges of consciousness, re-arranging the furniture.
As I think about it more, I conclude that 'reset' means 'to break as many links as possible with the past,' and this is indeed what I have set out to do.
For this reason, then, I jettisoned my best friend, unable to look at him and the uncountable number of links to a shared past any longer. I am sick of history, and its habit of digging up my precious sleep.
I am sick of history with its predictable elasticity: I progress only so far from my origins, only to be dragged back to where I started like a dog on a leash.
To exist at all as a human is to be condemned to repeat the same mistakes, over and over, without remotely learning from them. The same pathetic tics which were condemning at the age of 20 continue to condemn, and it shall be ever thus, no matter to what extent I am able to wriggle from the quicksand.
Running away from history is as futile as running away from one's own shadow, and yet I cannot resist the urge to try it just one more time. A game of hide-and-seek, where no sooner dare I open my eyes than the same old spectres are crowding in again: surprise!
The I can never escape its I. As Barthes would have it, it's the same as asking the image to jump off its photographic paper and maintain an independent existence. It's the same as blaming the mirror for reporting back displeasing sights. There is no way out, and I am done for.
