Existential Overload

Today is the first birthday of this blog. Happy Birthday Effulgent13!

And, on such a momentous occasion, I think it fitting, as a special treat to the millions of readers, from the four corners of the globe (or, at least, of this room), who devote so much of their precious time and energy to reading this ludicrous...erudite blog, to feature existentialism. And long-winded sentences.

I've just finished reading Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (he was an existentialist God! - irony unavoidable). I have no idea what the novel was about and yet, it spoke to me. I, too, have experienced "the Nausea", pretty much since birth. So I've selected a couple of passages I like from the novel to reprint (retype?).

The first passage is taken from a section of the novel where the protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, has completely lost it (his brain coherence), and is freaked out by a tree:

"Admittedly a movement was something different from a tree. But it was still an absolute. A thing. My eyes never met anything but repletion. There were swarms of existences at the end of the branches, existences which constantly renewed themselves and were never born." pg190

(existential trees used to frighten me as well)

The second passage is primal; after all, humans are just glorified animals:

"I started to look through books on display in the second-hand boxes, and especially, the obscene ones, because, in spite of everything, that occupies your mind." pg 220

(guilty!)

I don't think I'll become an existentialist. Or not completely. I believe my (physical) existence in this world is real (I'm assuming there are vast numbers of other worlds/dimensions) and it has an effect. I need to tread with caution, one wrong step and this world could melt. Or I could melt. I'm not afraid of melting, of being consumed by objects. But I'm not ready to melt just yet, I want to stay solid for as long as possible, to see what happens. I hope there isn't too much pain or humiliation or loneliness; then I might want to melt. It'll probably be boring, but I'm OK with boring.