February 22, 2024
a recurring concept in my yet-unpublished writing (unpublished for i wrote approximately one-hundred handwritten pages while traveling which need conversion from analog to digital) is the theme of wanting versus having (another’s really good writing here). the experience of wanting something is far removed from the state of having had that something; any way of transmitting the experience of having had something to another who wants to have had that experience necessarily requires translation through the minds of both the person who has had this experience and they who wants to have had that experience. these two filters tangle and mar the true form of this experience such that neither party has an accurate image of the experience in their minds.
experiences are unfortunately nondeterministic for others and the self. what propels one to great heights causes another to fall; a traveler along a well-worn path for the self may find that cliffs stand where once was flat land as the landscape erodes with time. it is not only that phenomena are non-transmissible – they’re non-replicable as well. each event is unique and unseverable from a larger context. one can imagine the difficulty of conveying the world of an event as opposed to the already-heavy task of the event itself.
that which divides wanting and having is action. for many choices action is walking through a forest blindfolded with nothing but that which you had on the start of the hike. this does not make it any less necessary. the local optimum which serves you well at one time is unlikely to provide forever and action is necessary to move to better plateaus. there exist lower valleys with steep, unclimbable walls as well. regardless, to be frozen to inaction is to be stuck in a perpetually-diminishing land.
asked to give an object-level example of this topic, i could discuss a hot stove. a toddler, naturally curious about the world, would like to explore and gain more knowledge of it; a heating element, color-changing, a unique object with properties of heat and light provides a new path for exploration. the toddler wants to touch the stove – they quickly learn that the experience of having touched the stove differs quite drastically than what they had imagined when wanting to have touched the stove. likely, they would like to return to a state where they had not touched the stove.
the above is an example with an unhappy ending. in truth, many learning experiences are, though not all, and nonetheless are important in providing models of the world such that one may make better decisions in the future. as well, some of these actions are made to achieve a more preferable station; some of these are successful and some only in casting one down into a valley.
there’s a woman at a club in barcelona. the bottom floor of the club is a large dancefloor ringed by bars; going toward the back, there are stairs leading to restrooms that could be doubly classified as biohazards, upward leading to four other rooms playing a variety of music with flashing lights, each with their own bars. from there exist two quieter smoking terraces. moving through the dancefloor, up the stairs, and through the rooms (r&b, then techno) to the terrace to breathe in the smell of tobacco which she is refusing for herself and to talk outside of the ear-piercing rooms.
she quickly finds that the context she exists in to others has changed; of course, she had some ideas that this would happen as a natural process. however, the knowledge that one may be seen as a prize and the feeling of being seen as one are leagues apart; roving eyes decaying her body in real time. vulnerability as a concept far removed from the isolation of being within it.