2003-04-09 1:36 a.m.

If life is going to be a struggle forever, a constant battle, why am I trying? Because if one considers history and the human experience, analyzes it, things become obvious—there is nothing to search for; this torment is not going to end; nothing else exists. Who is that angry, pessimistic woman in the the other room, and why does she claim to be my mother? What unreasonable, enormous demands does she have for me? How is it that she fails to recognize the misery she inflicts on her own offspring?

So. As I’ve already concluded, this waking life is profoundly cyclical, sickening, dead. One is born, one learns, one searches for peace, one tries for perfection, fails, dies. Perfection is utterly unattainable, in the same way that it is impossible to touch the top of Mount Everest while keeping one’s toes on the desert sand. Ask me not to hold myself to the standards of perfection, and you ask me to deny that which I know is the common ground for all people familiar to me.

I am sitting—reclining really—on an expensive couch, on pillows, with a moderately warm blanket covering my knees. There are two large electric lamps within eight feet of me. I want to pass judgement on the situation, say I am spoiled, wonder how I can want more when I take for granted a lifestyle coveted by such a large proportion of people in the world, both in the past and in the present—but it occurs to me that the expense of artificial heat, electricity, and this furniture is utterly relative. I could qualify every adjective with “relatively,” with “comparatively.” And why? Because there are no absolutes?

Well, of course because there are no absolutes. Which returns me to futility, the utter bang-your-head-against-the-wall futility, of searching for anything.

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