A phone rang, shrill and abrubt. Even the sound seemed fake, dreamlike. That sound, I know it is from a telephone, I know it is from a piece of electronic equipment that emits sound waves that have travelled to my ear, I know that someone out in the world, some other existing entity has used a similar device and in seconds I will communicate with that entity. The idea seemed unbelievably strange, hilarious almost. He tried to imagine that entity, somewhere outside of these walls, somewhere in this world. An exact distance through space. I am now expected to pick up my phone. If I do not pick up my phone, the entity will assume that there are no entities currently occupying this house. I will have fooled them. He laughed aloud at this thought. He was free, yes he was free. He did not have to pick up the phone, he didn’t have to do anything. To pick up or not pick up. It just didn’t matter, nothing mattered. What was it to matter? The question was entirely absurd. Does this matter? He asked himself and raised him arm. Or this? Scattering a pile of papers on the floor. The question seemed very strange to him, even the verb seemed unnatural: to matter. This matters, and that does not. That matters and this does not. It is of no matter.
He looked once again at his surroundings. Had they really been there yesterday and the day before? Had they existed like this? Habit must have dulled the sensation for him, for what he felt now was unbelievable. The presence of everything, it was so overwhelming. All of these things, they exist. They sit here and exist all of the time. They sit and wait, content in their existence, for someone to notice them. They exist. He looked down at himself, at the white shirt and the red tie. He began to unfasten the tie, watching his hands with incredulity. Those…those are my hands. They are part of me. We are part of the same body, the same object. This tie is not a part of me, but these hands are. This shirt is not, but these nails are. The distinction is so fuzzy and unnatural. Are these hands me? Are they just a part of me? What is this idea of me. I control these hands, they do my bidding. I can make them tie and untie. I can make them create. I can make them kill. They are mine, they are my responsibility. If they were to do something bad, people would point to me and say: “HE DID IT!†But did my hands do it as well? What if my tie did it? Not the same thing, no not at all. Different types of possesion, like partnership and ownership. Yes, partnership and ownership. The hands are my partners. I callude with my hands to create and kill. But they don’t offer feedback, we don’t discuss anything. The hands could never make me do anything, could they? Who is this me though, and where does he reside? He commands the hands and the legs, the face and the mind. But how can he control the mind? Who is this right now talking in my head, is it him? This monologue that I can hear. That is very strange though. Of course I cannot hear it, my ears are for hearing and they are doing nothing. If someone else were in the room they would not hear anything. They would say that I wasn’t speaking. But if I am not speaking, how can I be hearing? I recognise its voice. Who is it, is it he? Is it the mind. Perhaps they are the same thing. But then who controls my heart? Does the heart control itself? Maybe the heart is my true partner. But we never really do anything together. It just sort of sits there, beating. I can’t stop it and it can’t stop me. I can’t even talk to it… HEART!!! HEART!!! No use, it can’t hear. But I can. I, who control all and who can hear this voice. I, who can create this voice. But I cannot control the heart, that is really too bad. I wonder if the heart is a part of me. No, it can’t be. The heart is not a part of me. I cannot control it, it is in another world. It is another object, apart from me like the tie. They provide services for me, one decorative and one utilitarian. But neither is a part of me. This hand though, this trusty hand is definitely a part of me, it is me. If I touched someone’s behind in a line-up and they asked who it was, I would say: “Me, it was me who touched your behind. I touched it.†Good ol’ hand. I can always trust you to do my bidding. But what are these? Ah yes, these are veins. Are the veins me? I cannot control them and they cannot control me. I cannot speak to them, I cannot affect them. VEINS!!! VEINS!!!. No, they do not hear. They continue to pour life into my hands no matter what. But since I do not control them, they cannot be a part of me, they cannot be me. They must be apart from me, like the tie. Perhaps they are part of the heart. Oh yes that makes since, they both pump blood. They are another entity like me. Perhaps they have their own voice. Maybe they are even having the same thoughts as me. They are wondering if I am them. Oh what hilarity. So the hands are me, but the veins are not. Well how about the cells in the hands? I certainly cannot speak to them, I cannot even see them. They are their own little entities, like little animals. They eat and excrete, they fight other cells, they communicate with one another, they travel. They are not me. It would be absurd to look under a microscope at your hand and say: “see that cell right there, that’s me!†Well if that’s you, why don’t you move to the left? You can’t eh? So you can’t even control yourself, that is a sad state of affairs. It is clear now that the cell is not you. Your claim is as valid as saying that that dog is you. It is a discrete being, an entity that controls itself. If your cell is placed on a petry dish is it still you? At what point does it stop becoming you? Clearly these cells are not me, but if this hand is made up of cells and they are not me, then how can this hand be me? Maybe it is like an ecosystem, where none of the individual animals are the ecosystem, but all of them together form the ecosystem. The ecosystem is all of these animals, but it is also none of them. That sounds very strange indeed. Almost poetic in fact, but it does not solve the problem of me-ness. Where the hell am I, if I am not in hand nor heart, not in vein nor cell? Am I in the brain? But the brain is just cells too. How much of the brain could you remove before you stopped being you? At what point would this voice in my head stop, where does this voice reside? It is unknowable. It is absurd. It is hilarious. Here I am, existing and yet not existing. A lump of flesh and bones that is me, and yet it is not me. How stupid these questions have been. Just as silly as asking where the pen-ness lies in a pen. Is it in the cartridge? How about the grip, or the ink, or the ball…oh yes it has to be in the ball doesn’t it? The fact is that there is no pen-ness, no essence of the pen. It is a conglomerate, a construction of a bunch of complex molecules adhered together forcefully to produce the macro-figure that we call a pen. I am the same. I am a complex arrangement of molecules that we have labelled human. I am the same as a pen. Are existences are equal, not even equal actually. Talk of equal is absurd because there is no plane of comparison. There is no hierarchy, I do not exist any more or any less than the pen. There are only two states, existence and non-existence, and we both occupy the former. Then what occupies the latter? What does not exist? What is not a part of existence? You cannot conceptualize non-existing objects, cannot imagine nothing. Because an attribute of anything, living or dead, imagined or real is existence. What is something that is not existing? You can’t even begin to think about it, it is impossible. Then how can we say that we exist? What the hell does it mean to say that we exist? It is absurd to talk even of existence? I exist…what the hell is that supposed to mean. If I said to somebody: “I heckard.†He would say: “What?†And I would reply: “I heckard, dude. You heckard. It is a fundamental attribute of all things. To heckard. This pen heckards. This computer heckards. I think therefore I heckard!†He would then ask: “But what does it mean, to heckard?” And I would reply: “What is it to exist?”
That could have been broken into some paragraphs. It’s extremely difficult to read something when it’s one large paragraph, just like ALL-CAPS.