Yes! That book you mentioned in the last paragraph may have strong similarities to Marechera's writing. Thank you for mentioning it.
As for the Buddhist world view, I think I understand what you are saying. At the same time, there remains a question about subjectivity and what one should do with it. To say that a viewpoint is "just subjective" is to betray it, because there is no viewpoint possible apart from subjectivity. Subjectivity is the only means by which one has a viewpoint. On the other hand, moving toward a disregard for too much subjectivity, indeed a philosophical attitude to it, might seem normal and appropriate as one gets older, because one incorporates, then, a certain knowledge about death and a certain capacity for letting go of things, in some respects. This is the tempering process of wisdom and it is what makes us beautiful as we get older.
As for the Buddhist world view, I think I understand what you are saying. At the same time, there remains a question about subjectivity and what one should do with it. To say that a viewpoint is "just subjective" is to betray it, because there is no viewpoint possible apart from subjectivity. Subjectivity is the only means by which one has a viewpoint. On the other hand, moving toward a disregard for too much subjectivity, indeed a philosophical attitude to it, might seem normal and appropriate as one gets older, because one incorporates, then, a certain knowledge about death and a certain capacity for letting go of things, in some respects. This is the tempering process of wisdom and it is what makes us beautiful as we get older.
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APES IN CAPES!
actual processor+computer have completely mechanically failed. How bizarre.
From my own view at this particular stage of my life (age 52,) I observe that leaves
grow and fall. The ocean waves come in and go out. Every hour, across the world,
some six thousand people die. In that same hour, 15,000 are born. Each minute,
some 105 peope die, and 250 are born. Each second, worldwide, two people die,
and four people are born. To me, this is a kind of breathing, and this is what
that "Buddhist" kind of mindfulness taught me. is that humans come in the world
and go out of the world like leaves and like waves. A wave of humans goes out, a
wave of humans comes in. Foxes, sea stars, clouds, nations... it is all a great and
wondrous flux. I just see myself as one of those leaves, one of those flowers, one of
those waves of humans that came in on that day, back in 1964. I'll do my best in this
place with this mind, and someday, I will fall from the tree, crash on the shore,
and take a breath in or out, which is followed by no more breaths in or out.
Any meanings beyond that, seem entirely subjective, and as transitory as
everything else. As you so beautifully put, one eventually just gets on with
it. One eventually susses out the situation of one's birth, and either chooses to
jump off the mountain, or start learning the ropes.
I have no idea whether looking at a 'self" in this way is considered healthy or
unhealthy, but it has been a refuge from the narcissistic, rigid, and self-obssessed
society I was born into, and was forged from a deep conviction that the f***ing
emperor was as naked as the day he was born. I have felt surrounded by endless
discussion about the finery of the emperor's clothing. Tomes to fill whole cities
have discussed the pattern and the fabric. I trusted my eyes, more than their
words. The more I trusted my own instincts, the more my diagnosis was "blindness".
In a society which functions on manipulation, coercion, and deception, those who
strive for authenticity and autonomy are considered enemies of the state.
Thank you for your illuminating and thoughtful reply.
As a complete and totally unrelated aside, the book which Black Sunlight put
me in mind of, is Guyotat's "Eden, Eden, Eden". It's an insult to Marechera
to say so perhaps, but the initial sense of having walked straight-on into
a jet engine was similar.