The blurry blurry obvious

Last day of 2015 - London - part cloudy part sunny, warm

I woke up this morning not planning for a run. I woke up hungry and decided to go for a brunch at the Riding House Cafe. I ate and I got excited for Haruki Murakami's running song list, and I went for a 7-mile run, because I am 7 miles short to reach 600 miles on the Nike app.

Running is a lonely sport. People describe running saying "my sport is your sport's punishment" and they take pride in it. Perhaps they refer more to the physical tiredness rather than the dark void (which brings you pain) you must have as a motivation to start running. You want to fill it up with colorful images or kill it by body exhaustiveness so you can endure the steps and breath. But runners know too well this void cannot be filled. Instead you feel it more vividly hollowing you out, and it imprints scars on your brain. When you want to think about something something just won't come up. It's really messed up. Running is a hopeless thing.

And so I ran today. Because of the nothingness and an inexplicable feeling of something lost that I want to clearly distinguish. The What and Why of things.

First Counterclockwise Lap

I wonder how days can be different, that one day can be more special than another. I only understand how one day can be happier or sadder than another, but you can't define a day to be special. Like the New Year's day, there is nothing special about it if you think about how it came about. It's just a day where there is a gathering of people who you truly like or who you really hate. You eat and spend time with them. But this is the same as you take time looking at paintings, absorbed in their complicated layers and try to make sense of what they speak. People are like paintings. They are subjectivities which exhibit themselves as an object in front of you and ask you hey look at me.

Yesterday I spent time looking at paintings. This morning I called mom. She was concerned about how I planned to spend my New Year's eve and she listed all the people I could hang out with and said go ask them. Maybe I would, but there is no need because days are not different in themselves but only in the ways I spend them. I have met many people who are incredibly anxious about the problem of not being surrounded by people, and they are amazing at sensing your vulnerability because you are alone. What if I tell you that days are made up, definitions are created by others? Let me crush your dreams idiots. Don't be blinded by the blurry obvious please.

The clear line you see that divides one day from another, one year from another, is not there. For what are things but only coincidences of the particularity of time and space (for one second I believe in Schopenhauers' PSR theory). I am here now is no different than I am there before or later. Location does not matter, time does not matter (as I can just go to Greenwich and cross the prime meridian now). The matter (nerves and feelings) is in your brain.

So I feel no difference being in London or Boston or at home. The belonging or settledness people talk about are constructed by their limited understanding of the world. You are too you and care about nothing else. But do see, there is sky, there is sun; do dream, there is a place you can be whenever you want to go.

I wonder about these things and I have come to a conclusion. But it is not convincing, not helpful. The sunshine which embraced me only urged tears. The suffocation came, I see. My lungs suddenly dropped, my throat tightened, and there was nothing to be spoken of. The cause hid somewhere I could not reach (not governed by the PSR). It is that obvious I was not sad about the meaning of the day or the situation, but what was that something reflected in the void that scares me. It's obviously blurry.

Second Clockwise Lap

I wonder why I came to London to study abroad. I never really thought about it but was pushed by my curiosity of why not.

Life is different here as it is not defined. I am learning to live my life and plan my days. I have much free time during the week and I have many desires to go to places. There are already 20 galleries and museums on my list still left to see.

I found it quite frustrating though, that my desire to do homework is decreasing. I want to say it is because there are too many distractions. But perhaps there is a more obvious reason - I do not do homework because I do not like studying that much. Instead of writing an essay I am writing a blog. And art and its expressiveness are quite an excitation to fuel my days.

In London, academics and life blur together. There is not a distinguishing line between your daily life and your academic work. Going to the library is a lifestyle you can choose. Going to a cafe to read philosophy is possible. Going to a good restaurant for lunch and go back to class with the smell of cake is also possible. In a way, life dissembles itself and becomes life again.

I am still figuring out what my life is. There is no why to ask. It's just what it is becoming it. It's quite blurrily obvious.

I have imagined what it will be like for me to go back to Boston. It's unimaginable because everything surrounding me now will disappear, and their trace of having left before it has come is unpredictable. Maybe this is the inarticulable secret of the coincidences of time and space, and why simply does not exist.

Happy New Year (from London).