Saturday, February 25, 2006

On Not Wanting to be Born, and being Exasperated and Unforgiving for Not Having Died or Killed Myself Early in Life



This picture was taken from a room in Calcutta, at the place where my mother’s head rested while I was being delivered. It shows the roof of a Jewish dharamsala, a charitable lodge for travellers. I tell people that all human newborns cry at birth because they have lost the security and sounds of the womb, the environment of amniotic fluid. They are suddenly exposed to countless images and never-heard sounds in that millisecond after coming out.

I did not cry for that reason: I cried because I did not want to be born. And all my life I have not changed this view. It is so expansive that whenever I am asked about my nationality I tell people that I am an alien from an unknown planetary system, from an unknown part of the cosmos.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It has seemed unnecessary to write before now, as I would just be adding to that mass of inconsequential words that masquerades as philosophy in the world.

It's still unnecessary, but my pleasure at seeing your blog cannot be disguised. What can be more attractive than this self-sufficiency? Yes, especially when it takes the form of a claim that the self is an insufficient chunk of matter.

Your rare (and very expensive) honesty is something I recognize, and embrace.

So, yesterday, as I sat in the library here (New York), I mused on "the pursuit of happiness," that most sacred and under-thought of American creeds, and came up with this formulation of my own:

"Your right to pursue happiness ends precisely where my right to confront sadness begins."

We should make that a constitutional amendment. Confronting sadness is neither noble nor ignoble work, but someone's got to do it. But here, the policemen have whips and chains, and how they make you suffer if you don't pursue happiness. People would rather die than not be thought of as happy. It is unreal.

commonbeauty

Anonymous said...

Sir, it would not be enough to say just that it is a nice picture... it seems to convey so much more... there is an element of irony in with that empty bed and the figure on the wall.
Just curious - if you were to give it a title, what would it be?

Anonymous said...

The picture's title is "Of Being and Nothingness," after Sartre

Anonymous said...

Thank You, Sir.