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What alone can be our doctrine? That no one gives a man his qualities - neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself. (The nonsense of the last idea was taught as “intelligible freedom” by Kant - and perhaps by Plato.) No one is responsible for a man’s being here at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his existence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be. Human beings are not the effect of some special purpose, or will, or end; nor are they medium through which society can realize an “ideal of humanity” or an “ideal of happiness” or an “ideal of morality.” It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of “end:” in reality there is no end.

A man is necessary, a man is a piece of fatefulness, a man belongs to the whole, a man is in the whole; there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, or sentence his being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a primary cause, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as “spirit” - that alone is the great liberation. With that idea alone we absolve our becoming of any guilt. The concept of “God” was until now the greatest objection to existence. We deny God, we deny the responsibility that originates from God: and thereby we redeem the world.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

You were last seen walking through a field of pianos. No. A museum of mouths. In the kitchen of a bustling restaurant, cracking eggs and releasing doves. No. Eating glow worms and waltzing past my bedroom. Last seen riding the subway, literally, straddling its metal back, clutching electrical cables as reins. You were wearing a dress made out of envelopes and stamps, this was how you travelled. I was the mannequin in the storefront window you could have sworn moved. The library card in the book you were reading until that dog trotted up and licked your face. The cookie with two fortunes. The one jamming herself through the paper shredder, afraid to talk to you. The beggar. Hat outstretched bumming for more minutes. The phone number on the bathroom stall with no agenda other than a good time. The good time is a picnic on water, or a movie theatre that only plays your childhood home videos and no one hushes when you talk through them. When you play my videos I throw milk duds at the screen during the scenes I watch myself letting you go — lost to the other side of an elevator — your face switching to someone else’s with the swish of a geisha’s fan. My father could have been a travelling salesman. I could have been born on any doorstep. There are 2,469,501 cities in this world, and a lot of doorsteps. Meet me on the boardwalk. I’ll be sure to wear my eyes. Do not forget your face. I could never.

“There is nothing new under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes

Disease is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless the will itself chooses. And add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens; for you will find it an impediment to something else, but not to yourself.
Epictetus, the Enchiridion

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