It's been a week back from Berlin, and rarely have I the tenacity of writing down something. Usually around February and March my literary urge would be resuscitated, my words would sprout into a semblance of a tree. But I must admit with a forthright countenance that this year it could be different. Maybe it's Sartre, or Andrew O'Hagan, or some other gentlemen who unsettled me with their words, whatever I intend to write seem to induce a level of sardonic smirk, a signal for the ostensible inanities of, and especially of, my work.
Never mind, I should be used to this by now - especially in this university, one has to have quite some finesse in adaptability in order to cope with the cuisine offered at the cafeteria. Rather than food people would normally envision, the food here is tilted towards an abstraction. Say, an impressionist artist from the renaissance period conjectures up a painting of a plate of sausage spaghettis - the food here is quite like that, a mashed hodgepodge of likely edible things, mixed together with bold color and salt. One could only enjoy it on an intellectual level. And almost with an Orwellian touch, the students come by periodically to obtain their food like museum-goers attend to art. And I am really the exemplary pragmatist in this respect. I would picture a post-apocalyptic world, where humanities are reduced to a single spaceship heading towards another star system, where food is scarce and portioned, and only the aristocrats, or "Jacobanites", are endowed with the privilege of daily natural food. Thematically it fits well, and I just deem myself a particularly picky aristocrat.
In Berlin though, one need invoke neither an intellectual traverse, nor an a priori apocalypse; one simply chooses between Foodora and Deliveroo.
But the subsistence of food aside, the room I have now been allocated, after multiple back-and-forth emails, is spacious and outfitted with a range of amenities akin to those of a proper hotel room. I have even avoided having to bear with a roommate. If in Berlin I had a vague hope of what my life back in the university should look like, it's quite close to what I indeed manage to have, even though there isn't a U2 line at the front door. I have even retrieved my old circle, itself greatly dwindled, and picked up a new habit of having a pot of tea with Owen and a pot of stir-fried tomato egg with Franklin.
I tend to have a complicated relationship with my friends. On one side, it is human nature that my earthly companionship serves as a weight to keep me grounded, so that, for example, when I was having my 22nd birthday, I would convince myself to forage for some kind of a cake. On the other hand, as they have always been, friends are like the various landscapes seen through the cabin window - always appear the same and change only slightly, until the train reaches a city, or I have to get up to pee. The whole intricate and grandiose construct of sociability is so invincible, of course, unless, I find a job elsewhere, or a romantic relationship, or there has been a looming mid-term exam.
Before departing every station, the computerized voice at the BVG subway would announce "zurückbleiben bitte" - one would not mistake it for friendliness; but if a lady tells me to do the same, I would appreciate that with a humanly smile; if she tells me the same thing but in a different way every stop along the line, I might try to strike up a conversation; if she happens to have an attractive physique, and that she tells me the similar things even after I got off the train, like "be careful, it is slippery outside", I might propose to have a cup of coffee with her. This, of course, is only fantasy. But the same useless repetition, when carried out more artfully, becomes the corner stone of a friendship. In a sense, I believe, we secretly yearn to be taken as idiots.
Mind is an incredibly tenuous thing; heart is no less tenuous; however, it is more visceral, therefore more in accordance with our nature - childlike hairless little bipeds, who'd like to scratch their heads, build little things, cultivate a few offsprings and die.
Sartre's view is incomplete from this point of view. The world is existential, but our lives are not. Our lives are animalistic, veiled by varying degrees of eloquence, righteousness, and delusion.
