Ay ay ay ay

I have been feeling unsettled and disoriented lately, and I’m not sure why. I’m not able to explain exactly how I feel, except to say that things don’t feel right. I guess it feels a little like the world has shifted and I can’t put my finger on why or where or how. I do the same things I usually do, except that I write a little bit more and eat a little less dessert. I have occasionally made choices I wouldn’t normally make, like buying potato chips (did that this morning), or going to the brewpub with my comics classmates last night until 1 AM. My classmate Julia talked me into going by saying, “When in doubt, a good answer is usually, ‘Ah well, what the hell.'” This attitude has become somewhat familiar to me in recent weeks. Is that the change, or is that a result of the change? Maybe it’s both, and the whole process is cyclical. I don’t know.

The most unsettling thing of all is that naturally, when your world feels unsteady and foreign, you have to start wondering whether it’s not just you who have become strange instead. I’ve always believed these two quotations from Anaïs Nin and Marcel Proust: “We see things not as they are, but as we are,” and “The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Maybe it’s my eyes that have changed, not the world I’m living in. I guess if that’s true it’s especially disturbing to me because I’m usually very aware of changes in myself and my thinking. It sounds bizarrely metaphysical to say that maybe I’m taking on a life of my own — that is, the “I” that I think of as myself is acting without the knowledge of the “I” who does all the thinking and analyzing — but maybe that’s what’s going on. If so, it’s no wonder everything feels like unfamiliar territory these days.

Does that make any sense?

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]