Go Darke

Venison and blueberries. Kudu specifically. Which is like an elk-analog I decide after some consideration, the breakfast of… eh… well, people who don’t have anything else in their fridge. But I’m going to go and say this was a repast of choice. I right click on repast to make sure it means what I think it means. (if anyone ever goes through my search history they will be disappointed to find that it’s not all threesomes and Mars bar kink, and mostly just words that I think I know the meaning of, but appreciate the affirmation that Google provides)

Breakfast today is Ketogenic, paleo and low-carbohydrate. All catchwords I like to bandy about and pretend that I am an adherent of. I mean sometimes I am. But mostly not.

I went over the mountain… eh… what’s today… Wednesday. So Monday, an airport run to pick up my brother-in-law. Being now well homogenized into small town living I have become resistant to journeys where the terminus is any form of urban crush. But, to be honest, I still quite like airports, the quintessential melange of humanity. Watching people in transit flowing through that strange null-zone that is in your modern aerodrome always makes me quite cheerful, they are all so fantastically weird. (not like me obviously)

In any event, I turned it into a multi-pronged operation. We needed a new Moka pot, an essential item in our domicile, without which we can’t caffeinate ourselves to the point of functionality and/or happiness. (I melted the seal on our last one on Sunday morning by forgetting to add water and then leaving it on the burner)

This is marriage ending stuff! So I had to hit up the mall beforehand. An annoying bookshop (somewhat pretentiously called ‘Wordsworth’) stands vigil between me and my raison d’être . It was never my intention to browse… just get in there and get out again. (Like date night coitus)

But then I saw this. And I was like… ‘hmm’. (I also bought other books… because I have a problem)

I often worry that I’m a nihilist. (When I’m not worrying about my sociopathy I mean) Ha ha. The core tenet of nihilism is that you think that life is largely pointless. And I really do feel that. Mostly in my joints. The creaky, non-smoking variety.

The problem with that sort of thinking (and/or mindset I guess) is that you’re always tiptoeing incredibly close to the edge (of the abyss). ‘You know Nietzsche went insane’ is often my go-to retort when faced with any internal Nietzscherism or abyssal tendency. Which is usually enough to make me take a step back and go do something else, like boot up my Playstation. (I imagine going insane is not a great experience)

Wendy Syfret is an award-winning Melbourne-based journalist. Formerly Managing Editor for Vice Asia and Head of Editorial for Vice Australia…

The back-cover blurb doesn’t fill me with confidence. But those are my prejudices creeping in I note, flipping it over and reading the opening paragraph.

At the end of my street in Melbourne, Australia there is a sandwich board belonging to a store that, from what I can tell, sells candle-making ingredients. Each morning, it’s updated with a motivational platitude – ‘Why carry the mountain when you could climb it?’ ‘You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step’. ‘Be the hero of your own story’. Once it helpfully advised passers-by to ‘Do something great!’ A few years ago, that sandwich board advertised discounts, opening hours, and more traditionally candle-related news. But at some point, someone decided these stale practicalities were a waste of such cosmic space. The board needed to serve a more meaningful purpose. Now it regularly asks if today is the day you’re going to change your life. Selling candle-making ingredients has become secondary. Meaning itself is now the product.

-The opening paragraph, The Sunny Nihlist. Wendy Syfret. Souvenir press, 2021.

That is quite a good hook I thought. I often rage about about how meaning and mindfulness has now been commodified and gets marketed to us. Buy our product. We care about the planet and your health and making sure you’re efficient AF but also mindful AF. I’m Consumer Psych major, so I know how dark it gets in those product meetings where marketers try to graft something onto a product. These days its always meaning. (which probably means, if we’re honest with ourselves, that most of us don’t have a clue what we’re doing here)

The rest of the book is dull though. I grind my way through… but its a joyless exercise. In the plus column I do now have a new adjective to consider. I always used to imagine myself as a ‘functional’ nihilist. But maybe ‘sunny’ is better. You know… if you’re looking for words to pigeonhole yourself with… or something clever to put into the ‘about’ field on your Insta-profile.

After all it doesn’t really bother me that we are meat-sacks powered by chemical reactions floating through the infinite darkness of space on a rock. Albeit a rock with an atmosphere… and magnetic poles (things that are quite important in the grand scheme of things). When we die I’m pretty sure we just Go-dark.. (its the namesake of my blog after all). That doesn’t make me suicidal or sad or anxious or anything. It’s just (imo anyway) what it is… and getting bent out of shape about it doesn’t really do anything for you anyway. Might as well be cheerful.

Or sunny.