Why am I here?

An appreciation of all life requires an abandonment of self. He needs second sight. Social life is a parade of friends and enemies, however loose those terms might be used - at the very least it is a wash or a spectrum of engagement and disengagement. Sometimes we are drawn into a dance, a flow of collective thoughts, ideas, laughter and gibberish. Dancers are always judged collectively. Other times we stand alone with others, animals sniffing each other and nothing flows. The id is a stagnant pool, the ego is trapped in a shell of mismatched language and ideas. Animals are always judged individually.

The abandonment of self requires an appreciation of all life. Our thoughts are more or less scheduled by the meanderings of our lives. We make plans and dream up dreams and solutions according to our situations and beliefs. Ideas outside of those realms seem unimportant. The thoughts about the self become the perception of self, and we become unable to live outside of those thoughts. Let our prescriptions go, and our heads are flooded with the thoughts and the lives of others. Because the mind has to have thoughts. From somewhere. From anywhere.

Maybe sex and meaning are separate. Maybe they only meet occasionally. Maybe the temporal biological imperative is seperate from the atemporal sensation of being that is our sense of self and spirit. Maybe that which is billed as the entwining of souls is, in fact, just the satisfaction of three billion years of chemical inclination. Maybe the soul is only a fraction of our existance.

He doesn't want it to be.

He sits on the couch of a stranger from a New York night club. She is fixing drinks and fixing herself. They danced a lot and talked very little. He sits there, eyes staring blankly at the floor, shifting left to right. Questions from his past, questions from his future, questions from the couch... what will he say when she comes back in? How will he ignite the sparks of passion and connection that will lead them upstairs? The taxi ride was virtually silent.

She comes back into the room, her hands full of drinks, her face full of nervous smiles, her body full of tension.

"Why am I here?" he asks.