Crazy

I was with a friend a few years ago, eating white cheddar fries in Chimara, when, all of a sudden, I had an out-of-body experience. Nothing supernatural, mind you, only a vague but still weirdly acute sense of perspective I have never felt before. Everything just seemed so...arbitrary...and absurd. Does that make sense?

The closest analogy I can think of that approximates the feeling is when you stare at a word long enough that it stops making any sense. Except it has not changed one bit; the thing that changed is your perspective.

Only this time, it was not one word, but the whole world, and in a freaky, fleeting instant. Everything just seemed really, really absurd. I suddenly realized I was eating a root crop fried in a vat of oil squeezed from vegetables, and then sprinkled with a liquid squirted from a fat animal that is left to basically rot before it was turned to powder form. But with no words, and not just with my fries, but with everything else. It was as if all intellectual barriers had been destroyed, and I was left with nothing but a clear perspective of how absurd everything really is.

Then I started to laugh. My friend asked what I was laughing about and I tried explaining it to him but I couldn't so I let it go at that. He understood, he said, but I don't think he really absolutely did, because, well, I didn't.

It was strange. If it wasn't as fleeting as it was, I probably would have difficulty finding a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

I wonder if there are people who live like this everyday. I wonder how they cope with it.

Photo taken here.