fragmented shadows

aren't PEOPLE just so frustrating??

it comes back to this epistemology thing (god, am i obsessed with it? according to Jack it is my area of expertise! amusing considering how little i... gah... danger of repeating self! see previous post!!)

anyway.

to presume to know, and subsequently judge on the basis of this supposed 'knowledge', any single other human being is quite simply preposterous. at the VERY BEST one can hope to form judgments of their own flimsy, meager perception of another person... but it is a flimsy perception indeed, some fragmented shadow of the true individual, coloured by one's own bias and rendered sickly and thin by miscommunication, secrets, and the monumental hinderence of language.

how funny that we suppose language is a tool... language is nothing but our frankly lousy attempt to give pure thought some outward expression. why shouldn't we communicate through art? or something. so many people find it more effective.... that is, if we must communicate at all!

..................i really think that to know somebody else is a massive undertaking. if we call 'knowledge' a 'true, justified belief', then all that we understand to 'be' a particular person must be absolutely correct, as though we could witness all of their traits, responses and the general path of their thoughts in one instance.

'my name is writ in water'...

...on the wide stone steps of Rome, said John Keats. writ in water, lasting only a few moments before it disappears forever. i have heard this quoted with irony, but perhaps it holds more truth than we know (even despite the fact that he found posterity through his poetry...)

the person attached to the name is most likely lost to the world upon the instance of death, regardless of that which they might leave behind. for although we impose upon them, and their work, our interpretation, our recollections of their existence, this is just that; OUR OWN device. just as in life they cannot be truly known to us, nor can they after death. what is more, by this time they have left the world, and with it taken their essence, leaving nothing but the lies and falsehoods we wistfully tell about them.

written in water, are all of our names.