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Zoe Keating: Optimist


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Another Dan story.

Existential Absurdity

She sat back on her deck and bathed in the sun, a book splayed open in her lap. While reading Camus, she couldn’t help but think to herself that everything he said was nothing but… Well, let’s just say it—absurd. The idea that a man can commit a crime—oh, wait, we’re supposed to say spoiler alert—SPOILER ALERT. So, the idea that a man can commit murder for no particular reason other than the fact that it was hot out and the sun was in his eyes is completely stupid. The absurd, a lack of caring for existence, the idea that we live in the present and there is no future, the past does not matter—that is no excuse.

            No, she thought, No, it is not an excuse.

            This idea that existentialism was great was a load of crap. Ever since society had picked it up and made it into a new fad, she merely thought about throwing every book they made her read in English out the window. Existential, live in the here and now, who gives a fuck? The past mattered, why the hell else was there history?

            There were people partitioning to get rid of history in the school districts. Well, then, how was everyone going to figure out what’s been done right and what’s been done wrong? There is no history of the existential movement actually mattering this much –ever. So when it went down the tubes, what was going to be done in order to pick up the pieces? Nothing. Everyone was going to be running around like chickens with their heads chopped off because history would have been erased. And the fact that

            Thank you, Mr. President for encouraging the downfall of our society as we know it. Thank you for making everyone more prone to your ridiculousness and meager ways of controlling every mind within the country so that we all succumb to your fucked up ways so easily. Thank you for screwing over our free will and ways of reason. But I have to give you credit for at least one thing, here, it was done in such a way where the people did this of their own accord. The only thing that needed to be done was to encourage and push some sort of movement in which it happened as such.

            No one believed her when she spread this idea. They called her some sort of a socialist, and socialism was frowned upon. It wasn’t that she was a socialist; it was that she merely sought reason. Besides, she was more interested in living within a democracy, but that’s not something to get into right now. But anyway, concerning socialism, she wasn’t looking to establish any sort of government that encouraged such views; she just didn’t want to get caught up in the existential movement.

            Even her parents were caught up in the idea. There weren’t many left who weren’t being swept up in it all like a bunch of Nazis under the influence of Hitler. Okay, maybe that analogy is a bit extreme. But the whole pet rock analogy is too soft and minor to compare.

            The book she had in her lap one more time before chucking it over the railing and into the woods.

            Screw Camus. Screw his literature. Screw the shit he stands for.

            “I am so done with this.”

            She stood up and went into her house. It was a momentary and ill-thought decision, but she decided to leave. No more living at home while school was on break. There were other people she could stay with. Hell, maybe she’d live like a hippie and bum off of other people’s couches. Maybe she’d just be a bum in general and move to the beach, live in a tent and gather all of her own food naturally.

            “Gotta learn to surf if I do that,” she paused, “I can learn to surf. I’ll learn to surf on a large piece of bark and then I’ll catch some serious waves off of a trashed board that I’ve refurbished.”

            She’d go off on her own and live sustainably. That was the way to go—living off of the land and not even bothering to earn her keep. Her parents would still pay for school when it started up again; they’d want it to bring her to her senses. Going to school would teach her to be existential. It would make her like everyone else. The job she’d get would be the best one until the next came along, and even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t matter. What a life to live! Learning not to care.

            So then what was the point of living?

            She would know—because she was going off to become a scholar and a bum. Being both was contradictory. However, what did it matter? She was living within a world of the absurd.