Today was just a day full of sensations and thoughts - at least, more so than usual.

Perhaps because it was so DAMN hot, everything seemed amplified in intensity: sounds, the wind, the sun’s heat, time, Jersey accents, nihilism…

Um. Let me elucidate and/or enumerate these.

1 - at the train station this morning, the cicadas were incredibly loud. It was like something out of a film - you could barely hear the train whistle approaching since they were in the trees all around us, buzzing and whispering. Very iconic and representative of the summer; but a little annoying all the same.

2 - I had to hold my skirt in my hand today since the wind was so intense that it threatened to blow my skirt up around me, Marilyn Monroe style. Strangely, the intense wind did very little to help keep things bearable (since there was no chance that it would make it COOL.)

3 - When I walked in shade, I was fine. Hot, but fine. The minute the sun’s rays touched me, it was like I was springing a leak since I would start sweating instantly. Not pleasant.

4 - Time flew… maybe because everything was so hyperreal and crazy feeling. This might be a silly observation, but it seemed like that.

5 - Jersey accents. On the train home, I was seated in front of some women with quite possibly the heaviest New Jersey accents I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear. I didn’t see them when I sat down, so I was just creating a picture in my head of what they must’ve looked like, based on their voices and conversation topics. They were talking about selling property down in Florida and how the one couldn’t bring herself to do it, “because I have an emotional thing, you know?” There was further discussion about how rich she could’ve been had she sold the house and then discussion about how parents teach their kids to be racist… and the one woman started preaching to her friend about how she always prays for understanding and patience and prays to like “foive” different saints. I wish I had recorded part of their conversation because the accents were unbelievable. I was trying to figure out how to transcribe them, but I’d seriously have to review the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and use that (after dusting off my textbooks from college! I can still tell you what a bilabial plosive is, but the rest is GONE from memory). Some of the vowel sounds they were creating don’t normally exist in the English language. Anyway, I was listening and cringing and wishing I had some way to share this with the world via sound… and I finally turned my head just a little to see if my mental picture of them matched their actual being.

Frighteningly enough - it did not. I imagined them as heavier-set, 55+ Northern New Jersey Italian ladies with short poofy curly hair, dyed either red or unnaturally dark brown, wearing magenta lipstick that would be shiny and feathering into the wrinkles around their little prune-like mouths. Instead, these hag-like voices issued forth from slender YOUNGER women - perhaps in their late 30s at the MOST - with very short mannish haircuts, but equally bad makeup (overplucked eyebrows, streaky blush and bad eyeliner). But their youth really surprised me, especially after the real estate in Florida portion of their discussion. Strange.

6 - Nihilism. It fell into that progression nicely, really. I hung out with my friend LJ tonight and we ended up doing some shopping since he needed to get some things, stopped at a diner for milkshakes, and then went back to his apartment to watch an episode of “The X-Files.” Somewhere over the course of the conversation, he started talking about how he’s having a mid-life crisis of sorts (though he’s not even a full year older than I am), and getting freaked out by the inevitability of death, and the futility of accomplishing anything… the pointlessness of “doing.” This is one time when I feel I’ve truly already been there - at the edge of that pointlessness and futility of existence. True, it was for entirely different reasons, but the end thoughts were the same.

I find it interesting that though he and I share our beliefs in terms of not believing in anything supernatural (while watching “The X-Files”, I know… slight irony), not believing in an afterlife or a higher power, etc. I believe that when we die, we’re gone. That’s it. There’s no divine spark that keeps going after we croak. It’s all part and parcel of the whole human existence thing. It’s all got to end sometime. For some people, believing that there’s more makes death less scary - but I think it sort of cheapens life if you pretend that you get another shot at *this*, whether in another life or in a heavenly kingdom where you can make amends with the people who wronged you in high school, or finally say goodbye to the relative you didn’t get to see before he/she died.

I feel that this is all we have - “this mortal coil”, as Scully quoted from Hamlet in the episode we watched tonight. And really, Hamlet is sort of the grand-daddy of nihilism (edit: and Harold Bloom agrees with me! Yay!)

In case you’re not hep with the nihilism jive, here’s a pretty good explanation. Here’s a quote: “A universal definition of nihilism could then well be the rejection of that which requires faith for salvation or actualization and would span to include anything from theology to secular ideology. Within nihilism faith and similar values are discarded because they’ve no absolute, objective substance, they are invalid serving only as yet another exploitable lie never producing any strategically beneficial outcome.”

Yeah. So. Nihilism. Yay.

Anyway, I was just thinking about it on the ride home and I think that I’m a fairly “happy” nihilist. I am comforted by the fact that there’s nothing else after this. What I do every day either matters to me and the people around me for the moment or the day, week, individual lifetime… or it doesn’t. Either way is OK. I do the things I do to find fulfillment - not happiness, not my name carved in stone or in the record books. I have no need to leave anything behind. Whatever influence I have NOW, at this moment or this stage in my life, is what’s important to me. I think it’s a relatively sane way to live - I try not to beat myself up over the past (mostly unsuccessfully) but I also use any mistakes I make or things I learn to improve myself for the future… not so that I can make the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Improved” or “Longest Fingernails”, but so I can feel good for 5 minutes or five years. It’s selfish - but it turns into something selfless since I feel good when I help people. It’s nihilistic, but believing that faith is empty forces me to take the responsibility for things on myself. I can’t blame or thank or otherwise involve a higher power when I bounce a check or meet someone really great or find out that a friend has gotten through a rough time.

This is rambling. I’m sure that if I re-read this post a few times over the coming weeks, I might be able to formulate a broad outline of my philosophy on life and whatnot. Rooted in nihilism, and really dependent upon The Self as a tool for everything.

Before I get to bed though (it’s now after midnight) I want to share something magical and mystical. I’m almost certain many of you have seen this already, but a co-worker shared it with me today and I was at a loss for words:

Leslie Hall of Leslie and the Lys, as well as GemSweater.
Watch a video.

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Check out some pictures. (Only pay attention to the ones where you see someone wearing gold or pink lamé!)