Cogito Ergo sum

'I think, therefore I am' is the most common translation.

The problem with us humans is that whenever we see an 'am' we think of the Capitalized Version-- a face hid behind a fiery cloud and Charlton Heston's voice on a hill.
But we misread René.
Here is no goddish latin.
Here is no call to revel in the glory of being a homo sapient.Or a sapient homo.

I was meant to accompany certain colleagues to NYC today-- a roadtrip, it would be my first. To see this strange xanadu's skyline under a crisp september day. Middle of the New Yorker festival. Lion King on Broadway. Finding a gray's papaya. John Cage's music at $25 per head. Driving by the village, because the surreptitious pleasure of walking through it I wanted to leave for when I will visit without the sanitized companionship of the professor who drove today.

I had stayed up all night--- Why? Because I had an empty room, a laptop and a mind, that now blinks in tandem with the green dot above the battery symbol on the laptop to tell me Im alive.
We were to leave at 7:00am. I missed the call. The Levee broke. Except, humanity-- that thing I adore-- stepped in. Fatima used the professor's phone to call me to say hurry, we will wait, its alright, I was late too. Such affirmation. "We're not leaving without you". No Frodo or Indiana Jones could've made my heart surge with affection and belief like Fatima's line did. She rings off.

Cogito ergo sum.

To shit-shower-brush- [the shave thankfully, was taken care of yesterday] was the work of 8 minutes. One had to turn into pure force, to become sheer movement, and just do. No thinking. No cogitoing.


pause.


I waved them off with an unbrushed smile. On the way back from the student union where the car had been parked, I closed my eyes to turn off the blinking light in my head. Didn't work. Couldn't stop thinking. I knew why I hadn't rushed to clean up. Something keeps us back from our city of dreams, when we have lost our prince, princess or magic lamp-- And not to any Fury or Fate, but just a bad call at a crapshoot or roulette table. Deuces high. 5, not 7.

Morning air is cold here on saturdays. Everyone sleeps till brunch and beyond. The air is like running your hands in a trough of melting ice before throwing in the beer cans and tropicanas to keep cool. Your palm turns white. The ground is littered with leaves: no autumn here, just the burnt greenness of yesterday, lying crumpled; like someone kicked each leaf in the... yes well. The road and residence halls all blink at the sun like it's some stranger at a bachelor party who insists on keeping his coat on.

The wind knifes through thin cotton ferocious in its ecstasy of finding a lack of pantylines and socks. Eyes closed, you stump back to your room, the swipe card your key to oblivion. To forget numbers and dreams between sheets and under blankets for a while. Till brunch, and beyond.

Cogito ergo sum. The light blinks. I am bound to type this.

"...I am strongly convinced that not only too much conciousness but even any conciousness at all is a sickness"-- Dostoevsky, 'Notes from the Underground'.

The word to word translation of Descartes' original quip is "I am thinking, therefore I exist".

Therefore I exist. This is a curse. I lost my lamp and the magic man no robin williams could ever equal. I am afraid to go there. I do not know what I will see. I am thinking, therefore --moment to moment, a conscious mouse-- I exist.

Before I wanted to understand dead french men, I used to live.

Mea culpa.