The algorithm’s been throwing Heidegger my way so I’ve watched some of the videos since he seems like a big deal and we never covered him back in my days at university studying such things. So I’ve watched a few videos to try to get a feel for what all the fuss is about but, to date, that’s been the extent of my studies given there’s fights and beer and football and lots of Big Tits videos to attend to as well. My point is, I’m no scholar of Heidegger, just some knucklehead with some very loose ideas that he carries around like pocket change and this is how all that shit sometimes pans out.
Yesterday, just before leaving for work, I’d finished my morning coffee while watching a summary of the ideas of the existential Nazi. The video went on about existential ontology or the study of how existence itself exists or something like that. Like we’re individual subjects that perceive objects but with the awareness that we’re merely subjects perceiving objects. Real meta, right? The narrator made an analogy something like “to be authentically human we are like a television screen presenting a live feed of itself.” But it seemed to me maybe it ought to be the TV watching itself presenting a live feed of itself. It was all getting really deep but it was getting late and I needed to grab a bag of salad real quick from the grocery so I dashed out with a plan for a bagged salad, the gym and my 8-hour shift.
I got to the store and got the salad. I was finishing up at the self-checkout coral when I heard some lady saying something like, ” You can probably still catch them” to the self-check monitor who then dash out real fast. I looked over at the unattended checkout next to mine and noticed a frozen pizza bagged up and seemingly left behind. I snapped off my receipt and was heading out when some guy came marching back in, followed by the attendant. I deduced it was the rightful owner of the abandoned pizza. I walked on out and at the big double doors, a fat, lower-class looking lady was standing there with her cart aimed as if exiting but just standing there looking backward. I deduced for a second time: must be the lost pizza guy’s wife. She stood there between the sliding doors with a cart full of groceries, blocking the flow of traffic in all directions. I waited a few seconds for her to move but she didn’t. She just stood there stupidly with her big-ass cart blocking everybody and everything w hile waiting on her dumb husband and that goddamned frozen pizza. There was a gap maybe large enough to squeeze around her so I sucked it in and, with a sideways move, tried squeezing through the slit. Another guy was waiting to make the same move from the opposite direction and when he saw me making the move first, he halted. We locked eyes and smiled and I said, “Pardon me” to him but not, of course, to the nitwit blocking our flow. He returned the smile and said, “No problem.” It was a tight squeeze. The grocery was selling little Christmas trees outside that were arranged beside the door. As I squeezed outside, I brush one and it fell over.
I grumbled to myself, “Goddammit.”
The other guy bent down and set the mini-tree up straight again.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” he said again, amiably.
Heidegger seemed to be talking about some sort of meta-awareness. A meta-awareness of existence for some who are aware of how being in the world really works. A meta-awareness that although a frozen pizza may have been left behind, we’re still a part of a moving herd. Juggling two ideas of what we are without shitting our pants. I am that which waits on frozen pizza while, at the same time, that which either promotes or obstructs the flow of supermarket traffic. In hindsight, rather than mentally cursing her as a dumbfuck, maybe I should have politely suggested she read some Heidegger. But that would have been disingenuous. I’m not gonna read Heidegger either but the hypocrisy in the scenario in which she indignantly replies, “Why don’t you read some Heidegger, motherfucker,” at least makes me chuckle.
So yeah, who am I kidding? At best I’ll only watch a few more videos cause there’s too many other videos out there with Big Tits in the title for me to be wasting time on books. Plus, so long as I only possess a half-assed knowledge of any subject, I can apply it most anything, which feels pretty good.
mrobins71 