Being-in-the-pits

I stayed up all night last night. Maybe it was because I had the day off yesterday. Maybe it was because my sense of day/night is off. 7 in the am seems like a good time to go to sleep. My 1pm alarm clock startles me awake. And I will ignore it. Today, like every other day, I get to work 6 minutes late. I don't see the big deal.

But someone else at work does. He is the director of write ups. And he had many write ups for me and my pals. I think the director of write ups will have 20 or so "counselings" today. The counselings are warnings printed out on computer paper that we must sign without reading. First comes the warning , then comes the write up, and then suspension, and finally termination.

The counselings are purely bogus. They are used to show "just cause" for any firing made. That way the store can deny any unemployment claim they get. The director makes no attempt ensure the accuracy of his records. I get written up for days that I am "tardy" even though there where days when I was asked by management to make a change to my schedule. I point this out to my boss. Who at first denies my accusations but then he remembered that he was the supervisor who asked me to make the change. "Well, but still" is all the director of write ups can offer as excuse.

I politely ask if now the timekeeper will be written up for making a mistake, as I was just given another write up because of a similiar clerical error I made. I get no firm commitment from the Fuhrer. But just like Heidegger I have no problem ratting out Husserl. I will bar him from the university, and laugh at his decline in health, and even after the Allies have retaken Freiberg, I will suffer no harm. Heidegger went on teaching, and I will go on checking out your groceries, and you, the good people of the world will be no wiser.

He even looks like a little Hitler.

My Existential Angst is acting up today. Maybe it's because I drank a tall 32 ounce can of Foster beer last night. My liver doesn't process alcohol anymore, so I get depressed and moody easily.

On the bike ride home from work I grapple with Truth. Because Heidegger got a few things right. Like nothing matters. If a starving Ethiopian could be granted reprieve, for just a moment from the pain and hunger and futility of his life, he would agree. The first thing he would do is look around at all the suffering he has done and ask, why. And he would quickly come to the conclusion that the study Heidegger did for us.

There is no reason. There is no choice. We are no more defined by our choices, than we are the products of our birth. (contingency.) Do not worry about living the authentic life. There are no authentic lives to live. There is no leap of faith to make. There is only confrontation with the abyss. And when you look into the pit, to paraphrase, the pit looks back. And all we find in the pit is anguish. And in anguish we recognize the absurdity of it all.