SICKNESS

A certain terror exists alongside sickness. I have never believed in the age of invincibility, the so-called “teenage years” when half-grown adults thought they could do anything. Dangerous or otherwise. And really, goals never existed either, or at least my goals were always vague, half developed hopes (really the word “desperations” would make more sense here). But regardless, always in the future: in fact we always live in the future, always to-do, never just doing, even as we are calmest we are really always anticipating everything, even sitting down staring at a tree is really already anticipating future glances at the very same tree. The very conditions of being calm, of absolute oblivion, are always anticipatory. Our life is conditioned purely on anticipation, on the very condition of having a future, all our acts precede from an anticipatory gesture, I think while my cat pisses on my furniture. I am currently taking thirty milligrams of steroids a day to help with my inflammatory bowel. And I am raging. Even being in my apartment destroys me. Knowing what time it is destroys me. I push my cat over with my index finger and he falls to his side but he's still pissing, just up in the air. He can't stop. I don't blame him but instantly my mood sours and I take a anti-anxiety pill. This won't help, I think as I wander around my apartment gathering things because I have to leave. At a certain point you have to leave where you are. This is not wisdom, just natural. I gather my laptop, various things: a pen, in case I feel like writing; more anxiety pills, because I know this night is shot, really, and shouldn't be excused, can't be excused, by anything. They're injecting me with experimental drugs, I think, and I know that it's possible I might get lymphoma and die, and yet a certain levity exists alongside sickness, as well as terror. That there is a future that I anticipate at all times really clinches this deal, really opens up the world for me (shake hands with the world—you're always meeting it for the first time). Anticipation allows the possibility of possibility, if that makes sense, I think while my cat has finally stopped pissing and my anti-anxiety drugs take effect. Anticipation allows terror to strike at the heart of the future, a real grim reaper; or it allows levity, a rather weak handshake, I think, a real wimper, a weak smile. What we need to focus on is that anticipation precedes along, reaching out a hand, and this hand must grasp hold of the other hand. A phenomenology of handshaking, really, is what we're after. We anticipate the gesture and grasp the hand, and through this grasping I make possible my relationship to the other. In business terms I close the deal or open the deal, whichever you prefer. But the very specific handshake that I come to experience is only possible because I am reaching out, which requires that I anticipate in advance the handshake itself as a possible handshake. And here we need to grasp a final point—that though we anticipate and use a handshake as a projected, possible gesture, we must always remember that the hand coming towards us is completely other. We must harmonize in some way with this other hand coming at us in front of a gray suit. Whether the handshake is a wimper or a winner, we don't have total control. Our gesture must always meet the world and so while anticipation can give us this gesture, and while in fact anticipation is required first and foremost, at some point we're left holding the hand of a pisser who just spent thirty minutes pretending to speak to us about credit history checks and the NHL Hockey League.