In/dependence.
Q. Dont you hate fourth of july?
so damn loud and annoying
A. It is difficult to find the mental energy to hate a mere chrono-political marker in the vastness of time (if you subscribe to solar-linear time, that is), when other objects demand our attention. Indeed, can time even be said to constitute an object? Dates can constitute “memorials,” but memory is always formed by the construction of a fuzzy Presence, displaced by the Trace of past Presents— However, that does not make them “real” in the same way that other objects of desire are. No one can desire “fourth of july” just as no one can hate it. It simply does not exist in any meaningful way.
On July 4, 362 BCE, the Second Battle of Mantinea took place on the island of Arcadia between the Thebans and the Spartans. The outcome of the battle led to a hegemonic shift in the ancient northern Mediterranean kulturkreis as it moved from Spartan to Theban dominance, ultimately opening the region to dominance by the Macedonians by the end of the 4th century BCE. Many people died.
The calendars used to mark the date would be unintelligible to any of the participants on the battle, and to my knowledge, no one remembers, cares about, or celebrates the event. It is utterly meaningless, and bears only an accidental relationship to the “date” that we have assigned the event. Even if I harbored secret Spartan sympathies, I the object of my “hatred” would not be the date itself, but my hatred of Memory itself— my own construction of Past/Present/Future would be embedded within memories associated (but not constituting) the date.
As such, if you find yourself hating non-objects, like arbitrary time divisions, practice Forgetting. Forget to go to work, forget to feed yourself, forget what day it is, forget what has happened in the past, forget what you have agreed to do do in the “future,” forget language. It is only through the act of radical Un-Remembering that we can undo the violence that the Trace enacts upon our Being. I have not been able to remember my name or the “current” year for most of my life, and I’m doing fantastically! Once you have forgotten everything, you will truly be able to live as pure Presence, and your problem will resolve itself! Good luck!
(UNRELATED: fireworks displays are phallic wargame exercises, and I will have nothing to do with them.)











