My Philosopher Nephew

Because no child should grow up thinking that he or she is anything more than a meaningless speck of dust in the universe.

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Matthew and I went to the playground today, where we sat on a bench and watched some of the other kids run around and play. (I call it people-watching; he, in good Benjaminian fashion, prefers to call it "aura-minding.") Careful to wait until there seemed to be a pause in his thinking, I asked him if he was glad it was finally spring. "Beauty is unbearable," he began. "It drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to spread out over the whole of time." Waiting for a response, he stared into my eyes to see if I had understood. "You're a smart kid, you know that?" I said. He smiled, got up, and ran over to the jungle gym, but not before looking back and shouting, "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal!" Grinning, he climbed into the plastic fortress and disappeared.

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Matthew had his first birthday party yesterday, which was well attended and, save for an argument between two of his baby friends over the merits of the Derridean concept of spirit, went off without a hitch. Matthew seemed grateful for the opportunity to people watch, but slightly annoyed by the whole hullabaloo; I heard him mutter "God is absence, God is the solitude of man" under his breath several times. Thus, as the party drew to an end, he seized the opportunity for didacticism and stood up to give a speech.

"We all are living a lie. Time is too large, it can’t be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates. One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life."

Pleased, he surveyed our stunned, cake-stained faces.

"Thank you for coming. Don't forget to take your 'Nihilist Gift Bag' with you on the way out -- it is empty, just like us."

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"The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything."

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Today is everyone's favorite baby philosopher's birthday, so I convinced our table to sing "Happy Birthday" to him at breakfast this morning. We were about halfway through the song when, purposefully waving his arms like a tiny orchestra conductor, he cut us off. "Wait, wait, wait," he said. "In order for music to free itself, it will have to pass over to the other side — there where territories tremble, where the structures collapse, where the ethoses get mixed up, where a powerful song of the earth is unleashed, the great ritornelles that transmutes all the airs it carries away and makes return." He then looked straight at me and continued. "Now, more importantly, did you get me that picture book of Marxist philosophers I asked for? What about the Baby's Touch-n-Feel Guide to Existentialism?"

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"Without the comic, it is impossible to understand the serious."

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Noticing that Matthew had a new spring in his step after spending the past few days in California, I asked him how he liked Los Angeles so far. He paused, removed his sunglasses, and looked at the people around us. The sounds of West Coast life -- not unlike those of East Coast life, yet somehow different, more relaxed -- echoed off the cafe walls. He slowly looked at me and, with a face I now know quite well, began to speak.  "Aunt Gabby, the woman to my left is drinking a chia-seed kale juice that cost eight dollars. The gentleman to my left -- the one with the ridiculous colored shorts -- spent twenty-five minutes telling his date about his free-range turkey burger. This city has commodified the act of walking from point A to point B. It's Marxist fetish at its finest. Our concert tickets, stereos, and iPods aren’t sold to help us hear the music; the music is sold to help us buy the tickets, stereos, and iPods. I cringe with every step I take." He looked away, twirling his straw in his glass. "So you're not having any fun at all?" "Well," he began with a smirk. "After all, the department store is the last promenade for the flâneur." He put his glasses back on, finished the rest of his (virgin) martini, and walked away.

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Matthew, taking a break from his latest performance art piece in which he covers himself in Pennysaver coupons and reads passages from Marx, had his first french fry today. I couldn't tell if he liked it or not, so I asked him why he was making that face. He stopped humming La Marseillaise under his breath, took another french fry from the pile, and, rolling it between his fingers, studied it. He then looked at me and, sighing, said, "Aunt Gabby, the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." He promptly popped the fry into his mouth with a smile and went back to examining the pile in front of him and humming, but this time instead of the French national anthem, I could faintly hear strains of Beyoncé's "Flawless." "Fresher than youuuuu. Fresher than youuuuu. Fresher than you."

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Matthew was particularly cheerful at the cafe the other night, and so, curious, I commented upon his sunnier-than-usual disposition.

Putting down his cup of espresso (fair trade, aeropress-brewed, and "barely passable for window cleaner"), he looked at me and said, "Let me tell you a story, Auntie. Once upon a time, a fire broke out backstage in a theatre. A clown came out to warn the public, but they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it, but the acclaim only grew even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”

He smirked, finished his espresso with a grimmace, and, humming "March to the Scaffold" from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, walked away.

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Turning away from the latest issue of The Paris Review, Matthew looked at me and said he had come to a realization. "Aunt Gabby, it seems as though all anyone wants in life is to know who they really are."

"Yes, Matthew," I answered. "That's true, but it's easier said than done." 

He thought for a second, rubbing his chin in a way that conjured up Rodin, before looking deep into my eyes. "Individuals find a real name for themselves," he began, "only through the harshest exercises in depersonalization, by opening themselves up to the multiplicities everywhere in them, to the intensities running through them. It's a depersonalization through love rather than through subjection."

Furrowing my brow in concentration, I tried desperately to understand what he meant. 

"Don't worry," he added, "you'll understand when you're older." And with that, he turned back to his readings and left me with my thoughts.

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Sure, Matthew knows that life may have no meaning as soon as you lose the illusion of being eternal, but man, those limes sure taste funny!

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Forcing him to look up from the baby's touch-and-go guide to existentialism he was reading, I asked what kind of music Matthew had been listening to recently (he had just audibly scoffed at the coffee shop's fourth Bon Iver song in an hour). He slowly put the book down, plucked the pacifier from his mouth, and turned toward me to say, "Aunt Gabby, as I have told you many times before, impulse, subjectivity, and profanation, the old adversaries of materialistic alienation, now succumb to it. The listener is converted, along his line of least resistance, into the acquiescent purchaser." He paused, seemingly lost in a world of thought I could never possibly hope to understand, before adding, "and obviously Beyoncé."

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When I asked Matthew what he was so happy about, he responded, "Aunt Gabby, don't you know that the more one suffers, the more one has a sense for the comic?"  He then proceeded to launch into yet another one of his tirades about how Gap doesn't have any "Mommy's Cutest Übermensch" onesies.

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When Matthew told me he was going to drive us around for the day, I (thinking he was surely joking) laughed dismissively. He suddenly became very serious and said, "You must never forget that man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills." 

Then, pausing only to put on a Feuerbach audio book, he climbed into the driver's seat and we drove away.

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Matthew was looking at me inquisitively, with the slightest hint of dissatisfaction, from the dining room. "Why have you put up this fence? Is it because you are afraid of the self?" 

"No, Matthew," I answered. "It's because the kitchen is no place for a baby, no matter how erudite." 

Matthew looked at me, looked at the kitchen counter, and then looked back at me. "But Aunt Gabby, you must remember that even though a knife may be made for killing, it can also express freedom through its ability to heal the sick, such as in surgery."

"You're not the only one who's read Kant, Matthew. You're not coming in."

He stood silently, only occasionally shuffling his feet on the floor, before saying very calmly, "Well, we're all living in the panopticon anyway."

He turned on his heel and walked away, but I was left feeling as though he was still somehow watching me.

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"Hey Matthew, did you wake up early to go Black Friday shopping?" "Oh Aunt Gabby, when will you ever learn? The idea that today we no longer have a central struggle but a multitude of struggles is a fake one, because we should not forget that the ground for this multitude of struggles was created by modern global capitalism. Plus I have Amazon Prime, so I'm all set."

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Ask Matthew a Question

Hello all! Matthew, wanting to share his sojourn in this farce we call life with all of you, asked me to tell you that he is willing to answer any questions about existence, time, and the nature of being that you might encounter while perusing this blog. If you're interested, you can go to the "Questions for baby Matthew" tab. He's not always the timeliest of responders, but he is certainly the most profound.

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I love teaching Matthew that we are all slaves to our own volition. The only choice we have is to choose!