It's sometimes funny how quickly we find ourselves at the top of the world after crashing down, or vice versa. A friend of mine once described his own approach to the world (psychologically speaking) as a 'sine curve' of peaks and troughs that reflected his brain state at the time. Sometimes, he said, there was much euphoria and he would get giddy at the drop of a hat. At other times (as I've been witness to), he has plumbed the depths of depression even when he 'should' have been really enjoying himself, e.g. on the beaches of India.
I won't hazard a guess as to the method behind his madness, but I will say that during my time in Zimbabwe, I often felt completely original especially in the Dionysian sense a la Nietzsche (the individual that says Yes to everything questionable). On the other hand, since Ive returned to Cape Town, it just hasnt been the same... I've gone out to my old haunts—even though they've changed somewhat—and thought to myself 'what the fuck am I doing here? At one point I thought I could extend this stay and was really enjoying my time here, and now I just want to get this degree over with.' Ever the party pooper, I guess all of a sudden my return has hit me with a small token of claustrophobia helped by the financial situation that is niggling at the back of my mind and the manner in which there seems not to be an easy solution in the near future.
And then of course there is the problem of alternate realities, either in the form of drug intake or in the form of movies. Watching Jason Statham go psycho on everyone in Crank 2, and then returning to the humdrum and mundane of reality often makes one thirst for a bit more. But then on the other hand, beginning in such a position as his (in the movie, anyway) may leave at least a bit to be desired. Anyway, no big deal.
In the end, the main thing is, obviously, the same thing that always arises in these sorts of introverted moments of doubt: what the fuck is the point of it all? I remember during my early days of studying philosophy, I went to the university library and got a copy of 'Classic Philosophical Questions', by James Gould I think. It was set up in such a manner that each section had some major philosophical topic: reality, knowledge, science, religion, etc., and within each section were two to four essays by classic authors defending certain opinions about the topic in question. The only section I really remember was one near the end about teleology. It contained two essays, the first by Tolstoy which he wrote near the end of his life when he had been taking religion (especially Christian anarchism) quite seriously; in it he argued that God gives us meaning (or something like that). The second essay, written by Albert Camus, argued that it is up to us to give ourselves meaning through what we do everyday and how we go about interacting with others and achieving according to our own wishes and desires.
I take the position of the secular existentialist (i.e. that of Camus') to heart... there is no doubt that I feel that I have created a whole bunch of doors and windows in my sea of reality that I can crawl through or explore within if I should get bogged down or what have you. However, sometimes you can't help but feel in the back of your mind that until you get back into some sort of a routine that provides you with a means to some sort of end, that you start to squirm.
I remember feeling a similar thing in the last few days I spent in Gokarna. As much as there were many ex-pats who switched between six months in Himachal Pradesh while the monsoon was on, then six months in Gokarna (or Goa or Kerala or some such) when the monsoon was no longer, when my time was winding down and my three weeks were nearly up, I got that claustrophobic feeling that I have learned to recognize when I feel like its time to move out of a certain headspace. I guess the best way I always find to sum up that feeling is to quote Jack Nicholson from a certain movie, when he is in a similar situation of confusion and indecision and utters those fatalist words:
"What if this is as good as it gets?"
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