There are certain times in my life when reminiscing becomes necessary. As I sit at my table in my studio apartment writing this essay, I am forced to dig into my memories and search for a feeling, a reminder, that I exist. Rather, that my existence matters. Because the thing about being a nihilist and being a poet is that they shouldn’t coexist. Textbook definitions about nihilism state “all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.” Yet, as a poet, I yearn to know, and to communicate through words. How can two defining traits of myself be so opposing, so contradictory?
As I sit here digging through my memories, I remember a time when I was maybe seven years old. I was playing outside, it was summer, and I was digging through the tough green grass searching for worms. I loved collecting worms. Dirt under my fingernails. Sunlight warming my skin. A bright blue cloudless sky above as I gathered five or six of the creatures and placed them onto the frosted glass table on the deck of my childhood home. I stared at the worms wriggling on the table, simultaneously in awe and disgust of their wrinkly nude skin. I watched them stick one end into the air and move left and right, as if trying to remember which way to go, and then place it back down onto the table and slowly inch their body forward. They moved towards nothing, yet they acted as if they had somewhere to be. I didn’t know it at the time, but they were searching for dirt. For their home, for their purpose. I took that away from them, to admire and be disgusted by them; to play. Because to a seven year old, worms did not have meaning. And to a twenty-one year old, worms have meaning, because they live for the dirt and love the rain and keep the soil healthy.
When you believe that nothing really matters, there is a certain paradox that occurs. Nothing matters; therefore I will stop caring for everything and everyone. We are all such insignificant parts of this unknown whole that seems impossible to comprehend, so I choose to do nothing. Or: nothing matters; therefore I will do whatever I want to do, I will love who I want to love and believe in whatever I want to believe in. Some might say, “if you feel that way, you’re not really a nihilist.” My response to that is, okay. My understanding of nihilism lets me define it however I want, because it doesn’t actually matter, and I don’t care. So, I will write poetry, and I will care about it. Ironically, my best poetry is made up of words that don’t seem to have a meaning. Words that flow through my blood and drip onto the paper, no rhyme or reason tying them together. And yet, there is always this possibility that eventually the words will come together in such a way that create an entirely new meaning. You see, there cannot be one without the other, and therefore there exists a balance that keeps me from giving up entirely.
This is the intersection between my understanding that nothing matters and my belief that I am able to make something matter. A poet does not write poetry because they want to be a poet. They write because life is full of chaos and death and life and feeling and wanting and hating and loving, and they want to capture these moments in a snapshot of words that make their readers think. So, who will stop me from going outside and getting dirt under my fingernails? Who will care if I rip the worms away from their homes, for the sake of play? It will not matter, and yet it makes for a great story. In a way, you could say that gives it meaning. You can say that about anything. There is never meaning therefore there will always be something to give meaning to. And I get to decide what those things are, and poetry is one of them.