To be experienced: "Experienced," not "Experienceful." People talk about it as if it denotes one's

belonging, while English, I think, has tried its best to reflect its meaning: To be tamed by experience. To

surrender to experience and let it invade one's heart and soul.

I'm not interested in collecting experiences, though it may seem like that. When I recall my life, it always

sounds more thrilling than it actually is, and it should have formed a more interesting person than I

actually am. Witnessed family conflicts: Dads blood, Moms tears, her sisters powerlessness and herself

yelling in a sudden attack of asthma. Fell into a surreal world of romantic classics and heroic comics. Got

addicted to game online and imaginary friends. Left home at 15 and dragged her old carcass through

three continents. Stuck in a $12-hotel room in Mexico with no understanding of Spanish. Waited for day

and night in a Greyhound bus station with a bunch of angry people who wanted to break the door.

Encountered a crazy woman hind-seeing that she had a half-brother without knowing of. Wandered

around in tons of strange cities. Looked at the same sky from various thousands-of-miles separated

windows,...

Sounds adventurous. But, facing my indifference, experiences just flowed through easily. Not all of them

made me tremble and embrace life. Sometimes I was just exhausted and hungry for a warm bed to fall

into. Actually, most of the time.

Yet I kept finding myself in the middle of nowhere, I didn't even bother waking up to wonder why I was

here or there.

Mom complains all the time that I just try to torture myself. I told her that it would help me finally not to

feel pain anymore. But, no, I lied. Experience has done me no good in coping. I was stupid and I'm stupid

still. And I'm gonna feel pain as long as I'm alive and I'd love it to stay that way.

At the end of the day, whether it is a luxurious bath or a cold wooden bed with insects flying around, I

just find myself lying down enjoying each note of the mazurka and diving and tumbling with it... get

closer, lighter, freer, so I can become the music itself... to feel myself so human without many tales of

experience to boast about.

And well, I'm thrilled to find out that I understand Sartre (if not I'd be glad to pretend to). Or with an

ego-inflated voice, Sartre understands me.

"How I would like to tell him he's being deceived, that he is the butt of the important. Experienced

professionals? They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, out

of impatience, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafes, at weddings and

funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was

happening to them. All that happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from

afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty,

they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they begin to

simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a

coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bit of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels."

I'm still biting Nausea with a pace of about 2 pages/month. I don't find it unproductive though. I have a

life to live