I went to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. They stood guard in a hollowed-out shell, a scouting party of a few hundred, accompanied by tarps and folding chairs. Some sand was brought inside for them. Afterwards I was outside looking in. It was pretty cold and overcast and the Warriors were silent as they had been for centuries and I thought, wait, what am I doing here? What is this place and via what convoluted route have I ended up here? And how can I justify it? And I had no answers to these questions, and I felt the very familiar beginnings of existential panic. I was in a bleak, windswept plaza, surrounded by art installations in partially ruined structures, with incongruous pastel banners flapping in the wind. Which you would think would be even more existential. Which it was.
But then, I realized the panic was all right. Life is arbitrary, it is something we make up along with others and the world, there is no teleology, there is no fate, there is no intrinsic meaning, only extrinsic and temporary accommodations with things. And that feeling of freefall, of existential nausea, is an accurate response to this desire for some kind of solidity, for a script. And maybe it is those places where we do not feel this panic that are the most dangerous, because in those places we get too comfortable, too easily convinced that we are meant to be there, that there is a purpose to the intersection of our location and us: that we belong. We never do, not in that way. You can carve a thousand Warriors to accompany you on your quest but they can not see, and they will not speak, and they may be buried in the indifferent sands of time.