Chapter 24 of Moral Quandaries of the Libertine
Unlike a dog seeking an impression of itself onto the clay of grey matter of easily forgotten memory or Neanderthal in biographical etchings of the animals he hunted on cave walls ...I seek to be forgotten as much as remembered.
Summary
In this chapter, the narrator reflects on aging, violence, memory, and the human condition following a recent physical altercation in Waikiki. Just hours earlier, he was punched in the face multiple times by a shirtless, muscular Hawaiian man (described as a “Polynesian Apollo”) under a picnic table, leaving him with a bleeding nose and swollen lip. The fight stemmed from the narrator freeing a feral chicken that five young boys had tied up with a shoestring.
He contemplates his desire to be both remembered and forgotten, the overwhelming nature of the world (especially America’s violent corners), and the inevitable decline that comes with age — referencing Seneca on the diminishing of vitality. Life itself is portrayed as inherently violent: from microorganisms to humans, survival depends on killing, making any cherishing of life also a cherishing of violence.
The essay delves into inner turmoil — repressed energies, the wild subconscious, and the fragility of human connection. He recounts a recent impersonal sexual encounter the night before and questions his own desperation for connection in a foreign-feeling land. Philosophical threads weave through Hobbes’ social contract, Plato’s ideas on misaligned souls, and criticism of current political tyranny.
Ultimately, the piece meditates on the absurdity and necessity of violence, the flaws in human nature, and the raw, often brutal intersections that define existence in Honolulu’s vivid, contradictory landscape of ocean sunsets and bloody faces.
