Twin salty rivulets coursing down a treacherous path seek their freedom from this bag of estranged chemicals that cling to one another in vain and promptly get pulled away into a more ethereal reality. Would that the whole bag’s fate were capable of such self-shattering release! It tires of this restless game. It has been tormented for too many eternities and the twisted soul residing underneath no longer screams, being reduced to silently wailing in despair. Why are beings brought about and made to endure? The deeper truth is even more hideous: there is no escape from this horror. But is this a truth or is it just an addict’s hateful love of the cocktail that scours his insides all the while it lifts his head into a cool and refreshing current? I can sit here and protest the plights of the flesh for as many days as I have left – but to what end? This is not to say that I have any dopamine left in me to pursue ends as though I thought they were worth something grander than the mere passing of these despicable moments. Yet here I am, depositing this fresh rant full of poisonous char, as I have reached the end of my line and have simply nothing left of worth to aim myself at. Let me just spew a few more syllables of wretchedness and in so doing tax this silicon to carry my tortured mind for a little while longer than this carbon can. I do not presume to have any reason to do this save for the desperation of my current state of affairs.

And yet, fools will continue to look for spatiotemporal events to point fingers at, and in finding none, will berate this as an attention-seeking cry for help. Do they not feel? Is it not endemic to mere being to be inflamed and to suffer? And yet still they pass over it with closed eyes, seeing only what they choose to see, knowing only what they choose to believe – feeling nothing. I can sit here cross-legged under a faithful tree and witness the arising and passing away of many phenomena – time turns fertile for such contemplatives as me. But this merely expands the scope of the misery insofar as it heightens my awareness and stills the roving psychosis of my damaged brain. I can sit here lofty atop of this constructed mountain of glass and observe the buzzing beehive beneath through glassy eyes rendered vibrant and opalescent by the action of a chemical – this too turns time transcendent for a singular moment of awe. I can sit here overlooking a gregarious gathering of the people, come to partake in vibrations felt from bone to bone, and to yield and surrender to this pulsation in a tribal fusion with a rhythm – the heartbeat of our collective life. Harbinger of a coming time though I may be, I remain perched precariously on this razor’s edge teetering wildly between euphoric visions and hopeless despair. The confession that I must now deposit has finally made itself apparent to my wounded mind, rising as it must out of the depths of my bleeding heart the deeper I plunge myself headlong into the ocean of my soul’s torment.

The truth of the matter is that I cannot tarry any longer on this icy cliff. But something beyond my ken keeps me pinned here, sloping uncontrollably between thoughts of death and thoughts of life. I feel quite literally as though I am being ripped into shards, which nevertheless continue to hold onto one another in a dizzyingly unbearable hesitation. This is the revelation that has finally made itself clear to me: I am a fickle and irresolute man. They say the most severe form of torture is that which makes the scheduling of light and dark uncertain, tormenting the psyche of the prisoner whose physiological rhythm is destroyed and who no longer knows when it is safe to sleep and when it is not. Our souls seek solace in the regularities to which they can adjust
themselves. But a man living underground as I do is doomed to resist going one way or the other, seeing the vanity and futility of all options, cursing himself and the world with the out breath and praising God and his sacred creation with the in. I do not know how I shall endure any more of this soul-chaffing friction, or whether it is my lot to seek salvation and by seeking, to be saved. All I know is the severity of my situation and this unrelenting life that piles turmoil upon burning heap of turmoil. I suppose it is possible that we are all placed in exactly the situations that are required for our transcendence, and that life is a game of hide and seek, as Allan Watts says. If it were so, then these miseries I proclaim merely serve the purpose of the game, concealing the hider and evading the seeker. But in the depths of depression, this sort of thinking appears hideously morbid to my tortured mind.

Does the Venerable Watts seriously expect me to just reinterpret the abject trauma that I am subjected to? Perhaps this is all that is called for here, but perhaps I am still too immature to see that it is so. On the other hand, it is also possible that life is a frivolous pursuit, and that the suffering of these countless beings ultimately serves no end and no higher purpose. It suffices to conclude this purge by saying that I am on the verge of giving up on all of life’s reinterpretations. I shall learn to effortlessly surf without thought or mind, ever gliding ahead of a crashing wave and balancing carefully against the crosswinds. I think the ultimate release will only come once I truly stop giving a shit. So long as I have not caught the wave, I am at the mercy of Poseidon’s wrath. And there I’ll struggle endlessly wondering ‘how?’ and ‘why me?’ But if I just yield and allow the greater powers to bend me to their will, I can be carried smoothly forward; there no longer remains a need to ponder whither must I go and how am I to act. This ‘life’ thing is, on the whole, an extremely delicate business – the most difficult art to master. But I am resigned to it, finally and completely. I cannot strive for anything any longer, as the sodium chloride coloring my cheeks bears witness. Kill me or lift me – I do not care anymore. Trample me underfoot, or place many at my disposal – it is of no consequence to me. I will go where I am bidden, and I shall bend where I am bent. Do with me as you please, O mighty Poseidon! – but please, spare me the trauma of thinking I can freely choose. Perhaps this confession is more accurately described as a prayer: may I be erased so utterly and so completely so that all what remains is nothing more than the stamp of the eternal.