lethalpsychopomp

This thought was prompted by my research into the Nag hammadi scrolls. Its a series of gnostic texts that were found by a 14 year old Egyptian boy in 1945. It wasn't turned over to anyone till 1946, and in that year his mother used some of the text-filled parchment as kindling. Ancient scrolls and scripture, lost to the elements. Life goes on. We are all subjected to the decay of time. Nothing is permanent, and that scream into the vast, indifferent void becomes both an act of defiance and an embrace of vulnerability. The hope that someone might be listening keeps us sane.

Amazingly, despite this knowledge that everything will be lost to time, it doesn't stop us from attempting to save it. Perhaps, paradoxically, this knowledge of impermanence is what drives our desire to preserve things in the first place.

In 2020-2021, I was convinced we were gonna get nuked by Russia and so, in attempt to protect knowledge, I took every copy I had of the Bible, every copy of the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishad, Tao Te Ching and tried to save it. Wrapped them in plastic, put it in a bag and hid it in my bedside drawer furthest from the window and shielded by my bed. All to protect it from any nuclear fallout. That hope that maybe something will be the exception to times effect takes over.

This is what I repeated to myself as I was laying in my bed. It wasn't a command, it was a plea.

"please get up! Right foot then left. You can't stay like this! Make your bed, you'll feel better. It's not hard. One small calculated move at a time..." encapsulated by two small words. Get. Up.

I was begging myself to do something. To get ready. All the while the anxiety kept building. The tingling sensation in my fingertips and teeth intensified. And I couldn't stop it.

At this moment I had a scary thought. As I was laying there, seemingly emotionless I thought to myself "do I need help?"

By MRYM

The flame

As it holds the purifying ways

Repelling my sins,

my devious shames

I plead And plead

(and plead

and plead)

For the merciful need;

The fame-ous way

You say

"I protect, I save"

Your poems

Your promises

Of redeemable, irredeemables

Those who believe in your feeble assurances

And you hear me say

"I'm not selling my soul to this possible blame!"

And yet here's that same flame

Feminine

And strong

And unwillingly baring the blame

I am unhappy. I don't know why, but it feels as though my existence is plagued with discomfort. It permeates through my being, with no known source.

I feel anxious and unmotivated. I feel deeply insecure and insufficient. I hate to say it, but when I think of Aristotle saying "a woman is the incompleteness of a man," it resonates with me. Not to say that all women are, but I am.

And it is not that I view myself relative to what a man is perceived to be, I just feel incomplete and that quote is what I thought of.