Amor Fati

This is the world. Not all of it; it’s not even most of it. For some however it is everything.

You are looking at the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City.

We sure have left our mark on this planet. Our cities glisten like fresh tattoos and stink like fetid shit. I have nothing against Mexico City in particular, and I could have placed just about any modern city above this text.

When I look at this image, I’m caught in despair. I despair for the beautiful earth and I despair for those stuck down there in those little boxes. I can’t help but see myself there, feel myself there, knowing that I’ll spend the bulk of my life traversing those oh so narrow streets, entering and exiting  a few of those buildings over and over until one day everything disappears in an instant.

Cut to black. You are dead. No memories, no sensation, no light no darkness no pain no joy. There’s no ahead and you can’t look back; there’s nothing left to look anywhere.

I think most people consider death as something abstract; it doesn’t really factor into life the way traffic does, the way your boss does. It’s ungraspable, death, for all signs indicate it as the extinction of consciousness and consciousness cannot understand anything beyond itself.

Most see death as a bleak affair or else they see it as the gateway to paradise. But even the most ardent believer still cries when his mother dies. I think somewhere down deep we all know the end. You can feel it after finishing a good book; when you feel that longing after the middle and that nagging itch to find a new beginning. The bleakest of all endings is the end of you precisely because you know that there will be no longing, no itch for a new beginning. Death is the end of imagination.

I’ve always been afraid of going to sleep. Something in me finds empty space very disturbing. One minute I’m breathing with my eyes closed and the next minute it’s morning. Where did  my life go? Where did I go?

Perhaps the answer to those questions is what makes them disturbing to ask--nowhere, you went nowhere and here you are so where are you now?

Hopefully not caught in a sprawling urban hellscape. Hopefully not anywhere I find myself wishing I was anywhere else.

Yeah, I find this picture disturbing and how could I not? I find that the most disturbing thing to gaze into are my own eyes in a mirror, and there I am again in this image, caught in the same world that produces squalor and pain, caught in the same world which produces splendor and beauty. 

There is no black and white and I’m sure that there are thousands of happy people in this image that I can’t see (or deliberately look past). My despair is a product of my own monotonous misery; it is nothing but a reflection of my experience of going up against the hard steel of this world and the aching sense of possibility which accompanies imagining a better one.

I've only tasted falseness disguised as truth and I've made it my every meal since.

Reaching for the heights we forget our feet on the ground. We stand upon shaky toes mistaking the clouds for the things right before our eyes.

Oh how I wish all could be clear again, forever. But such feelings are only ever transient, I think. Because generativity is predicated on the constant human craving for wholeness and understanding, for control, for domination. For safety and for freedom.

We are but walking contradictions with a burning desire to craft a narrative for ourselves which flatters and makes sense, which puts us into the nice boxes only. We reconstitute that which makes us ugly in our eyes; We make ourselves into tradgedies so we can experience catharsis.

Maybe the trick is realizing that there are no tricks. Not just saying "I realize there are no tricks," but feeling reality with every fiber of being one can conjure up.

The mystery has no regard for fantasy

That feeling—perfection

The endless striving drives us all to madness

We live to the beat of anxiety

We relax depressed, worn out

Let go!

We must do nothing

They need help

As long as a single soul is suffering

Breathing

Sitting in silence at the top of the hill

Feel the weight that pulls you into the valley

Trying to remember the golden meadows of youth

Long gone, long gone

Wake up.

You are alive now not tomorrow

Not yesterday

In this moment your mind is spinning

Trying to find that which rests right beneath it

Right behind it

One breath at a time

The next step, the next breath

May never arrive

Know the end to find the beginning

There is no infinite peace of mind

There is no forever storybook written

Live! Wake up!

You are all the same thing

Clay in different shapes

Made of the same stuff from the earth

That you curse and mourn at once

The great mysteries remain shrouded

What is the implication?

Because it all ends someday

Not today perhaps

To feel the feelings you desire

Yes?

Tell me,

What is so wrong about reality?

What is this pain carried around?

Touch fear and live pain

The truth is the rawness of experience.

We all need help don’t we?

Out on our limbs, sawing at the branches

We fall again and again and again and again

Pointing the way to

To what?

What is there but truth?

Run ‘round and ‘round in mind

Just a mutt chasing his tail forever

Ungraspable fantasy is truth

Solid ground is truth

Truth encompasses all that is and ever will be

Do not worry

There is no need for them

Just another invention

Another hammer, another nail

The truth is older than words

As such cannot possibly be conveyed through their use

Drop words wherever possible

Drop that running script in mind

And feel the world around you as it is

Just sensations.

Don’t mind the tears behind my empty gaze.

Every day I sit stirring in my own mental filth.

In so few steps

But now

With a well stubbed toe

And rocks in our shoes

We move ahead listlessly

Wandering around

With nowhere to be

And nowhere in our heads