By Ryan Hadlow
6:30am
I awake to the raucous sounds of the alarm I had set the night prior, I immediately feel unease at this obnoxious attempt at self-punishment which seemingly has no end. Unaware of anything other than this visceral feeling of stress, that once more I must exist, the punishment continues. I let out a hefty sigh and bring myself up to put a close to this affair. I am a young man, in my early twenties and decent looking. My arms, lacking much substance and covered in tiny, thin, but decently populated hair, reach out to the cold surface of my device. Every moment it rings it echoes throughout my mind like the sounding of a bell before a fight in the ring. I hurriedly proceed to press the button in an effort to stop this anguish of mine. My brittle fingers were now left abandoned without purpose. The noise in all its persistence is gone. I have conquered the noise, yet I feel only briefly fulfilled before the deafening call of silence assumes its position.
I start my quiet observation of my surroundings. I lounge upon one of only three furnishings of the room. A thin single mattress laying on the matted carpet has grown yellow from the sweat which imbues it as I lay restless. I peer over to my left, a parade of delighted ants dancing their way towards the rotten remains of last night’s dinner. This sickens me, yet I have no strength to give to these newly found friends for I could not sweep them away nor shift their goal forwards. After all, would it really be fair if I forced myself up from my contented position just to go bring misery to a group of fellows I had no qualms with other than them existing? Still this feeling persists as if it had already been decided by an entity, unbeknownst to me, that they must serve their sentence for the inconsiderate conduct. Where has this judgement come from? I decide it is in my best interest to ignore these greedy beings and continue my survey of the room.
I lazily remove my gaze from the left and in turn donate it to the right. This side encapsulates my betterment, it holds all but the worst half of my mattress, but most importantly, it is clean from top to bottom, and so it is perfect. It is my favourite side for it is less bleak, but to say lively would be a severe exaggeration. Here the matted carpet transitions into an unblighted and irreproachable strip neighbouring the wall stretching across to the base of a locked wooden door. There is an oddity about the door that comes not from its beige complexion or its barred windows but something extraordinary. Streaks of dark wooden grain have started to play a game of charades where I, the ignorant player, must diagnose the image with character. First, I spot two circles above, then a line slightly sagging at both ends below, and finally, a bulbous figure standing in the background. Yes I see it now for it has been staring at me all along, it is a face, a face not quite human, but human enough. Although now the game has ended, the humanlike face still intrigues me, threatening me. Are the circles really its eyes? The line its depressing non-linear mouth? The shadowy bulb its head? Is it truly human or is it nothing at all? Even if all these assumptions were in its favour, why could it not have been a sloth or a dog? My thoughts acting as water in an ever-flowing river, every question raising another question, none answerable. After a lengthy line of interrogation and deception, I feel as if the door could no longer be bothered with holding my interest. I blink and look back over to it; the face has retreated back into itself.
I slide my eyes over from the door to the second furnishing of the room, a semi-opened, bulky wardrobe where I would hang my clean clothes. Glorious no doubt, yet in all honesty I have no recollection of the assortment being so public. I could see a few poking out from the left door, a pure white shirt and jeans, a navy coloured suit, and a costume most fitting for a jester. None fitting a single theme and all scattered about; this was an unusual scene for such an orderly person as myself. Despite this fact, I knew they were all mine as they had my name stitched into the collar, Thomas K. Such troubling sights indeed! Was it truly I who took part in the showing-off of such enigmatic existences? No, it couldn’t have been me, I have no remembrance of such an act, but if not me then who? I at first, try to reason with myself, manipulating my thoughts and memories into birthing a self deceiving, unreliable, and dishonest version of events that reflect nothing true. The answer, being ever so clear, had never warmed up to me though, for I pondered this in desperation for a needless duration. Ultimately, after frivolous conjectures, I came to terms with knowing only that they are there, laid bare in full display, complete and unbothered.
Wishing not to linger and waste away, I proceed to give a start to my working day. I start shifting my naked body forward, riddled with internal scars, it sticks to the mattress like jelly. After a bout of pushing and pulling I finally prevailed, hunched over, looking towards the clothes. I take a few moments to rearrange myself, my appendages unwilling to fulfil their purposes, then I at last crawl over to them. There is a small golden knob mirrored on each side. Withered webs of dust and dirt cling to the outsides of the once coveted shiny objects, now destitute. With a jerk of the hand directing the left side open, I start to examine everything. Of the three to be scrupulously inspected the navy suit stuck out the most. It has been decorated with the fingerprints of someone taking the utmost care not to disturb the honour of the linen for it was quite dignified. Whereas the pure white shirt had been deeply creased and looked as if it had been thrown in without regard into a heap onto the base. Lastly, the most mysterious piece of the three, was hanging off to the side, basking in its homely darkness, almost as if it were reaching to shut out what little light had been shed upon it. It was not friendly, nor did it wish it to be, but in an act of resistance I shuffled closer, staring. How could a display so colourful and so cheery, hold within itself such fear and dread for the world?
The longer I stared the more it became; it was illusory, my vision narrowed, and I could not make sense of it anymore. The elongated legs, which would surely cause one to trip over oneself, the short stubby arms, which could not protect more than the bend past the shoulders, and the flattened stomach all covered in different coloured stripes. I was now with deep respect interrogating its very existence and its mine. Gradually, this certain feeling crept up on me, I felt nauseous, as if it were unloading a heavy haul of questions onto me; something I could not bear for I was sincerely weak in comparison. Resistance was futile, the incomprehensible was weaving its way into my mind and I could not dare escape. “Was it I who was doing my own undoing?” for my place in this place, if it was one, was perhaps the most misunderstood as it could not be won with questions. This being however, had an abundance to fall back on, and could never swap places with I. It had summoned myself, and the space I inhabit, to be judged in the most supererogatory of means with my very being unzipped, chastised, and dissolved, in front of its hostage. Trial after trial, forever condemned to guilt, my mind was fatigued, I was losing to myself. What am I? Creation? Destruction? Fashion? What is this feeling? Defeat? Victory? Death? Am I me or am I it? A subject? An object? I did not know, yet it knew it all. I could not continue; I must run like the criminal I am before I drown in existence.
There was nothing left to admire, just questions to administer. An eternity came and went but I was at very last able to flee from this feeling of frenzy. I slowly closed my eyes and drifted far away, deeply submerged in the silence. A short while passed and once awoken the frenzy dimmed, unable to be extinguished, yet enough to function. I regained my sight and laid it back on the costume. A challenge was issued and if not answered the act of walking towards the closest bridge and jumping off would do me no less harm.
8:00am
With my hands guided by guilt, my eyes led by consternation, set on the costume making sure to blink copiously so as to not fall back in its mischief, I lift it out into my room. The fabric is rough, heavy too for when I lift it, it resists pulling me down with itself. I decided that if I wanted to carry out my mission as fast as possible, the gruelling task that it is, I must wear it for if I do not I will get no further than the door within the week. I wish not to even gaze upon its notion of party for it stands against myself, inviting itself, mocking me, wishing both to be found and unknown. For what is better to be accepted by the many for the sake of the whole, and to be rejected by them in the instance of the singular setting itself apart. Pulling away its true content to manufacture what is seen while undoubtedly undoing more of the blinded than of its contrived nature. It cannot therefore understand its own beauty within its caging fortress as it is replaced with self-importance, uncertainty, and shame for it believes more in its product than of its truth. Once it rids itself of its shallowness the rippling tide that overflows its own eyes shall begin to feel free, which there then follows an allowance for beauty and genuinity. And as death approaches the mix of intangible and somatic it reveals one of three tracks, either acceptance which forgives and takes over, slowly evaporating any sense of immortality once held culminating in a true death where it may be born anew flourishing aforementioned goal, a flower of beauty and genuinity. It may reveal denial, a stubborn, unchanging and frankly maddeningly cowardice state that pleads and bargains in the presence of reality hoping purpose may still reign true and that they may defy death itself as it stares them in the eyes! Or it may give way to the natural choice, removing oneself from their physical form and placing itself above rationality. It is the end that seeks to escape from unreason by unwittingly pursuing it, plunging itself in front of it as it goes beyond what it should. Unreason to be that which I do not know for if I did I would not think. Due to me being unable to find its reason, there would not be one other than artificially as I try escaping only to increase its unreasonability.
Before I go further I must remark that this “thing” has done a very real harm against me, twisting around my mind, poking and prodding, creating holes for my vulnerabilities to leak out. Causing an undying image to be set alight, abandoned for the painting of the flame and discarded in the soot. An obsession with the untruthful forever pulling away, hiding while writing letters posted to my address insisting that it should be a part of me, asking for all that is and may be, to play my part. I ask myself “Why? Why do you do this? Why participate in a game of chase within an enclosing circle for if you lose, you lose everything, and if you win, you win so little.” A truly tenacious thought for I do see the beauty in it, yet I answer “I do, for at this moment I feel a violent revulsion towards all that do not, yet in doing not I do not blame, I instead march forward absuming all energy until either I give out or give in for this is my circumstance, an unforgiving, unrelenting, hurtful place that wishes upon my death, yet I am in love with it all.” The pain is necessary, misery too, for the nothingness that consumes us is our daily foe and the anxieties it brings forth are crucial to the human condition. Although my chest may ring with pain it is that same feeling that calls myself into existence, crafting a deeper connection to bliss while maintaining the inclined slope we etch ourselves into.
The natural choice of course is a disturbing one, suicide; it is however the most profitable answer to my pressures and pushers. It relieves me, a solemn end to my thought and doing of things, I no longer must ask or feel anything at all, just fade away. Yet in my ending of myself I do so only for my present as my future is already dead.
For can there be any reason to myself at all? Or to anything for that matter as I cannot ever decide on what is and what isn’t in these moments of harm. What did I do wrong? Why am I like this? These thoughts bring me pain; some naive group may confuse this for strength under the false pretence that there is some light in everything which is assuredly not the case here. For if I did not think these thoughts I would go on to be great, or greater than I am now at very least, as I would not be thrust forward while in my resisting stride. Resistance in this case being my resolute affection for life, as I may not ever stop moving but I will do whatever I can to stay. Resistance however can take form as irresolute too for it is not just built upon the now but what lies just ahead of me in tandem with my present. I am on track towards nothing, not a wall not a thing, I try to console myself, yet still it brings about nothing. Resisting this ineffable urge to drown in the face of the storm builds not strength but instead acts as a thin plank ripped from the ship that helps to keep myself barely afloat. As in the case for when I am about to die, my reality hits me harder than previously thought and I may only continue when my resistance dies before me.
It is not assured though whether one will make it through, in the end, towards what is good. Although a sudden end to myself cannot be called good in and of itself either for taking one’s life is a brutal and harmful process; it can neither be called bad as far as the present is concerned, for an immediate end to suffering is quite good. So, in the present way of thinking it is both bad and good. Additionally, since the past cannot be looked to, only looked back at and since I have not killed myself already, and it cannot be affected, therefore it too must be neutral. Henceforth the attitude one has towards suicide must be resolved through its future effects in which the pursuit has a few exceptions for only in rare cases such as terminal illness is ceaseless pain guaranteed. The future itself being a being of promiscuous action, hardly ever properly reasoned with, mostly being unreasonably predicted. No matter the case, even if a predicted existence comes into itself it is not the doing of some sole observer but rather the state of all the things that constitute it. Unless the things that pertain to the subject that have, will, and do exist are founded within this prediction it cannot be called reasonable. For a prediction filled with luck and potential is only incrementally better than one without knowledge. This is not to say we cannot use these predictions as some do work, such as in the case for objects, but instead to not over rely on that which has not been logically or soundly understood. Even the reasonable predictions are still limited due to a certain point in time where things evolve and ambiguate themselves into an unknown diminutive entity far removed from the present.
In some event where one is called upon to answer what is wrong with themself, they act as subject examining object and the various faults that they harbour. But if we inspect such a being in the way of expectation we can expect only injustice, hammering instead of mending, whereas here we must strive for an equal footing whereby reason can confront and subdue. My anxieties speak to me, they gently creep in and at that moment I wish for nothing more than to find my issue, it tells me, “Why look outwards? It is you; it has been all along.” And above all else this message is not only the most understandable phrase to ever have been uttered to me, but it does not disconnect me from my reality, I see clearer than I ever have before, I see the world for what it is, and it is this that murders my future.
For now, though, I, in avoidance of forgetfulness will demarcate my intended goals for even now they are slipping away from me. Firstly, I must disregard any intuitive sense and answer if ‘that being’ even exists or if it is purely a delusion in my sickened mind. As knowledge itself may be revealed in sporadic bursts and while helpful to know more it has only the chance to sharpen the knife while never cutting into it and never revealing what it is for there to be cut. Therefore, I must look to its materials not what it can be made of, its birthplace of conception and not where it could be created and take on any notion averting myself from considering it never existed in the first place. Secondly, I intend to answer what this costume is. I have not affirmed it in any way that might allude to its costumeness, nor of its clownery, only of its wearability as once more it knows its own place, yet I have divided, classed and created this essence that leads ruins to any hopes of it becoming that of the suit. An essence built up by me that is related to those once experienced by me. Moreover, there must be a reason for this costume in particular that is indicative of what builds its essence as there is something for it ‘to be’ in the way of the existential and its ‘is’ of identity. For whatever it ‘is’ it is certainly not empty. As an understanding in the preliminary nature must be present for any inquiry into the engagement of it or of myself and it must be inquired for errors to be revealed lest we forget them. A cryptic task for I can only tell that I will uncover this ‘what of being’ within further despairing peace wrapped in this costume’s meaninglessness as both are assured through the embodiment of such a thing. Lastly, and most pertinently, I hope to answer ‘how’ that being exists, consisting of the mode, manner, and type of being this one holds and not of its what. For this chase takes place somewhere away and inside the consciousness as awareness beckons others to begin a ritual of order while its mode only asks for others ‘to be there’. A sort of existence only found in its ‘being of there’ for what it was and what it will be are two separate things and I can only attain such an understanding of it through all conceivable ways for it ‘to be’. As through time it reveals itself as timelessly temporal, and unlike the never changing numbers with which whose existence is in relation to the ‘ideal’ this being is tethered to what ‘is real’. Henceforth I must view this ‘being of there’ in nowhere, for what we examine is not somewhere at some determinate place but rather a continuous observation of the guiding thoughts that lead me. They lead me in all and everything for it is not just one among many to be examined in a form of categories, it is all that there is, a unified existence capturing my focus. For why would I examine meaning through categories if I cannot understand what is all there right in front of me in its ever-shifting relation to the world?
11:30am
I shall now continue towards my goal by starting at the beginning of this costume, tracing it back to its origin and its irregular, uneven yarns. I begin to undo the buttons and fit each arm in, then legs, until I am utterly engrossed in it. I then walk across the room to the last of it, dirtying the once astonishingly clean floor, undoing a task which took what felt like forever in a mere matter of moments. I approach the third furnishing of the room, long drooping curtains that are quite unable to be swept up by the wind. Although here in its own domain, the furnishment is not what I am here for but rather I come hither for what lays behind it. The slightly fractured glass split in two horizontal halves with a reddish-brown tinge indicating rust around the metal edges. As I peer through, the rest of the apartments, shops and buildings are placed in frame, and as I search for the closest that deals with fabrics I take notice of the sea below all, unveiled by the dimming sun concealed behind the polluted air. The sea is not too uncommon or rare for it is coloured white and blue; but that may be the only similarity drawn for this sea is made up of flesh, work, and dreams. An infinitely numberless horde of those gridlocked in a revolving motion who lift up the shops, the buildings, and all of the rest atop their shoulders sweating and swearing eternally as those who endure are promised relief.
Billboards, signs, and banners posted about in an authorising manner of way; this way that holds power above them all with flashing lights that coerce and words of affirmation that bring resignation from responsibility. Only after the staggering sight no less daunting than that of a spiral of ants is it revealed to me that there are some whose job is to rise higher and hold access into that which is held up. With ports resigned to each entry a boat is filled with navy who sail the seas damaging what lays below while shouting endlessly that “This process is for you!” As the sea holds up their arms pushing them evermore towards their dreams while never attaining as much themselves. For how can they within such a mass! Each and every one working to rise above the rest, all putting more effort than possible into it while only a favourable few get the chance. A colony of death thrusted into the limelight reduced to its capabilities and mishaps, given praise for produce that is never placed in the right terms inducing a cyclical climb to nothing. Those in navy implore such a process though, as selfish gain reigns above for those corrupted souls may misuse the meaningfulness in all as one, confusing doors for mirrors.
I watch as one from below tries to climb up onto a boat, a pathetic attempt that ends in suffering more so than it began with. It is to me, truly artful and a beginning to that beauty once spoken of. The body now broken and bloody falls back into the pit with those all around taking notice bringing with it a momentary halt. As it lay on the ground getting trampled while labour begins once again, everyone who comes across it may then take notice of their failure and from this some lay down new paths forward while others dig down. The opened area gives way at once to new and old ever desiring to free themselves from the captured space that they were squashed into. It becomes hard for me to watch so I look down to face the pier at the bottom of my building, spotting Arthur frustrated with a navy whose appearance takes the shape of a red coloured orange. Most ferrymen agree their work to be awful but as they are born into a legacy, one which most uphold out of fear, they take on the hardships and forgo plenty. If anyone can help me find what I am in search of it would be him and so I launch off of the window, pick up my wallet and keys, and head down the stairs towards my friend. Once down I wave to Arthur to get his attention, but he takes no notice, I will wait for him to be done before I begin my pestering.
I step onto the harbour distancing myself from the habitual participation inside my room prying on whatever. This room that I was born in and unable to live elsewhere, the deepest connection grew while my understanding only a little. I feel as if I have not left, however I may deceive myself, for nothing I perceive is different from before. My location has changed sure, so has the angle, and yet still everything in view is connected to what was above as if I were still there. Could I be dreaming? That my body still lay upon the windowsill? It could not for if it were there would be no acidic air brushing against my nose nor any lamentful eyes from down below engaging with my presence. Who would dream of such a place? Others may sense my being of here in a physical sort of matter, but I am not all for show, the rest is hidden away. Rather it must be the room itself composing some sort of inexorable tune living within my meaty flesh. Lingering around it does not let itself be seen outside but advising all of itself which does towards an end linked necessarily. In fact, it is too much to even say that it is hidden, for there cannot be this state of privation as we need only to look and stay looking. There is just simply no way of disconnecting the two, whatever dualisms that may arise here are just as privy to a uniform discontent as the last.
For the last focused on the space within the room whereas now these modes have been discovered it has shifted onto the room itself citing the same claims. While it may be that I cannot ordinarily see the external appearance of any room it is still possible and just as easy for them to be found, not hidden nor in the limelight, grounding them on the same plane as the rest of me as it holds the same properties and because it is its space that is not. And if I were to expel myself of this space I would have nowhere to live, and both would be rendered just a hollow box and a clump of meat. Moreover, in the scenario that the meat had been revived then so too would the box and if the room was all that was left of the meat then it may then lay claim to being all of the meat. There is but one piercing both planes at once as both realms connect through this self-governing whole body.
12:15pm
Arthur is finished, he looks around and spots me, calling over to me and gestures shortly to walk over. I feel utterly disgusted with myself for disrupting his day, yet do as I am told. As I limp over to him with the weight of the costume dragging me down I begin to wonder if I should explain myself or not, perhaps even lie, maybe I should tell a joke, I could even pretend I am someone else. I had no reason to though, and so what is even the matter with such dithering, I am surely not capable of answering correctly, if even there is a way I will choose wrong. Facing me he shouts,
“Hello Thomas! How have you been?”
“I’m doing quite alright Arthur, yet I do not wish to linger about and so I have something I need your help with.”
“No bother, although I do have a question, what in the world are you wearing?”
I had forgotten how to respond, the costume still had no place in the game I was playing yet it didn’t feel that way at all. I felt that if I were to brush over this topic then I would not be able to convince him of the necessity of my goal, but I ever so wished that I ought not to. In fact, it would give me great joy if all that was needed of me was to declare nothing was wrong, but I knew if I were to do so then he would not take me seriously. His questions will weaken me further; I already felt like going back home.
“I do not know, as it is my task to find out.”
“What do you mean you do not know? You must know!”
“I mean I know that it is a jester’s costume, but I do not know what it really is.”
His face becomes emphatically puzzled, a reaction I had become all too familiar with over the years.
“A costume? Is this some kind of joke?”
Is he messing with me? I could not tell; it was if I had missed an entire string of sentences. Though his question clearly has more to it.
“No, why? It’s clearly a jester’s costume, look at the colours, the sleeves, the legs, what else could it be!”
He had to be messing with me, yet he kept on with his inspecting looks and confused expression. Perhaps he was tired after working for so long, but even when tired he was always still as acute as ever, could being tired even cause such a mistake?
“Well moving on then, I am terribly busy and must attend to my boat, will I see you tomorrow?”
I had failed his test, now he would not take me for the rest of the day unless I answered to his satisfaction.
“No, you shall not, for I urgently require your aid and if deemed unable it shall not just be tomorrow that you do not see me but for all of time; I will forever be waste.”
He nods, urging me to go on. “Although I cannot presently give that concrete response you are looking for, it has taken hold of my identity, eliminating all traces of the past, pushing me so far as to escape my supposed house of eternal dogma.”
My head starts hurting, the aged meat is starting to die. Arthur sits, stewing in his thoughts for a moment, then, staring at me he asks “So… is that all?”
A fool, this is who I am, a joke, this is my title, a cockroach, this is my existence. I am made of gags and jest, choking all depth from the gullet of life. An inescapable error. If I did not exist, especially in this manner, jesters would be no more than clowns. The court has assembled; I must dance with the fire; there is nothing more humorous than my frantic lunacy. “Are you beyond this?” they chant, “I am not” I shout; laughter penetrates all opened ears as they all point down, “Splendid! Splendid! Dance more! Dance more! Brighter and brighter!” And as the noise grew louder, my steps beginning in silent disorder, were met with blaring chaos.
My reality snaps back into place. “I meant no harm Thomas, it was a crude attempt at humour, and I really meant no foul ill towards you.”
He must have realised the crumbling beneath my feet was shaking more than just my body.
“No problem my friend, though I must really get to my request for you now if you do not mind?”
Continuing his nodding from before he suggests that I go on. “I must get to the closest fabric shop as quickly as possible; my mission is simple yet can only be dealt with by confronting a master of the trade.”
That word, master, what complete and utter arrogance, maybe I should polish their shoes while I am at it.
“Ahh yes, that would be master stitch, she is held up in her shop just by the city front, would you like me to take you there now?”
I could not have asked for anyone who better understands the labyrinth that is this place, it almost feels as if he were implanted with this knowledge since birth. It is now my turn to nod; the game is coming to a temporary close and I may soon speak with my friend.
“Fantastic! I shall charge you only a fraction of the price as always and we shall leave right this very moment; ten dollars please.”
I pull my wallet out from the ends of my shoes and hand him the money. “You really are such an odd one aren’t you?” At least now I can tell he is not being serious.
“Before too long you’ll end up like me Thomas, with an inverted brain and a tiny voice in your head telling you what to do.”
“It feels as if I already am, that such affiliations came to me almost decades ago, though you could say such characteristics require a brain to begin with.”
“Oh no I am quite serious, I would like to show you my proofs, here look.”
He pulls out a drawing of a circle with an upside-down brain in it, now laughing so contagiously, as if he had told the greatest joke to have ever been told.
“See look! Such an amazing and groundbreaking proof right?”
An inverted brain? Is he deranged? Am I? I think I am, no we both are.
1:01pm
I grow ever more tired of all my invasions, placing each foot onto the dark wooden floor; its harrowing creaks acting as a confirmation of my choice. I begin to hum a tune to soothe myself staying weary of the silence and what it begets. It comforts me, such an odd little melody I put out there for the world, yet truly it goes unaccompanied by thought. Without skill and without meaning, what else do I need but this joy? This unbridled joy?
“Thomas please, I am asking you to quiet down as it is making it near impossible to focus as I get onto the boat without the fear of falling.”
My inconsequential piece of joy, the only thing helping me to stay afloat inside such despair; gone? I think not.
“Do I not deserve a moment’s rest?”
“Not any more than I do myself, Thomas, so keep it down for now and you can begin again later, away from here”
“But I must continue! Please I beg, do not do away with my humble tune-”
“What is it with you today? Why must I waste my breath, my time, my energy, I have told you once and that is that, now listen.”
“But….”
He flicks his head and stares me down. I dare not argue anymore, I have extended my hand too far and for too long. What brief happiness do I even deserve? None it seems, none at all, at least not here. I believed that as long as I hid myself, quietening all of my acts, that I may experience bliss. Such an insignificant act I thought I could conjure up without it being noticed, how appalling. I thought, that is where I went wrong: my reality does not even match what it is building up inside of me. For everything I think seems to be so brutally untrue. Instead, I shall just sit in my sorrow, experiencing it dry around my skin as nature takes hold of me, forcing me to act on whatever it is that I will myself to do. For I am so heavily limited in what I may know and therefore act upon correctly, yet I believe it is necessarily so as otherwise I shall extend beyond what it is that I am grounded in and there is nothing that may sully these grounds that pertain to my thought. But how may I know that my knowledge of it as such does not depend on what was already there, as it were, unchanged, now filled with garments that distract from its a priori nature. Almost all natural inclination of knowledge about it proves wrong, the grounding needs not to be fashioned with things: why should it? They are not the same things. Yet I cause this, these garments fashioned with and by me, surpassing the limits of what can only be known as both actually there and as a figment of my imagination. Thus, at once they are revealed to me as this ungodly unification that goes beyond what it should. Such a limit-breaking breaks me; its essence purposely avoids me as it was never even in me to begin with and never could be. I realise now that as long as I pay close attention to it itself, then all else is an emerging contingency. I shall now sleep, dream as I may until there is no difference between my imagination and experience of that external world I am so let down in, at least then I may experience some more joy. So relaxing… So perfect… It is as if I am climbing the stalks of sunflowers that are shining so brightly as the sun beams down on them. The pillows in the sky, the burst of colour invading my senses, taking over them all leaving me with nothing but bliss. My body feels light; a soft tune lifts me up and I no longer fear my fall back down to the ground. Oh, what harmony is this? How odd it is to find myself here in this unfinished, yet still ideal landscape, oh how confusing this all is. At last, I feel like I can rest without worry, yet I know it will end; it always does. And with that thought my happiness starts to drain away, without even so much as a second of resistance, as if it were nothing but a stranger passing me by. I wish I were to hold a conversation with it so I may begin to understand why it must always set out so quickly. Such a fragile thing, or rather a plethora of the same sort of thing, for it is never the same even when it presents itself to me as such. For does it not even have an essence? A quick judgement tells me yes, but upon further investigation I see that only its effects remain similar or equal. Is a smile really all that happiness is? Yet when my doses increased and such a state was induced, I still could not feel it the same: back then there was no sunshine. But now, yes, right now, I know that I am happy, I want to stay; please, just for a little while more?
“Thomas! Awake right now!”
I wake once more to the sounds of a shattering skull, we are traversing quite fast over such a rough and deformed surface, perhaps the people below will finally latch onto me. I had entirely forgotten them once I had got onto the boat, for not a short while either as I had thought nothing more of them but the object of which I must cross over. Even now they are not something I can readily admit as being alive.
“Get up already Thomas! We mustn’t waste any more time”
“Alright, I’m up so you can stop yelling at me now”
The boat is rocking heavily, nearly knocking us both down into the pit below. The sounds grow louder; such wallows are beginning to destroy whatever sanity I have left. Even after knowing the consequences of my actions, I had not even begun to fight against them. That fight was surely coming though, what else could? What even was acceptance at that point? I could accept it all, but it would kill me. What horror! Had I not just preached the story of such a true friend? I cannot believe such a choice has led me down this path, I cannot abandon it, I mustn’t. No, that wasn’t me talking, it couldn’t have been, my circumstance fed me those words, and I was merely their vessel; but now I am not and so everything will quiet down. I am in control, that was only a temporary state, but I cannot reconcile my reality with my ideals, it will never happen, nothing does. Yet still acceptance eludes me, I am still playing into what it is I am fighting. It is ugly, that is to say I am, we are both one and the same, my experience and I, my reality and I, what else but dreaming up a world can save me from such denial?
“Stop sitting there doing nothing and come over already!”
I try to stand up, but my legs feel numb, so I sit there poking and massaging them to get the blood flowing as I watch my friend’s expression turn from anger to pure rage.
“What the hell are you doing?! I didn’t ask you to sit there staring while you play with your legs, get over here!”
Embarrassed, I lift myself up as my legs wobble and ache. I cannot stand straight, leaving me to crouch over to the back of the boat and attend to my dear friend. I continue to fall over a couple more times as I painfully drag myself over to the end. I sink into the crevices and slip on the blood leaking in through the cracks of the wood.
“I am truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart I swear it, I’m in the wrong, I know it. I will do my best from now on to listen, though I again apologise in advance for any potential missteps.”
He doesn’t say anything, by this point the boat has stopped rocking, he just points to the other side of it, gesturing for me to sit and stay quiet once more. I could not even follow one single basic task.
2:02pm (Interlude)
I am a lemon, or perhaps, even a lime. My existence, it is outwardly chiral, upon these green eyes I see how often I seem to match with others. I am awkward and so is he, but I so often lie to myself and others that I rarely notice how often I conceal our differences. Slight oddities, is he so or have I made him so? My cure is weaning, I do not deserve it, give me a biased judge, a death sentence, how many more spasms must I endure? Impulse after impulse, I keep changing my mind and letting it slip; I thought I was God, that everything would be clear by now, what despair! To think I could escape into my imagination again, to let it run wild. I am a cancer that is progressing towards his mind, once I have reached it he will then acknowledge me. I am depraved, starved. I sink my teeth into him, he is oblivious, he continues to row. I cannot stop now, I wish to infect him, to make him rotten like me. Though, I have already seeped deep into his mind, it is not enough, can it ever be? Parasitic does not even begin to describe me! What pride I have! But who are you to judge? I am king while you take up after me, why try so hard to get rid of me? My importance cannot be so pathetic. I must clear this place out, this boat has become my operating table, he is dying, I must save him. It is up to me, and I may only save him if I wish to, for it is my excitement, my duty, he is mine. And so is she, they all are, for I am the highest being here, come hither and I too will save you. Do you not get what I am? Still? How long shall this charade continue? That these stories are but a warning, that there is no lasting truth or definite conclusion to be made here. How obvious must I make it, dear reader? Silence, no answer again and yet you still pretend for me that these words hold meaning as I pretend for you that I can write with substance. Perhaps you are being sincere, but so am I; when can I leave this linguistic presentation? To ever get out of what it is I have just explicated, that is, everything shallow and dull: the antithesis to my existence, a trapdoor to meaning. For this task was easy, to point out everything wrong but not anything right. I cannot play along any longer. I beg you, please do not expect much from me, after all, I did not help you.
3:00pm-An odd time
Communion with your fellow man is all but a test, for no game can conceal how sharply you are graded or at what scale of force is employed upon you to conform. A force so mighty it crushes all but the body of the individual, pulling them further down into a therapeutic shot of analogies. Competitors, seeking to act whereby one can be won over with a set of poems, with countless rules and scales solely there to organise and separate those pseudo-communicators from genuine speakers. It is all so meaningless. “Speak not with thy words to prove one’s worthiness,” the preacher says, “act not to impress either. Aim squarely at the essence of conversation, its fullness- by which it is meant exactly why it is enacted, and you will be provided its rules.” I swear by it, that such repentance issues out what may be called a defective perfectionism. One cannot enclose life in any meaningful and singular type, for it reaches far beyond the cognitions that make it so, and further from the unexperiential back into an absurd paradox. Because I might suppose that insofar that I use any given reason to try to define my ultimatum, I now merely presuppose my answer in the outlook towards my given fate. I call upon my death, as it does not await me but rather pretends to, what a horrible job at reporting it does! Pointing to what could and what might be, stamping that dim light out. How marvellous a delusion! Something not even the greatest salesman could think up… what kind of death do they think they are dealing with? There is nothing of more influence than the very thing I have no grasp of. I eternally face forwards, beg the questions in face of nothing as if I were to somehow get ahead of myself. Why do I continue to ask?
The destruction awaits. I ask for meaning, I beg for meaning, I act for meaning. I want nothing more than to mean something or to have meaning myself: my life is in servitude to everything and nothing. There is no breaking out of this cycle, I continue to ask, for I cannot do anything but ask. I plead for an answer, how can I will that which I desire to not exist in a continuous hampering of the mind, whereby, I am at once free to overcome my embedded lust for a consistent meaning? The “answer” is spoken so plainly to me that in its very heart it reaches for an end instead of how I feel in the moment. How do I convince the anxious and depressed that they ought to continue into their insipid loneliness, cut off from shelter. How, for the why has been made very transparent, yet this only pushes the despairing further down as they are told “The answer is right in front of you! Don’t you see it?” Dissolve any frame you have, and you will see … “See what? Stop speaking in riddles and just tell me!” Ha! It seems the deaf and blind are more aware than you. You must be willing to put in the work, to sit down for a while, the stories of others commit you, but you must listen if you wish to surpass them. I was once told to imagine Sisyphus happy, that such a task required my utmost attention. But by the end I could at most muster him static and engulfed in fear: an unmoving statue. For he was no longer mere fiction, but in his doing so he became human, and to be human- plunged into despair, he could no longer fight. The very conception of fighting frightened him, he had his goal- happiness, the invitation to the party; but as he transitioned from mythos to material he collapsed. Where is my tutor? The one who, supposedly, “authentically”, guides those to happiness? The limits to how the new and old are encountered and digested, united in a profound rejection. That it is impossible to act if not for meaning than for the evolution of his desires (or will) to create meaning. The author holds onto it for dear life, the belief that: no meaning in itself becomes meaningful. And this he does, for if not he convinces himself that it is mere preparation for what comes after.
The phantasy that this aptitude for life does not have stages to it but rather is one itself results in delusion. That which cannot turn back or become static but in its effort to answer life’s “why,” transforms into a continuous rebirth of a set of beliefs woven into the very essence of a being’s outlook on the question why? Here, the meaning of life, the ultimate why, is a commitment to slavery for a belief; our prison is unescapable. For this reason, this why, is never even our own. But one must extend beyond this sort of conclusion, the individual who clings onto this will never be truly happy, they already acknowledge the meaningless of it all. The road paved by the embrace of an evolution of the answer to “why?” retains its richness in life, and by a glint of beauty there is just this: every act is now complete in strength and felt only by that one being in that one moment. Nothing else may truly know it as it entered another consciousness. For this is one’s absolute right, for what may grant me relief if reason is simultaneously what holds me and is beyond me?
I know not of that which lets itself be taken as meaningful if there is not an equivalent why.
The claim that all life is to be about some concrete why, that it may retain its form for all across time, is utterly fruitless. It has been admitted that there is no meaning but that this question of why is necessary inasmuch that it leads to a sense of meaningfulness. And to position one’s trek towards this old meaning, is certainly deadly. One cannot live without this fear, that to move away from this old meaning is suicide. Hence I must provide an alternative if I wish to coax one into overcoming this fear. In the entirety of meaningless meaningfulness: there is beauty. And in beauty there is liberation. In the instance of why? there is its cause, such cause is meaningless in this state, only by virtue of there being a degree of beauty in it, it is felt as meaningful. For even in the case of an ugly meaning, there is something beautiful in its ugliness that then transforms it from gross and meaningless to then provide value for its observer. I encourage one to think of a possible meaningful act or object that does not involve or include a degree of beauty. But there are some truly ugly things that can have no inspirational effect; these are the forms of that which is absolute ugliness. For true ugliness is only existent in particular experiences; while the generalised always have at least a glint of beauty. Whereby, the particular is that which can be pointed to in experience, and the general are the unified essences of those particulars. Thus I vehemently reject the notion that everything is beautiful. For if there was, then how could one even mention ugly without its aggregate, thus minimising its harm. And there are those things that do not and cannot escape ugliness, like that of my lived trauma. Hence if everything was beautiful then beauty could liberate nothing, it could not involve liberation and would be creation instead of transformation. There is nothing born beautiful, it is an event, an evolution. But there are also those things that are immediately and wholly beautiful in its truest sense, one that could not exist without its ugliness being preconceived and preparatorily destroyed.
The terms ugly and beautiful are not mutually exclusive, often hidden within one another in all instances. Moreover, beauty is the quality which transcends particular causes, there is no cause that can be pointed to as the answer for why it is that something is beautiful, it may only exist as a sum of imposed causes. There is no rationale to beauty because it goes beyond what can be replicated. As such when beauty is placed in a world where everything has lost what meaning it was supposed to have, where values are held solely by their author, it casts its rays across all without need of explanation. Thus, what drives meaning in this absurdity to the individual is, but a subjective quality of experience imposed by a confusion with some general or particular things’ beauty. For there may be something beautiful with no objective meaning at all; but there cannot be something meaningful without at least a glint of beauty in it. A simple case of what is termed beautiful in experience can be seen quite obviously in patterns. There are pure patterns which are those that conform to a rule, such as in the case of a Fibonacci sequence; the chaotic patterns that form a rule, such as in an abstract art (consistently inconsistent); and pure chaos which does neither. Pure chaos is by definition absolutely ugly to the human being, though it has (luckily), only ever been cognised as a limitation on experience. An example of this pure chaos would be that of a time-less and space-less consciousness, or rather, an intuitionless consciousness. Moreover, the chaotic and pure patterns are our safety, for we find in these a consistency which produces the sense of being ordinary. Patterns will be the first and most concrete qualities that can be found in nearly every diagnosis of beauty; they are also the perpetrator of unintentional beauty. But once more, they do not supply the why for beauty, only a how which in turn may only ever allude to a why, leaving it misunderstood at best.
The word “meaning” is itself the most meaningless whenever it is held in regard to life. What answer could there ever be to the question “What is the meaning to life?” That cannot be given in a single breath that proclaims to know all and see all, thus, to follow in their steps. That question is only ever to say, “What is your belief about what life is about?” Something so devoid of anything non-personal that the question means nothing while missing what it is trying to get at. That is, that the answer to the question is not obtainable by anyone who hears it, nor is it ‘concrete’ in the sense that it may change in an increment of a second or be renounced for its opposite depending on circumstance. Moreover, its application is only for humans, as there is quite simply no sense in asking a dog or a tree “what is the meaning to life?” Meaning is imposed. It may only exist as a sort of subjective attitude to human life, one determined by the very way we pose the question, nor is it earned, and it is entirely derived from external factors: it is inauthentic.
The individual however cannot survive without meaning for they cannot live without motivation; this though does not make the former inauthentic but rather the sense associated with it as such. The sense of having meaning in life is achieved when the individual finds themself free in whichever system or set of beliefs that ultimately bind them to act in accordance with them. So, when an individual finds meaning in religion they find the highest degree of freedom within that set. Or when the individual who sets aside meaning ultimately finds meaning in nothing, they have found their own highest degree of freedom. For freedom is not something rigid or objective but that which allows for and sets up meaning; it is the power to exert impressions given to us through and by our world over and against reason and the finite appearances present to us.
Thus, freedom is the sole passion that generates beauty, it is higher than even faith, for faith is nothing without meaning or its appearance.
So, in saying the individual cannot live without meaning, what it truly means is that they must have at all times this feeling or sense bestowed upon them by a given impression of an object’s degree of beauty which in turn pushes them forward. Thus, it is both possible and of great importance to live without meaning in its inauthentic form, and instead to be in search of beauty which supplies its sensation, for this sensation provides authenticity and liberation. To suppress one’s embodied lust for meaning is the greatest path of all. That is, to find joy– real joy, one must run from that which they reasonto be the meaning bestower, for beauty is the revelation. It is, however, not merely a property of things, but additionally an episodic affair, whereby it is an imminent force that reveals existence. Not the objective existence of a thing, but the existence of something as it exists to us. For if we do not take notice of an appearance, or, if it disgusts us, it simply does not exist to us past its immediacy. And it is only by another being bringing it to our attention that it resolves its appearance as harm. With the moment it exceeds our capacity for truth, it once again becomes nothing. To overcome this ‘nothing to us’ we call attention to health, where self-care acts as our shield amongst the battlefield. There is then this introduction to life, a beautiful life, one without inauthentic meaning or hope, it simply uplifts: how much longer do you wish to stay? When asked for meaning one must only reside in silence; for it is not something found in descriptions or labels, but in their connection to beauty. One of many wholly ineffable feelings.
It is clear the answer to suicide must itself be beyond a certain objective meaning. How to attain it? Where is this richness I speak of? The suicidal man does not simply forget this feeling, the richness in life eludes him purposively, its beauty once sowed into everything, covered up. “This life is no longer worth living” has the ultimacy the recurring thought does not, that “This life is beautiful no more, its richness diluted, I am nothing nor is anything going to be.” That final thought is the sum of such ugliness, that the world has become dull and its air toxic.
They are in search of salvation, one the future cannot provide.
Whether directed at the past or present, to live in the present is required, for suicide is not a moral question; it aims to be a recovery from the pain brought on by the brutal ugliness of the world. For the world seeks of them everything they have to offer, nay, it demands it from them. Of the powers that be there then presents in us this willingness to seek an end to all suffering; the will to liberate. This evocative feeling can never seem to let go of me. The beautiful instills in me this feeling the most, for when I look at a work of philosophy and see the words impress themselves upon my mind, life suddenly regains its sense of meaning and its overwhelming awe. The same can be said for the ugly too, however these feelings are not the same as their method of attainment are complete opposites, I wish to embrace one while I merely succumb to the other. Why though, must it always fall on me to find beauty? True, it is not hard to find for most, but for many it is ever so challenging, it never seems quite right. Again, for some they need only go into their backyard, but for others they must climb mountains.
The suicidal and the mountain climber are of no difference here, both conditioned by the dullness of the prairie to find its cure in the heavens. And in the midst of their arduous trek up the steepest of mountains they find a place to leap off from that commits them to an eternal freedom. It is their temptation; life always finds a way to freedom, especially in its supposed abandonment. Even the individual who tells himself that there is no meaning gives himself meaning-enough that he may justify the rest, for in him there is still that feeling of it. To be liberating is to be emptying out an imposed meaning from an external source, replacing it with the self-sufficient sense of having meaning, with beauty as its mirror. Life is a struggle, to suffer is to be alive. This struggle, this feeling of being in-between a triumphant liberation and a hellish cage, it is the anxiety; I cannot separate it. It is the ghost of my will to escape: the essence of liberation. Hidden in the shadows of all conscious acts, subsisting within every decision, it simultaneously prevents and renders the individual’s ability to act through that which might ultimately be nothing. For as long as the will to liberate is well contained within me, I may never need a reason to attribute this feeling of finding a meaning to my life. But what of my roaming unconscious? Now in this sense I speak not of the unconscious in generality but in one’s freeness to exert it over oneself: one believes only when there is the will to. And where there is “the will to …”, there must be that which corresponds in total opposition to it, through our various sensuous capacities e.g. when there is the will to power there must be already an opposition to power. That is, in my attempt at freedom I only ever find that it is bestowed upon me by something I do not control. Hence a search for freedom will conclude that my experience no longer needs some sort of higher explanation by fate or “purpose”. That I only ever wish to be found in a world in which one needs not to think; where the whole world is given to me.
Liberation however, is to overcome even this so-called freedom: to be happy with the abolishment of a pursuit of meaning in general.
Whereby the competing forces, production and abolishment, are one. Again, to be in pursuit or in search, there is already a limit to that which you can find by nature of the mind, and the answer surely lies beyond this limit. One must resign from their desperate hunt for meaning, not be idle, but patient. There is then this destructive property of beauty, as it shuts off the possibility of freedom through means otherwise than sensuous matter. It is the signified by which the sense of meaning proliferates widely into, making itself known in consciousness, by giving us an indication of life’s richness in the form signifier. Thus, the nature of the construction of anything beautiful in this absurd world is, quite clearly, constructed through an elaborate web of signs that themselves are revealed to us in truth by sensuous matter which signify something. Hence, beauty is a machination of human signification and we ourselves develop it. And in turn freedom becomes the pioneer for my affinity towards a given interpretation of beauty. Whereby, my fate becomes just another way in which I try to justify myself, it fills me with a sense of absurdity.
But what if I do not wish for anything but the predisposed ‘meaning’ I already find myself in? For example, there is faith. In every miracle there can be found an equal product of protection, power, and grandiosity and when this sort of faith enters into the individual they feel once more that there is guidance, a way through, a way to guide others. Though it does not seem to extend far, they are careless, an outsider’s perspective. For what if I regard life as hell? It is surely a miracle then that I have not killed myself already. And if I dare regard my death as a miracle I shall surely be denied this. Thus, miracles are nothing more than the individual’s justification for their life to continue. What more will you ask for? That I give myself over for nothing all while you expel me from happiness? There is nothing to gain out of pure delusion, but what of God? Would it thus satisfy my present wickedness to convert and believe in something so powerful that I become worthy? Then it would all make sense to me again; I could hold myself tight as I then rush off to school where they teach me how to babble. This is an overcorrection to the highest degree for I need not be taught that this feeling of liberation comes from something incomprehensible. For the Christian, God is beautiful, and the Devil is ugly. For the Satanist, God is maniacal and the Devil glorious. To reduce either as simply being good or bad is problematic, it incorrectly categorises one as meaning good and the other as bad. This bifurcation of what is meaningful and what isn’t simply by word of God when one cannot even attest to this by virtue of replication is chiefly the weapon used against the aesthetics. Yet it too is solely dependent on its agent’s perspective of beauty and freedom, for if God were not beautiful he would be forgotten, and if freedom were not to be found in him then he would be demonized. Here I say perspective, but it is activity too, one which extrapolates the features of experience into a momentary suspension of its byproduct.
A prayer is nothing if not for one’s bias to attribute some event to it, to be given the impression that it returned something. It consists of that certain sense antiquated with the absurd, one encountered in something beautiful in which there arises an immediate feeling to do with its subject matter. This sense, or feeling, cannot be put properly into an explanation for it cannot be described in a wholly external manner. Nor is it born from the generally explainable, but rather the particular circumstance of the individual and their given impressions. It is, essentially, incapable of being reproduced in language due to its mediocrity. If everything that gives us meaning then is not lost to language, if the causally corrupt determines whichever feels the ugliest, and that which is most beautiful is most liberating; then surely there is no answer to life’s attempt at meaning lying outside this.
There is but the individual’s impressions, ambitions, and inspirations; he must keep striving forward without prescribing himself a doctored meaning to uncover the most beautiful of things and thus live the most liberating of lives. He must skip over the misguided attempt to name his meaning and instead head straight for its deceptive source; for beauty loves to deceive. To seek out that which language has not imprisoned within its system, to disregard a search for meaning and instead look out for the meaningless; the nonsense.
One cannot ignore one’s own will to desire meaning, but in light of this they may focus their efforts on that which finds them the most relief from life’s ugliness by suppressing this desire in its utmost while the petals of beauty are revealed. And by now it should be clear that the aesthetics have been transformed, for art or beauty relate no longer to merely appease the pleasurable but reach far over into all branches of life and reflect in it our sense of meaning. But what has not been mentioned up to this point is the differing nature of the life lived for liberation and the purely aesthetical life as so derived from the Ancient Greeks and such.
For the hedonist, life may be summed up as such, to seek pleasure and to avoid headache or pain. One might say that above all the hedonists were to a certain extent, instrumental rationalists. This is a life based upon the desire to fulfil one’s own desires; one which can be a product of a misinterpretation of the life of liberation, and not interchangeable with it. For instead the beautiful may indeed be trifling, it may not have any rational sense to it, it may even compete with my conscious desire to be rid of it. To give in to all physical or intellectual pleasures is to try to remove the importance of the dread of having to create one’s own sense of meaning while only acknowledging the happiness it brings. For the creation of beauty and thus of the sense of meaning involves a tension between not knowing and accepting the freedom of that set, bringing along with it a sense of dread. And one may indulge in a life filled only with pleasure, but this is not without pleasure becoming the meaning for life. In essence, to live the life of a hedonist, one where pleasure is held above the beautiful as it is confused with liberation, or where beauty may be seen as the replacement to ethics or morals, is of an entirely different philosophy.
To live for liberation, to be plunged into the despair of freedom and to suppress these ill attempts at meaning, this is where one begins to find his most authentic self. This deathly feeling you bear, this sickness, it has spread all over, still it does not complete you; will you reach the peak? Or will you succumb to ugliness? To end it all before you could even bear witness to joy? To love and to cry, plead no more for there is beauty in this terror. Focus in on it and do not let it go; the world is open to you, and your passion must strengthen.
5:31pm
The sun is setting, where has the time gone? My mind tells me “Look at you and your pitiful attempt at comforting others, using the words you wish so much to hear yourself.” I had wished for comfort, that it may come willingly, to be asked out on a dance with the righteous and to live in their protection; what joy there would be if I hadn’t needed to speak. And yet it is he who is listened to, the one who communicates with such eloquence and demand, they are the one who is powerful. As such, I am powerless, I have no lasting impact nor the ability to attain it, I cannot write beautifully. For however in which way I decide to be, there will always be this wound that has already destroyed me – for me. What use is there in telling myself that I face death in the presence of them, for they are all there already present by the time that I exist. And again, I am reminded that I desire to see clearly, that I cannot handle not knowing what they think of me. For as soon as I turn my head I look out and discover a whole world staring back at me, inspecting me. The chitter chatter of these bodies are causing this looming feeling of dread, pushing me against time evermore. I slip away only to be found within the same chaos as before. Paralysed, I am desperate for comfort, where is my darling from the past? That honest figure who let me be, the one that forgot to judge me in my silence. Oh this time that I have wasted in explaining something that never came even an inch closer to me, what have I done? Destroying myself for others. Oh darling, how lost I have become, what sickness I have spread, but I truly believed – and once more it’s over… the virus has reached my brain; self-annihilation.
Ryan is a Bachelor of Arts student doing an extended major in philosophy while minoring in linguistics. My interests lie in existentialism and analytical philosophy, with the intent to create works that unify the two without sacrificing depth or novelty.
Featured image: Stańczyk by Jan Matejko (1862).
EXORDIUM 