And by the movement of celestial bodies, he declared triumphantly on the first day: Let there be dark.
And so it was engulfed, forever and ever and ever, into that yawning pit of nothingness. Eternal. Inevitable. Unfaltering. The ceaseless, eonian dance of the stars, on to the ordained abyss at the end of all things.
— from a Holy book, destroyed but remembered, that burned in the fires of human hate long ago, marked as blasphemous under pain of death.
It’s growing dark here again. And so very quiet. The last vestiges of natural light retreating behind a cascade of darkness that stretches to eternity. The world once again embracing its true form. The logical mind seeking a distraction until it is too fatigued to keep going. The superstitious mind lighting candles to keep the shadows at bay. The sage braving the blackness to ponder the secrets of the stars. The romantic brooding over his loneliness, and the philosopher his existential dread. The poet picking up his pen, dipping the nib into his bleeding heart, and scratching the macabre ink on the too-thin parchment. The lovers losing themselves in a tangle of limbs and pleading sighs, unleashed against the gathering hush.
You can almost hear them all. Hear them screaming at the top of their lungs, shouting defiance on a planet lost, invisible, silenced, that they fear, even if unwittingly, to remain forever in the shadow of the vast nothingness beyond.
One has to admit, if one is in the habit of confronting his darkest, innermost desires, that it sets the perfect mood to lose yourself in yourself. In whatever twisted madness prowling the apparatus of that otherwise innocent face.
It is enough to forget that in a few hours, all of them will wake up to the harsh reality of their lavish, extravagant lives. They will leave for their appointed destinations in single file, heads mostly bowed, eyes characteristically lifeless, hearts laden with the solemn weight of orthodoxy, minds racing from one problem to the next, preoccupied, engrossed, blank, their advertent thoughts a counterpoint to their mechanical stride.
Had they but a morsel of those thoughts, a fraction of that consciousness, untethered from the mundane insanity of the day ahead, they might have noticed the pleasant breeze coming from the drafts in between the buildings. Had there been anything left behind those glossy eyes, seeming to look everywhere and nowhere at once, they might have noticed the hypnotic pattern the light made as it pierced tall, gilded windows, and made reflections dance in a whirlpool of colors on the surface of potholes. Had there been any other possibility but the stark, brutal cycle of repetition they call a life, they might have laughed and danced and skipped around without caring if they were seen. Or judged. Or branded.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Let’s come back to the moment now. To the cold nights. The perpetual winter of our hearts. The ice that never quite melts. The sorrow that seeks release in every half-whispered word, in every tentative touch, in every inaudible gasp of pain. Very slowly, you begin to see it again. That for every facet of our being on this world, there’s a price to be paid. That there is no fate but what we make of it, and life, despite our flimsy attempts at making it make sense, remains a dance in random chance, irreverent of the subtleties that shape our yearning minds, our feeling hearts, our restless bodies, our blackened souls. Eyes that glimpse too much and understand too little. Thoughts that jump around faster than their origin can be discerned. Hearts that are defenseless against the onslaught of every paradoxical emotion that besets them every second of every minute of every day.
Have you ever glimpsed it? The pulsing, brilliant innocence of a soul that opens its eyes for the first time to this world? I wonder if they somehow know it from that first second. If they feel the pain, the aching, that beleaguers their entire being from that very instance. If that is why they weep for this strange state of discomfiture and pain. I wonder if they know, even from then, that life is a lease. That every second you breathe brings you closer to that non-existence whence you came. You open that eye and go on a journey. To what end, nobody knows. But everybody understands that the experience is inevitable. Forced. Tragic. Beautiful. Terrifying. Unrelenting. And always, always, always moving toward that old friend, the cheated lover, the great leveler, the sweet reliever of agony, who offers you the gift of non-existence again.
And what if he takes it all away? Our cherished, inexplicable consciousness? For you know, my friend, deep in your bones, that the darkness was never the enemy. That unlike fools who preach a fallacy as short-sighted as the reach of their simple antiquated minds, you know light and dark do not cancel or destroy, but complement and swirl. They churn and eddy and pool and coalesce in a mesmerizing tapestry stretched across time and space.
And you have been taught, from those very first moments, to fear that which you should cherish. To cast off that which you should embrace, your spirit yearning for release in a place where it will only find suffering.
If you’ve ever found yourself feeling trapped, with the walls constantly closing in, you know that the only salvation is not any light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not about throwing yourself at the wall in a state of panic. Your deliverance is not in prayers, or any Nietzschean will to power. You know that the only way out is through, and the only peace on this side of death is acceptance. To know that your days are numbered. To know that you are forsaken, coerced to this existence, defiled by the touch of a lover who forced themselves upon you.
Yet despite the involuntary nature of this arrangement, we humans usually opt to make the best of it. We build order out of chaos, come up with rules for everyone to behave, and establish value systems, apparating them out of thin air. We conjure up art and philosophy and literature. We cure diseases, rail against the very entropic nature of our rotting cadavers, and search for immortality in the pages of history. We wish for a life of significance. A mode of being that goes above and beyond our mundane inclinations. At some point, the basic principle of life — as Darwinists would call it — which is to survive, consume, and duplicate, becomes a tedious cycle giving rise to rebellious insolence and self-destructive stubbornness.
Depression, emptiness, and nihilism. The three words that define much of what we see in society today. You might not see it for what it is, but it takes courage to realize there may be no point to this existence beyond the random turns and twists of nature. The whole of history, from The Iliad to Michelangelo and Bach and Dostoevsky, could very well never have existed if that simple, willful creature at the dawn of time was courageous enough to reconcile life with the nothingness that spawned it. If the being’s natural inclination wasn’t to survive, but to let go and end it there and then. Perhaps get a head start over history itself. Decide, in a moment of prophetic clarity that belied its primitive faculties, to not rape a whole world into being. How easy it would’ve been to avoid it all. How nonchalant art the butterfly on those life rests the fate of the entire universe.
It’s a strange fate that we should find solace only in rare moments of abstract clarity. Perhaps under the confident shade of an ancient tree, with the gentle breeze coming in through the boughs and giving your face a thousand wind-kissed strokes. Or when sitting beside a pond at night, listening to the tentative chirping of bush crickets who break the overwhelming silence of the night. Or when you look up at the sky and find that the stars, in their multitudes, are shining down their celestial light on you.
I wonder if it is the rarity that makes these moments special, or the fact that our hearts are constantly yearning for a sense of peace and quiet that we cannot find in our perfectly organized modern lives. Perhaps we miss the chaotic undertones of nature, without ever realizing that these whitewashed, bland walls, these overfilled streets, these overstuffed minds going to and fro without ever pausing to contemplate the nature of their existence, are ever so slowly draining our souls of its sap.
I wonder if people even realize that their minds are not their own. That they have incrementally become beings of whim, knowing deep down that exercising those forgotten faculties will only bring about pain and confusion. From one activity to another, from one location to another, from one person to another, from one idea to another, from one display to another. Creatures of the digital age. Denizens of the metaphorical cloud. Always tired, never bored. Ever restless, oft malcontent. Working, grinding, sweating, bleeding, all to keep the wheel turning, and the machines running, and the wealth flowing, their industrial overlords satisfied, their bellies filled, their loins duly attended to, their minds preoccupied, their thoughts distracted, their souls wrapped in a bubble of stifled fatigue, resentment, uncertainty.
And all of this, the price of the churning mass of human cognition. Conflicting ideas. Paradoxical thoughts. Being brought up thinking a certain way, and realizing that the world turns on a different axis. Admiring love, but not finding it anywhere out in the wide, cruel world. Idealizing honor and integrity and respect, only to know that the very system is predicated on injustice, that society itself preys on the weak to make the strong stronger, and the rich richer.
The modern human feels trapped, and the walls are closing in. He feels paralyzed, because his is not a simple life, pointed towards a higher purpose. The modern human is bombarded every day with conflicting ideas and thoughts and beliefs, never daring to put too much stock in any one of them. His existence could at once be defined by an urge to lead a life of indulgence and a disturbing nudge inside his soul pointed at eternity. And even if he becomes self-aware of this state of manifold, paradoxical existence, he will never be given the chance to sort through it all, because the system doesn’t want him to think, question, and decide. The algorithm determines your preferences, and you in turn shape the algorithm to reinforce this mire of inertia, this vile idleness that is only interested in keeping you alive and consuming.
And the nights? Oh, the nights are just a temporary reprieve, the soul growing so frustrated that it lashes out in random, and on the odd occasion finds a home of songs where it belongs.
Lost in your own mind, taught to seek comfort in the ruins of human civilization, in the hubris of their unquenchable greed, taught to fear the dark, avoid the pain, distract yourself by any means necessary, the tools of gratification ever at your disposal, the numbing digital drugs profusely prescribed, the pharmaceuticals readily available, what is a man to do?
I think I can finally bring myself to admit it.
The veiled confession sitting at the heart of this dreamer whose fire was extinguished by this world long ago.
The fear. My fear.
That if I should fail to reignite that fire, to remember that home of songs, then all of this will have been for nothing. That I may never get the chance to show how grateful I am to have been given the opportunity. To existence, to experience, to love. Even if what I have to do — the price of my existence — is to face the manifold existence of my encumbered mind.
To face an infinity of conflicting ideas and exercise my will against the tapestry of time. To put my faith in a course that may very well be my undoing. To risk it all on a fool’s errand. To trust in the machinations of random chance or preordained fate. To slowly unravel the tangled web of my mind and reconcile my soul with the non-existence that awaits me at the end of this road.
To hear myself finally work up the courage to say, I am scared.
I am frightened out of my mind every day, and yet I push on, hoping against hope that I may someday earn my place within this long, exceptional story we’re telling to the universe… trapped on our small, insignificant floating blue ball moving ever onwards amidst the darkness of the space beyond. Eternal, unfaltering, inevitable, on to the ordained abyss at the end of all things.
