…less and less of this makes any sense. I all of the sudden had to ask myself, what exactly am I hiding from? Why do I hide behind the shadows and the walls, cower in the dark spaces, and the corners? What was it that happened, that made me want to disappear, never to be seen again?

I’m thinking of the failures, but all men fail, and the failures have been (barely) counterbalanced by the successes. (The mind remembers only the sorrow, the woe, the defeat. Happiness, joy, victory—these are all effervescent things that evaporated upon the wind.) And still, even before I ever failed, even before I fell into those big gaping pits (barely clawing my way out of them, mud-stained and bedraggled, drawing ragged breaths, teeth clenched in agony) I wanted to stay hidden.

I am thinking of a cocoon. Or maybe it’s some half-remembered, garbled memory of floating in my mother’s womb, protected from the cold, marauding world outside.

(Fortresses crumble, armored tanks can be pierced, steel-reinforced bunkers can be busted with tactical nukes. But as fragile as human life is, I cannot think of any force greater than a mother’s love.)

…but this leads me astray, I am turning my gaze backwards (ever wary of the doom of Lot’s wife) and try to come to grips with the vastness of the territory I’ve managed to cross. I never imagined to come this far, not after all the traps I’ve succeeded in locking myself in, not after all the chains I’ve wrapped around my own neck. Despite myself, I have come to this place, whatever this place is. I am here, in this now, as unencumbered as I’ll ever be.

(That treacherous voice, that inner Judas clamors forth with a high-pitched shriek: “It’s never enough!” and I wonder where I learned that lesson, for the first time in a long time, pondering whether or not that is necessarily true.)

… and still I press on, I can’t help but wonder, is this not just an artifact of the civilization in which I found myself growing up in? A society that beatifies greed and selfishness, that sanctions the effective murder of the poor and the unlucky? I find it remarkable the countless ways that these godless people who so mercilessly tout their so-called “God” can rationalize pure evil. Let’s call a spade a spade, once and for all, you know? You can’t be Christian and a Capitalist. It’s right there in the Bible. Jesus Himself says so.

…and I wonder how long I can continue, sick and confused as I am. I have nothing to center myself on, I’m dancing on the edge of a spinning merry-go-round, my eyes twisting this way, the world falling away that way. It’s just a matter of time before I puke all over the place, I guess. It’s spinnin’! It’s spinnin’! Look at it, it’s spinnin’!

Because when was the last time you fell to the sand, rolling around in an effort not to force your eyes to a standstill, those little pockets of seawater lolling in your ear sloshing this way and that, trying to tell you that the world really is twirling and twirling about. It’s weird that you have to create an illusion in order to understand the truth. It’s like conjuring up a fake horn on a real unicorn—not for the first time nor for the last.

(I’m worse than any damned butterfly. The mind reels.)

I’ve stopped wanting any sort of sense to any of this. If I had it in me, if I could just say “fuck you” to the world once and for all, take my credit card, and charge my way across the world, not giving a shit about yesterday or tomorrow, if I could just hurl all of this dementedly convoluted psycho-machinery to the ground and break every single piece of it, if I could just pull my head out of my ass for even a single second of clarity, I may well sell my soul to the devil. Just one second of understanding what all of this is supposed to mean, and why I am to suffer and die the way I’m fated to. If there was a reason other than the fact that the people who run this place are Pure Evil™, then maybe it would be worth it. Maybe.

When did we get so confused that we started calling evil “good,” and good “evil”? That was the ultimate perversion, and we keep living this atrocity every single day that some addlepated ignoramus utters the name of Jesus or sometimes Mohammed, like some heather, pagan magic spell. These people are not your personal totems. What gives you the right to brandish them like swords, to handle them like torches? What gives you that right?

… I can’t help but admire the Buddhists. I think that they may be the only religious people in the world who never killed anyone else in the name of their God or their way of life. So naturally, everyone else kills them, or sometimes they even set themselves on fire. These people got it right, somehow. This isn’t for you or for me. This is for the human race. Your kids and grandkids, nephews, nieces. The moment you realize that you are who you are, you’re obsolete already, it’s time to cede your place to the oncoming generation.

Anything less than that is narcissism and base, dishonorable selfishness.

Was it God or Satan who said: “Deny yourself!”

I sometimes get this all confused.

(What is it that makes it so easy to imagine evil, and yet so difficult to imagine good? Inherent depravity of Man, indeed.)

Do you think John Calvin is burning in the Hell that he imagined?

Whatever. I’m done. It is finished. (At least for now.)