The Beast At The Door

So many things that I've put aside of late. I experience so many things that I long to put to page, but where to find the time to stop experiencing and start writing? I came to the conclusion weeks ago that it was criminal to have this life and these thoughts and this ability to meld them that we call writing. Moreso still then, to use it! My great, and sometimes only, regret is that I have not time enough for all the evils I could perpetrate (Aaron's shroud should hang over my coffin).

What is the point of holding on to these little corpuscles of hate? Do they make me more interesting, the way that I like to think they do, deep down in the dark where dwells this dank? Nihilism says that I must hold my hate as nothing to me, just as I would demand my greatest joy must be called no different from dust and ashes, or a Big Mac, or any other (nothing new) under the sun. The "true" nihilist (and try to think that phrase aloud without laughing) then says, but if all is equally nothing, what then must we conclude of nihilism? There too, we see that it holds no more weight than anything which it desiccates to so much meaningless dust. It seems our whim is truly all that can be given credence. But let us not fall into the existential joys of choosing not to make a choice just yet!

What greater crime is their than betrayal? Like any reasonable person, I find no joy in Inferno. Beatrice was a cold mockery of our lust for purity that sickens me to this day. And yet! And yet, somehow he and I come to agreement on this. The sociopath, wise in her solitude at the top of the lonely mountain, says with satisfaction: "the only people you should be afraid of are the people who are nice to you, because gratitude is a burden that you might never be able to repay. better for people to be assholes -- that way, you can brush them off as easily as lint." But to this I say: I would rather owe someone a million times the value I place on my life than to place any trust in them and see it tossed aside as the worthless thing I fear it is.

There is your nihilism then! Tossed into the rubbish heap for the sake of my own sense of pride; my vanity bleeds out in scarlet colors in my eyes that never seem to make the leap even from the quickening tension in my neck to the words I tap out onto this keyboard. Oh how I hate you! Not a general hate for all, no, not at all. I hate each and every one of you, and for a very good reason (someday, someone will catch me out with all my stolen phrases from better speakers and writers than I, or is that just a vain sort of vanity to hope such a thing?). Each of you has fallen short in your own human way that I just can't stand at all, and I, for hating you for it, have fallen most short of all.

Did you know? I was in Alaska recently. Juneau. I climbed a mountain. The doctors and the biologists, they invited me to their party. I ate the most delicious fish, caught by some of the attendees that very day. I drank their beer. I drank their wine. All in moderation, of course, I was a representative of someone else (my employer) and there was decorum to maintain. As the night waxed and attendees left, they produced instruments. Instruments for music. Guitars, ukuleles, bass, and voice. They melded together, amateurishly, and more truly for it. They spoke aloud the chords they would play and asked each other the names of songs so they could play together. Some remarks were exchanged between them, those warriors of measures and keys. "Oh, I can't really play in G." "This thing is best in E." For all that hate that I hold for you, and you, and you, and all for very good reasons, I must tell you all. I hated them the very most of all, more than all of you put together, at that moment, and maybe even now. I nearly broke down in tears in front of them, and from that drew even more vitriol to fuel the bile building behind my teeth.

It was so pure and wholesome. Those doctors of life and the music they played together, cooperative and joyful and all for the sake of the joy of expression and community that they shared. They were there in that moment, and I looked on, an outsider at a party that I had been invited to. I had no instrument to play! No voice to add, raised in song and rejoicing. I didn't know any of the songs they sang. I felt so poisonously cast out that I knew then how it feels to be as loathsome and alone as the Christians (jealously) say the jealous atheists really are. I produce nothing but my hateful words chiseled onto sand in a hole I dug deep just so no one else can see.

Far better then, that I am here in New York City. There are enough people around that I can finally feel alone.