I went for a walk; I needed to think. As I made my way through half-empty streets, I felt the loneliness and the change that ever-so-slowly is taking ascendancy over time and space. As I passed a building on a side street, I chanced upon a kitten. It was playing, no care in the world. It saw me, capturing me in its sight, its curiosity awakened. Then it ran across to the corner of the building, lo, another kitten comes running. And behind this one, another one appears. So there are three kittens, playing, jumping. Then sprawled along a bush, I detect the mother. A venerable matron, quietly but attentively watching her brood. From her distance, she allows the kittens to frolic and play with one another, but she is not too far off as to not be able to make her self felt. The whole sight brings soft tears to my eyes. Granted, my mind is disturbed as it is and this scene of life in motion opens the gates that hold back my human suffering.
The first kitten detaches itself from the others, and moves closer to me. It stands next to a bush and stares at this stranger that has interrupted its world and caught its fancy, stares at this fantastic aberration of nature that towers in the darkness clumsily and sadly. And I think to myself, do animals get depressed? I wish I could say no, that I could rest in the comfort that they above all creatures great and small would not be afflicted by such a thing.
So why does this kitten out of its siblings detach itself, preferring to attempt to unravel me? Is it like me? Will it too fall into the abyss of depression? I pray not.
I wonder how long I can last, before I expire. My body is weary, decadence has set it – it set in quite a long time ago! As I tell the people I chance to meet how I seem to rely on chance to survive one near death experience only to proceed to another, they are horrified. But the horror comes not from my eternal mishaps, but from the fact that I seem not one bit distressed as I describe my stories. I am not scared of death. I died when I was six from a scorpion bite; body pale as nothingness, the flame that was once sparked by Love rapidly perishing (Love is the moving principle, it is Love that nurtures that initial spark that makes the earth tremble and inspires into motion what results in life), an almost-empty vessel hallowed by father and mother I felt languid in the arm of my papa. I was fast expiring; I was to ascend. But a doctor and his skill saved. Yet, the esssence evaporated, torn out of the flesh violently through the bite mark. Through the skill of man was saved, was retained the substance. But what is an empty or almost empty human being?
And so, I am perplexed: will I be able to endure until I can leave? I am also afraid, will my genius, for I suspect or I am of a credible nature so as to be under the illusion that I possess genius, be extirpated? Will it be deluted, trammelled, dragged endlessly until I cannot recognize it? I was once told a story, and it scared me. Is the solution not a solution but a radical destruction … of the self?
Will my musings and fastidious attempts at divinity cease as I permit my fire to extinguish? But then again, what option have I? I cannot continue tearing myself apart every other instant. Substance without essence is volatile; all is ad hoc. And my body cringes and convulses forth. Alack, the edifice I constructed renders itself much too heavy for its foundation – and it prepares to unravel itself, to implode.
Soon, the calm – either way.