I am under the impression that last night I suffered an existential crisis — a moment when my mind was paralyzed with feeling. However, I am not sure if crisis is the proper mot to describe l’incident since I did not experience fear nor did I find myself in any difficulties. Naturally one would be stupefied and paralyzed by fear upon the realization that one is mortal and therefore susceptible to that fantastic metamorphosis that we call death, that there is a fine and almost non-existent line between life and death; however the realization does not allow one to become cognizant of the fact that the difference is lexical, indeed our ignorance has transformed the individualizing veneer that ostensibly exists between these two antipodes into an infinite and unbridgeable gap. But as I said, I felt a calm that in retrospect should be frightening.
Now, returning to my story. My mind slowly careened upon a mental track, one that had already been laid out and had simply been waiting for me to arrive upon it. Once on it, my destination was inevitable as the telic condition 1 + 1 that always culminates in 2. My mental faculties were not excercised: I was a passive consumer of the rationale being ennacted before my eyes. I was a vessel designed to hold a particular substance and now that substance was being poured. Then the dénoeument followed, a conclusion I felt to be both natural and logical. As the equation finalized itself, I saw what we falsely assume to be nothingness (I say this for nothingness cannot be experienced), an all-consuming darkness of appreciable substance. Then I inversed it: I turned the opaque wretchedness that preys on the human imagination inside-out. I puncuated it with a peremptory smile.
I had been victorious, so to speak, but over what? Perchance over my own stupidity, that indispensable and imperative ignorance that rules the roost of every mind? No, man cannot overcome himself, i.e., that faculty that is both primal and primeval: the human condition.
Oddly enough, it was as if none of this, this intellectual accomplishment, had never taken place (I would be at a loss to explain what I meant by inversing the opaque wretchedness that travails mankind). I was not cognisant of it — at least consciously — at the time. It is as if my mind is perpetually thinking and all this funny business has sunk into the dark abyss of wherever it is in the human mind that such nonsense takes place (but how can something that is not substantive take place, i.e., take up space?). Though denigrated to the unconscious, its hubbub continues droning melodiously throughout.
But how strange that I should notice it after the fact. One notices the ticking clock when one lays down in bed, when it is there within hearing distance from us, this Sysiphus whose creator is man and whose rock is the monotonous tic-toc. To a certain extent, it is as if I have awaken, of a sudden, and come to the realization of something that has been taking place within me. But how can I be certain that this all took place last night? I can only trust my sense and consequently my belief that it chanced at such and such time.
It seems to my mind that I am saying: I felt this emotion at, for ease let us say 7 p.m., and it shook me; yet I was not able to feel it at the time consciously. I felt it subconsciously (uh-huh), and it affected a reaction within my being, a sensation that though belated, was alble to untimately break through its prison and affect emotion again. I am unable to determine if this secondary sensation is similar to the previous one, or if it is inferior or superior, or even if it is the same emotion.
Of course, I am left with the lovely phrase: I inversed the opaque wretchedness that afflicts humanity. Perhaps I am going mad. It must be for I have only felt such calmn when I went mad — provisionally! It was a delicious instant; I was driven by instinct. My mind had been subjugated to my human compass and I never felt better.
And when I returned to sanity, to life per se, I felt no need to speak of my peregrination to my self. It may be said that I never felt anything, that through the reflective faculty, I have recorded an interpretation upon that instance of blizz. Then again, I did tremble with absolute lunacy when a ladybug crawled up the length of my arm. My whole being convulsed and I trembled consumed by ecstasy.