I am afraid.
I am burning out too soon…
…like a candle flame in fast forward. Destroying it’s own being in it’s attempt to exist.
I wonder silently if you can hear the desperation in my breathing. I know it’s wrong to wait for you to rescue me, but I sift through your words searching for a glimmer of hope.
“The human race is such…” you say. Then you remove your spectacles, clean them gently and continue.
“…We move steadily, inexorably towards our own demise…all the while, seeking more and more of the life that causes our death. There is dazzling beauty in transience which the gods themselves long for. Our senses are permanently heightened…colours are more vivid, sounds clearer, tastes sharper…because every moment that ceases to be, attempts to imprint itself upon a mind, to linger on. Perhaps human memory collectively captures infinity in a string of memories. To the omniscient, every moment that has passed or is yet to exist is the present. “
But these observations that you utter with an air of complete detachment, looking out of the window at the misty morning…they no longer reassure me. They only increase my impatience for the end. For the final chapter. The moment when it shall all be revealed, in a glowing neon montage…when I shall look at it and say, so that’s what it was all about.
Already, the world and its endless possibilities seem stale. Already, the whispering in my head is growing louder. Already, Insanity impatiently drums her fingers on the walls of my skull, waiting to claim her chosen daughter.
You smile indulgently. That smile conveys a million clichés. I know my earnestness seems foolish to you. I know you have lived through four decades more than I, and in those decades you have known chaos more intimately than any lover knows the mysteries of his mistress’s body. Yet, miraculously, you have survived self destruction. The disease that wastes your body is not a result of disillusionment, just a fluke of genetics. You are not jaded and cynical like me… You are still full of innocent laughter, of wonder and humility.
Can you not see that we are trapped? Bound in sentient bodies driven by pain and pleasure. Ensnared in circumstances that affect each other like a falling house of cards. Insulated in the prison of a mind that twists and contorts itself all day long for the pursuit of truths mundane and profound.
Nirvana- Ceasing to be. Like the blowing out of a candle.
