Asylum

A narcotic debauch of two or more months came to a close one month ago. Too small and unexceptional to warrant detail, a mere echo really of the self-inflicted catastrophe that is my past. Aftershocks years after the collision of youth's flight with reality's hard ground, growing progressively fainter as they pass through in expanding concentric circles, still plague this impossibly weak mind, each thus far a broken promise of finality. One almost yearns for the more severe and definite concussion from which these pathetic emanations originate. It's as if it the past still exists out there in some physical reality we do not possess the requisite sense to detect. And of course it does; I can feel its weight even now, its unbearable, exquisite, damning weight. I cherish it even as it crushes me. I worship it as everything I know. This is love.

But thankfully the narcosis was arrested, and by a defiant act of will. Maybe this will be the last, finally. As much as I return to the shame of my past over and over again as to the phantom itch of a severed limb, I do wish to shuck it off finally. To finally turn about and walk forward through life instead of in reverse. If not to resolve then to see resolution for the unfortunate myth it is.
So the recuperation begins, and the physical energy regained feels unnatural, alarming even. I lay in bed and my chest surges, as if some current is passing through it. There is an excess of energy and an attendant inability to concentrate or contain this profusion for any purpose. So this too must be waited out.

And then it strikes, a fever that waylays me. I become a somnambulist, sleeping shameful hours through the day and plodding through my abbreviated waking hours like an astronaut encumbered by his heavy suit and tethered to the safety of his spacecraft--the sleeping world. But the dreams return! The dreams you didn't even realize you'd sacrificed to your self-abnegation; dreams trivial and absurd, dreams of youth and alternate lives that tease you through the sliver of moonlight that is the dreamworld. Dreams of lives more real than this one spied upon through the transom over the barred door between reality and imagination. Alternate realities that splinter into innumerable mirror fragments when I turn my clumsy shattering gaze upon them.

Feeling better finally, up from the depths, nearly recovered, swept up again in the wake of world, back in time but still off the beat, no matter; devouring this reality, greedily, hailing a world that roars past, over and under and beneath and through me like an electric current, indifferent and glorious; I am overwhelmed by the breadth of creation, absorbed in the mass of God's love in divine anonymity and exquisite irrelevance. Welcome back.

And back I am, having lost a little more patience, that is to say time, it having been swept into the vortex of self-absorption, dissipated in the implosion of self. Suddenly aware of the hour, of my decaying flesh and mind, of the nearing gallows, waving frantically at humanity near and far, raving like a lunatic (do you see me there, the madman on the streetcorner expending his manic energy into the ether by way of words?). This is my atheist's prayer. There is no means to express this yearning, I have no faith by which to transmit this love of life and ashamed gratitude for existence, no means of repaying the irredeemable debt incurred upon conception, no currency to transact and no language to communicate, as the infinite weight bears down, inexorably, slowly but soon, any moment now, pressing my insignificant self, this tiny fractional autonomy of coalesced matter that is my entire existence, past present and future, back into the whole of nonexistence--so I must accost you, insult you, hail you like a starving beggar and desperate madman. Don't be alarmed. Don't look away. Humor me. See this half-squandered life. Take note of it. Listen to my futile and meaningless plea. The end is near! Relent!


Boards of Canada, Macquarie Ridge