Disappear In The Dark

I just wanted to lay down in the dark and disappear, one more phantom in a nest of nothingness. Say goodbye to kisses missed and kisses stolen and kisses desired, to soft cheeks and hands clasped and smiles from the wrong men. No more mothers, no more fathers, no more ancient primate prerogative driving from the depths. I would end the quest for biological immortality, the fear game, the tug and pull to be the one, the only one, the Queen of the Heap, the one to survive. 
What roused me from my usual exhausting efforts to preserve my identity was a chamber of mirrors, an expanded perception of self that allowed me to view the animal in the box through a tiny pinhole. That animal there, covered in hair, endeavoring to conceal its animalness with words and thoughts and fashion and rouge, that would be me.
That would be me there, struggling against my mother, against my sister, against all the king's concubines, rushing to capture the blissful prize of dominion, of the power of being. There are many, many possibilities and I am striving to be the one real self, the one that beats the others back into the abyss, the one who claims validity from the annihilation of all other possibilities, struggling for control of the gene pool, for control of the world, for control of reality.
Once upon a time I wanted to escape the cool dark stillness of nothingness, which is also the white noise of everything at once,  so I was born into this world. But what is here called “life” is in fact death.
I sacrificed the endless multitude for this experience of singularity. I have become separated from the larger body of My Self, the self that exists beyond time and beyond space. I have burrowed deeper and deeper into an angry psychosis, a desperate attempt to escape the Other who is myself.
And yet, even here in the shadow world that I have created the Other is represented. The Other lives inside of me, the Other lives outside of me, the Other is my own reflection, the Other is my mother, my sister, my daughter, all of them animals, all struggling for control over one another because they lack one crucial feature: a knowledge and mastery of self.
We are in denial of self. This denial is what we call “Life.”
And so, for a moment, seeing all of this, glimpsing that pitiful creature through the pinhole of objectivity, I just wanted to lay down in the dark and disappear again, relinquish my stranglehold on reality. Do the brave thing and sacrifice the singularity rather than the multitude, accepting the burden of the Real rather than hiding it under the carpet. For a moment I just wanted to relinquish my position as  The One, and take my place as one of the many. I wanted to accept annihilation and evaporate, become another phantom drifting placidly over a lake of nothingness.

Light Benders

Possible lives, possible moments, possible lies. Possibly the biggest lie I ever told was, “Fine, thank you.”
Sitting in the Boulevard Cafe, watching the traffic, watching the trees grow a millimeter a month, listening to the conversations of others, the music from bygone eras washing down over my lipstick stained disappointment. No cherry pie, but six choices of coffee. No cherry pie. The noise of life swallowed down with hot decaf tea. The noise of a kitchen, which is the noise of life, the stuff that fuels these fleshy forms coming out on large round white plates.

Fleshy forms, such a deceptive word, “fleshy.” We imagine something very solid when we hear that word, something definite and unchanging, something akin to stone or oak, but it is more mutable than that. It is changing constantly, cells being replaced nightly, a tiny imperceptible operation that leaves you with an entirely new body in seven year cycles. Like watching trees grow. You don’t see it, but its happening, its there, an invisible process of transformation. We have been deceived into thinking that we are stable, of an unchangeable essence, we are who we are and no other. We are one static personality, a good person, a strong person, or perhaps a bad person, a weak person, a smart person, a talented person, a tenacious person, an affable person, or we are a person composed of a combination of two or three of these choices but no more.

We think that we are inherently something,, but anyone who has ever turned their attention inward has faced the terrible truth: we are inherently nothing, we are only something in particular depending on who is looking. We are different things to different people, and when we are the only one looking in at our self, then we are just the one who is looking and the other we thought that we were is a farce. They start us in the beginning, making us choose the words to define ourselves; naughty , nice, fireman, ballerina, president, veterinarian. Just as they were started off. If we look far enough back we remember choosing certain things as if it were a game: my favorite color is green, I like rock music, I read paperback horror stories, I hate musicals and fish.

Well, anyway, I remember making those choices. Perhaps I am the only one. Or perhaps I am the only one being honest. Because the truth is terrifying, a free fall of no cherry pie ever. You don’t see it, but it’s there, an invisible process of transformation catalyzed when nothing notices itself. Our outward forms shift and change and our emotional states vary and our thoughts obey certain patters, certain habitual tracks upon which to run their train. But who is the passenger? A pure and shining void. A frightful bit of nothing caught in a little temporal whirlwind. We call it life, self, mind and body.

And if you see this, if you look at someone beside you and perceive them as a fleshy dirt devil, a living process for transforming light, a sort of perpetual motion machine circulating raw nothingness, and you know that you are not supposed to see it, because you already agreed early on to play the game and not see such things, then you know you are not what is defined in the game rules as “fine.”  You know that if you tell them what you are seeing they will do what they can to stop you from seeing it because it ruins the game. 

So I say, “Fine, thank you.”  and continue watching our possible lives, possible moments, possible lies play out. Six different types of coffee but no cherry pie and the traffic flowing on the street outside.  A free fall. Watching the traffic, watching the trees grow a millimeter a month, listening to the conversations of  others, the music from bygone eras washing down over my lipstick stained disappointment. A frightful bit of nothing caught in a little temporal whirlwind I call myself.