Addiction

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I think everybody is the addict of their own drug. Its identity does not matter — for in addiction we’re all the same. We seek the pleasure that brings us pain, no matter at what price it comes. We spend our sanity looking for it. We lose our sanity using it. But for what use is sanity in a world without pleasure?

In our darkest hours we sit in corners deprived of light, lingering in the shadows, our souls consumed by hunger. That is pain. Looking out windows streaked by rain, we tell ourselves our addiction has gone too far, and that has to end. But walking away from pleasure is near impossible to do.

Especially so as we experience the ecstasy of our drug anew, and are reminded why we keep taking it. It’s because the pain is such a small price to pay for such immense pleasure. And that’s why we persist through the torturous pain — because the pleasure — however fleeting it may be — is what gives our lives meaning.

No-one but the addict may understand the appeal. But it is there, or there would not be such a thing as addiction.

Prisoner

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I am a prisoner, free to roam to my heart’s content, but tied down, stuck, unable to move. My body and spirit are clashing, battling. One day mind shall lose to matter.

I hope that day is far away, when I am reduced to nothing more than a whisper in the night, slowly fading as the sun rises to purge the forest of its secrets, when my flame is reduced to a fading trail of smoke, bound to be forgotten.

Tick-Tock

Tick-tock.

The nearer the hour draws, the more I realise I fear its end. It will be gone then, never to come again.

Tick-tock.

Budding Hope

There was sun before the rain, yesterday. For a moment I thought the rain would sweep me away. Then came the night. This morning it was bitterly cold. A cherry tree blushed into bloom. I think spring is to come, and hope is in bud. I breathe on it at times, to keep it warm. I’m waiting. Waiting still.

Breathless

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There was frost in the grass, the cold nibbling her fingers, making them blush and ache, as if pins were pricking them, shedding blood. A silver sliver escaped her parted lips, her breath a ghost disappearing into the unknown.

She was waiting.

Under a distant tree, far afield, lay blushing spheres, their rotting flesh spreading intoxicating fumes. Soft and sickly sweet, their whispers travelled silently, waving, luring, urging, for creatures to follow them to certain death.

Slowly fiddling with a thread spun from spider’s silk she was waiting for her prey. The sun rose, melted the frost and turned it to dew rising as misty clouds, wisping in the morning air. She was breathless; the slightest sound and her wait would be in vain.

Tentatively and with great reserve her prey emerged from the woods. Ears erect and with nostrils flared, scanning the world for predators thirsting for their blood. Each step was made as on glass, a foot set down, withdrawn, shiveringly replaced. They inched forward, lured by the succulence saturating the air.

Her heart was beating, the silk twirled round her fingers. Hands shivering with suspense, she watched the creatures draw ever nearer her irresistible trap.

The cider from the fermented fruit moistened their coat as they feasted on her bait. There was a premature twitch in the silk, and within a second they were all gone. Their silver breath faded slowly, tracing their path.

She twirled the silk hard round her fingers, turning them blue. All that wait for nothing. And it was all her fault.

Recovery

I feel better now, having done what I wanted to do. One’s heart speaks true; others cannot know. Even if it was foolish, it was best for me. I feel better now. I can recover; face another week.

Spectator

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It’s raining rivers and my street is a pond. A mallard is watching me from afar, through the curtain rain. I feel invisible, like glass. That stare; the bird isn’t blinking. It’s still. As if it knows all the secrets I hide.

Tussilago

I found Tussilago by the water’s edge. All is well now, on the surface. The clock is ticking in the silence. I wonder if everything I do is wrong.

It’s Raining

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It’s raining, but the dams protecting my emotions are still whole. Far up in the mountains, upon the snow-covered peaks there was a downpour. I don’t think it was snow; it feels harsher than that. I think it was rain; droplets of water that fell from silver skies, pouring off the sides of the mountains and down onto the valleys below. I think my dams are about to burst, the water wants to flow, down, down, down and seep into the ground that hasn’t been watered for so long.

Water is very different from everything else. It is. And still it is not. If I stick my fingers into it I can feel that it is wet; I can feel its watery lips gently caress and kiss my skin. But what is the feeling of water; is there any such thing? What if water is an illusion, very much like life, and me, myself?

I am overcome with emotion; there’s a storm brewing inside. I’m fumbling in the dark and everyone is waiting for me to fall. They support me, but they don’t do it will all of their heart. They think I’m insane, that I’m crazy, that I’m mad. maybe I am, but the storm pushes me forward. It feels so right, yet I know there can only be pain in the end.

But all addicts are addicted to their drug, that’s why they can’t stop. There’s this ecstasy of taking it, and no abyss can deter them from taking it again. And still it hurts, and it feels so good. And all you want is for it to go away. But when you see it leave, you freak, you cry, because you don’t want to lose it. So you catch it again, caress it and kiss it and say you’ll never part.

Life is torture, but feeling nothing at all would be death.

And still, hidden among the raging clouds that obscure the snow-covered fells, I know that there is hope. It’s tangible. But maybe it is because I want it to be. Maybe it’s a bird of hope that’s made of glass. When I touch it it’s going to break, because it was made for hands that aren’t mine.

I shiver, because I don’t want to see that bird of hope flying among the raging clouds. I don’t want to see it, because if I ever catch it, how can I know it will not break?

It’s raining. And I’m still here.

On Reverse Wizardry

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Through a recommendation (I shall restrain myself so as to not bore you with the details — so do not tempt me) I was introduced to Nietzsche through his collection of aphorisms in “Human, All Too Human”. I found a copy in the university library — admittedly, there were numerous copies, but since I only had use for one, that is what I borrowed. The book has been my companion on my long commutes since.

Ah, indeed, I do realise that makes me appear a slow reader, if I divulge that I have had it for three weeks, which translates to 30 hours of train rides — but, to my defence, every morning and every evening I travel through rather mundane British countryside; which never the less manages to be among the most beautiful scenery I have ever beheld. Half my time on the train is thus dedicated to pressing my nose against the glass of the window, studying the hills and fields that I know so very well — almost by heart — as if I seek some deeper truth I hope thusly shall be revealed.

So, shall the time I spent reading the work be summarised, it is probably closer to 15 hours, which I believe a more accurate estimation. And, Nietzsche himself stated in a version of the preface that “I betray the fact that this book is hard to understand –that it stimulates confusion.” I cannot say it stimulated confusion, but the act of understanding someone else’s thoughts has always been a laborious one.

Never the less, this afternoon, not long after I had departed London, I could close the book and declare myself done; I had read and considered the last set of aphorisms, and I could turn to the — perhaps paramount — task of understanding them fully; at least to the best of my ability.

One of the last aphorisms is #627: Living and Experiencing:

[W]e are finally tempted to divide humanity into a minority (a minimality) of those who understand how to make a great deal out of very little and a majority of those who understand how to make very little out of a great deal; indeed, we encounter those reverse wizards who, instead of creating the world out of nothing, create a nothing out of the world.

Yes, admittedly, Nietzsche was an existentialist, and a pondering such as this is not at all unexpected. What caught my eye, however, was that it rang so true in its appeal; the irony in the observation being that although it is within human ability to see beauty wherever one turns, it is also human to fail to hone this ability — this talent.

Maybe — I am merely philosophising on my own, inadequate level here — the ability to see the world as a beautiful place (to be a wizard) is innate, only that it is lost as the human creatures outgrow their childhood to be lost in the present, too occupied with the mundane to realise that beauty is plentiful therein.

I am the eldest of a cinquain of sisters, and have thusly been blessed in appreciating the vastness of the infant mind, despite my own tender age, as I have seen my sisters grow up alongside myself. In regards to one’s own view of the world it is simple — too simple — to grow forgetful, and it is near impossible to remain objective. But in regards to the world-view of others it is easier to avoid subjectivity.

When I think of my sisters as they outgrew their infancies, I think of smiling faces with glittering eyes; the sparkle therein being the fire of wonder. And sometimes, as I recall this imagery, I think that a mature mind in a baby’s all-seeing apparition would go mad with the stream of influence to which it is exposed — for a child sees everything that the world offers. They are purely objective.

A young child does not pay much attention to the constructs of the world; what they see is the world as it is. They can crawl in what seems the most insignificant of spaces only to return with a treasure which is trash to everyone else. But to the child whose treasure it is, it is a part of the world into which they have been brought; their infantile minds believing that it is utter and complete truth, having no opinion about the worth — or lack thereof — of existence. If something is, then it is; a child’s world is not more complicated that so.

Many people fail to hone this ability to see the little within the large as they mature and grow up. They no longer see the innate beauty of things, but pass judgement upon it instead; they reverse the wizardry with which their childhood was endowed. Maybe that is why I am the only one on the train who childishly presses her nose against the glass as we fly across the countryside; I see such beauty in a world that others consider perfectly mundane, somehow, perhaps, who knows, having escaped the reversal that defines the adult mind.

Yes, to the defence of the native Britons, I am an infant in their corner of the world; but as a person, I have grown and matured into adulthood. In that sense, I am them. And still, they bury their faces in the blotted ink of the newspaper, whilst I breathe silver upon the glass of the carriage. My mind still retains the infancy theirs have suppressed; the reversal robbing them of the ability to see the beauty of it all.

I think this is very much at the world’s loss, and I believe there would be such benefit if “mature minds” could only kneel like wizards in the grass once in a while, having found a hidden treasure that although being worth noting, still manages to be worth the world.

Although I readily admit this is a liberal interpretation, I think this is what Nietzsche meant~.