Black Path

There comes a time when I sit in my room, lights out, alone, and all I can feel is that numbing, rising sensation of the darkness closing in around me.

It came, I fled, running down the pathways of antiquity, Dumas, Melville, Chekov, and so many names and faces that I can't remember them all, just the same look in their eyes, same pit in their hearts, same search in the souls, same as the one I feel. And they open their mouths, forming words that I've never heard, a long drone that I can't block out, telling me what I can't ever hope to understand.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm not strong enough, maybe it's the fact that I'm not smart enough, and yet when the darkness came crashing down, I found there was only one thing to do.

I opened up my heart.

And in an instant all the demons of the world rushed in, all the hatred of the world rushed in, all the pain I know and some I don't came to me and beat on me and made me realize what I had truly asked for was not something that was meant to be understood, the kind of thing the kind of knowledge that drives men insane, the kind of thing that is a deeper truth than humanity is even capable of understanding.

Yet I seek it. Every single night, in the face of every moon, in the bottom of every bottle, in the depths of every ocean, in the words of every song, in the heart of every man, woman, and child, because the answer is out there, I know it is, I've seen it there, I've heard it whisper to me from the graves of the dead gods of this small, blue place, their gravestones a monument to the truth they found, but even once they found it, they could only know it, but they couldn't say or write or sing or dance and for the eternity they lived they lived to try and express it, but they never could.

I want to know what it was they knew, Lethe, Poe, and Frost. I want to know what it was they saw, what they heard, the call of the universe, expressionless, effortless, fathomless, defying all attempts to measure it. Science can't tell me what I feel, science can't do shit to it because they can't see it, but I feel it, and I know you feel it too, and that's why you read these words I write to you, why you know you are searching to. For what? Who knows. But, fuck, just let me through! I have to carry on, I have to keep putting one foot before the other, straining, stepping, reaching, grasping, seeking, blinking in the darkness all around me, trying to see in this land with no sun.

Why here? Why do I look here?

Because I'm searching for what can't be seen, and everything under the sun can be seen, so I have to go where it is not. It makes no sound, has no form, has no life, is nothing that the living are capable of knowing, and so I pray, I exert myself, trying to reach a moment of unforeseen elevation, transformation, debarkation from this planet, from this form, from this limited, circular-reasoning mind.

I don't know if I'll succeed, I don't know if what I know is truth, I don't know if truth is what I seek, I don't know if truth is what I want, all I know is I can't live your simple life, I can't work your simple job, I can feel it in my stones that I will never get satisfaction from anything under the sun because everything under the sun is old, dry, and dying and I must press on, cross that darkened horizon, dive into the blackest pit of the Beyond, and if I don't make it back, I'm sorry, but I'll be gone, lost to the sands of time, consumed by the dust, for that is all we are, or so they keep trying to tell me.

Such a short time, such a small place, such pitiful excuses to stay locked, trapped, cannot escape, but I wont let myself be defined, not even by myself, and I will continue on, press out past the shelf of the Never, beyond the unknowable Nothing, through the fields of madness, picking poppies on the way. And if I don't find what I'm looking for, I still wont admit defeat, because this body is limited, but I, I endure for

ETERNITY.