Do not go gentle into that good night

"Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

- Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night

Human beings are bizarre and anomalous creatures. We desire change at an inherent and perhaps even primal level, yet we simultaneously abhor and rebuff the very thing we crave.

Perhaps this is because, at our essence, we prefer to embrace comfort in the face of the unknown. We would rather avert our gaze than stare down, way beyond the precipice, into the endless void below.

I have always regarded myself as the type of person who constantly asks, "Do I dare disturb the universe?", and without hesitating, replies emphatically with a resounding "But of course".

Yet, is it really so despicable to turn toward comfort rather than espouse uncharted territories, particularly in our weakest moments, those of fear? Or is that the time in which we are required to delve into those unexplored depths with the most reckless abandon?

That is the unwavering, and likely unsolvable problem, I suppose. That is, the impenetrable question of the human essence, of how to define it, of how to negotiate it.

There is no definitive answer. The human condition is fluid and constantly manipulated by forces both exterior and interior to it. We can only decide how we wish to navigate our existence.

The rest is just ashes in the wind.

Love & light,
M xx

Night Film

“Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?” 

― Marisha Pessl, Night Film

I felt my life was mostly the live action epitome of existentialism - existentialism incarnate - with fragmented bursts of normalcy. My reality a single extended exhalation. I felt frustrated, angry, anxious, confused, but mostly, sad.

After a fitful night spent thrashing around between the suffocating sheets unable to embrace the solace of sleep, I finally managed to fall into a disturbed and restless slumber long after the sun had risen. 

I awoke less than an hour later, unsettled, an aching sense of discontent lingering like stale smoke around my shoulders and collar bones. These nightmares are frequent and unyielding.

Love & light,

M xx

Waiting for Godot

“Estragon: I can't go on like this.

Vladimir: That's what you think.” 

- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Over the past year and a half I have written sporadically. Wine soaked proclamations of love. Hopeless pleas of regret, sorrow, and irreversible anguish. Wallowing in misanthropic delusions my only solace. Tiny self-indulgent scriptures reserved only for me, to desperately clutch onto in self-inflicted moments of turmoil. Yet little of worth has been spilt from my quill.

Being creatively stifled has had an inherently crippling effect on me. I move through the world in a subdued state. Life passes me by in a swirl of muted colours that mirrors my jaundiced perception of reality. I have been completely stunted, entirely incapable of creative expression. A hollow shell of a human being trying to make sense of a nonsensical paradigm. Grappling for the energy to merely carry out the motions.

I fear I have become inexorably maudlin. Like a sad clown on the worst kind of summers day. Balmy and suffocating. The Great Pagliacci. Past his prime. Melted soft serve dripping down his pudgy fingers and wrists onto his chubby lap. Jaded and alone on the isolating path to self-destruction. 

To be entirely truthful, I have no idea where I am going. I am not where I expected to be at this point in my life. But really, who can predict these things. 

I tried picking up Bukowski but he only served to reaffirm my melancholy. The truth is, I am not entirely sure that we are ever capable of truly figuring it out. So we sit, drinking our cheap Scotch and sucking on our Marlboros, hoping for some inkling of enlightenment. 

But honestly, enlightenment is a lot like Godot. We can sit and wait and wax lyrical about our own conceptions of what it might be, but, like Godot, it repeatedly fails to arrive. The play ends, the house lights turn off and we are left in the dark, alone, no closer to to enlightenment than we were before. 

To prophesize that it is all doom and gloom, though, would be an insult to the truth. What other point to life is there than to grab onto the fragments of happiness that are flung our way and hold onto them with the utmost vehemence? Like a child unwilling to part with its favourite toy.

It only takes one person to alter our perceptions of reality, to banish the darkness and expose the cracks of light beyond the abyss, albeit in rare and infrequent effusions. If you happen to stumble across this person, do not let them go. You might not find another like them again.

Love & light,

M xx