“Have you approached the bareness? A kind of skulking before the spirit, amongst the living, yet beyond the stubborn soul, where indifference pries itself into one’s instincts in order to go on living; marching down on the thunder claps of hesitancy with a wide open determination, vast enough to incorporate their power; obsessive enough to continue moving forward?”

–

“Just this once, give up all your memories and embrace the sensation of the ever present void, that “blank check” of creation, dashing itself upon the shores of discernment, not as a conqueror, but as an all-pervading “what will be,” a kind of sempiternal foundation to which an eternity of constructions may put themselves upon. It does justice to life, much as you believe the opposite, if you could but draw nature in the figure of your imagination instead of your mind.”

–

I lay on the floor. Suddenly it felt like my body was a mound, under the soil and covered in earth. From out of this mound grew flowers, the roots of which were underground, tangled up with my body, growing from my organs. Though buried beneath I could perceive the flowers, I could feel their bloom, feel them grow, feel them age as if through seasons. I felt and became these flowers dying, withering and crimping until they laid low. And then suddenly a tree burst from the mound, rising into the air, fully grown, with huge robust limbs and a solid trunk; the flowers were the source of this new life; my organs were the source of it, and it grew from my body.

–

“He was an incredibly sensitive soul. If you ever sat and looked at him for a long period of time it was if he was carrying the weight of the world’s emotions. You could look into his eyes and see the entire world, all the pain and suffering, but all the pleasure and joy as well.

Most people run from that kind of sensitivity, he never did, but it took its toll, and I’m sure more than once he regretted and hated how sensitive he was. But he never betrayed it because he knew it would be a lie.”

–

How does one survive the challenges associated with understanding the mysteries of life? By that I mean the great wonders and the unfathomable beauty that survive without reason or a lasting explanation, always as an incomplete answer, like a divided number with a constant remainder. Do we survive by taking pleasure in the mystery itself, finding peace in the fact that it is a mystery with no complete answer? By indulging in the mystery, by accepting the unanswerable quality as somehow the source of its majesty?

What is an answer after all? Does knowing how a flower grows increase the splendor of watching it bloom?

–

He did not want to live, but he did not want to die; he wanted be alive and to feel life, and for that reason, living, living in a way connected with the expectations and norms of society, felt pointless, unreal, like the life of a mannequin.

“Why live when one can be alive? Yes exactly!” he thought.

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Incited to feel the heart of attraction itself, lofted into the realm of a source found past to nowhere; moving beyond to a place without motive; leaving intention itself behind?

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