Schopenhaur, like Buddha, said that all life was suffering, that in order to free ourselves from the endless cycle of boredom and stress we have to relinquish our desires and relent to a peaceful construct some place above and beyond our emotions; in Schopenhaur's world there was no room for love except as an instinct, a feral passion, a survival mechanism. Love, after all, is a desire, a hiccup between idleness and distress.
Boredom inspires me.
Stress compells me to action.
Nietzsche wanted us to confront a demon's curse to live life again and say, yes, gladly, please, and not be frozen in place in terror or tears. What he seemed to be saying was yes, there is pain, there is horror, split wrists and broken hearts and needles and gossip and gore. What he seemed to be saying was what Ferlinghetti was saying when he said:
"The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then".
Because there's a lot of ugliness between birth and the reaper, but baby, there's a lot of beauty too.
Nietsche wants us to confront a demon's curse, our palms open and suppliant, and say, for all that misery and depression, for all the times I've been drunk-sick and dumb, what I remember and anticipate are those moments of neon at night, trembling fireflies in the darkness, moonlight, laughter, love, and beauty.
Do you remember Halloween? What recalls me to that night was not sitting, sobbing against the asphault cold but laying next to you soft in the light around three a.m. I sang to you, and it holds true today: "You're worth the worry and you're worth the pain. You're worth the trouble, I would do the same. If we all went back to another time, I would love you over."
You smiled at me, that face that darkness could kill, that sleepy symmetrical smile that kills me every time and you said, "There's my girl."
Last night (five months and several life times gone by) your skin was the color of amber alcohol and autumn leaves, speckled by sunlight. Your eyes were burning money, green grass under bare feet in June. Your sensation was alone in a snowfall in winter, silent all around, and I felt so alive, so alive. Because its my joy that defines me, and your presence that makes this sensation so abundantly clear.
I would do it again.
Live several incarnations of expired paternity, paper sacks full of ashes, supermarket rebellions, crying mothers, the pain of seventeen and loveless, lay the world out as the spoils of war, again, again, all for the joy and the feeling you bring.
It's so good to be alive.
-Psyche
twice sixteen - 14 January, 2016
Hey--what's going on? - 11 April, 2008
I wasn't cool - 30 July, 2004
something you wouldn't believe if you saw it. - 11 May, 2004
Going to 17th and U - 27 April, 2004