Midnight Craze

under a bright moon,
man uttered a voiceless thought
—Silence answered back.

Paperboat wayfaring

The sea that is life is rather more viscous than it would seem at first glance. It springs back if pressed at, the viscid consistency is playful. Amorphous and blandly colorful, this mass extends from one end of infinity to the other, and (on the perpendicular axis), from one end of Time to the opposite end. From the surface down, its depth is of such baffling unfathomability that it is usually presumed bottomless. Overhead, scattered stars twinkle in an irregular melody, suspended in a low-hanging sky. The air is powdery, crumbly almost; or rather, it has that quality of being almost solid, yet insubstantial.

To the crew in the paper boat, days pass by in a haze, uncounted and numberless; each day is a solo performer in an interminable and magical parade of little grains of sand, spiraling ever downwards and seeping through. It’s tempting to write, if only a little, about the habitual tempests of fractals and hurricanes of quantum mechanics, the occasional still aeon in doldrums, of seagulls and mirages of warm shores that dissolve back into the ocean, or of the way the open skies boast unfaltering beauty in their volatile semblance. It is an almost instinctive longing– if all this could be written down and kept! Indeed, and Man could have libraries of nothing but delightful stories, and countless archives of long essays analyzing each incident by detail. Surely that would be lovely, except then what remains of life would be lost.

When one doesn’t concern oneself too much about them, memories just put themselves away is some corner of one’s head. They grow ripe and are sweetened with age, and sometimes they seep through into passerby thoughts, which eventually bloom into actions. Every mishap leaves its little sand-grain of a mark, some sort of impression upon us, without which we would be some other, different person, however slightly. So, maybe, Man would be better off living rather than watching himself live. (You know, if it was the afterlife that consisted of endless bookshelves and a myriad of varying interpretations and analyses of one’s life, eternity wouldn’t actually be too bad.)

But of course, no man is quick enough to seize every second of his life. Surely a few will stumble over their own eager feet, while running under their heavy “Carpe Diem!” banner– because a life lived to impress is a futile one, as there is no such audience to our follies. Still others might fall into the cruel delusion of dreaming that they wake in the morning under a fresh, clean sky and set off about their day, while oblivious to the fact that they are still asleep. But perhaps, it is regret over what we miss that makes what we do manage to grasp taste all the more sweet.

Indeed, what would a life be without wanting?

But alas, it would merely be incomplete.

Beauty and pleasure are fleeting things, so it is but all we can do to taste them to their fullest, celebrating their ephemeral character instead of lamenting it. Hedonism is not cynical, on the contrary. Using our hearts to feel and our minds to think are but natural, practical notions. Tell me, can you find anything more worthwhile to do in the interim between birth and death, but to enjoy the excursion?

Wind Blowing Past the Coming Night

Ah, can you feel it? The sweet and savoury scent of the Christmas wind in a generally hot place, indicating that security and love are present somewhere, unseen but waiting to be felt. You walk adrift, not controlling your own feet yet feeling that your sense of direction cannot possibly be wrong.

The trees move with the soft wind, tingling and shuddering with some delight the human race cannot know of, wishing to fly along the trail of the gust. The sound of the world seems to conspire in your favour, granting you a slight moment of omniscience and hope. Even the other people seem to be smiling, perchance with the same thought circling about your head. Your skin seems to be so glad that for a moment, while your mind is in an altered state, it commands the entire body to abandon ground and rise up to the clouds, with that almost-divine wind, unto the stars and beyond, unto a white shore in a distant planet, unto rocks and pyramids of silver glass; unto a future so bright and beautiful, that your eyes desire and see the whole frame as well. The wind has brought you peace, comfort, and hope for a bright world. Indeed, it has… Your ears hear a whole symphony of instruments resonating in perfect balance. You can feel it, you can hear it, you can see it, you can smell it, you can taste it… you can almost touch it… Good Lord, you are almost there! The wind is taking you to the place you are meant to be!! Rejoice!!!

And then you feel it…

Blast…It was a dream… nothing more.

Blast… You rose so high that you fell altogether lower.

Blast! It was a bloody dream! Nothing more!

Well, be thankful. I haven’t had that dream, yet I lie in your same hole.

Lukewarm

Man sat under the radiant sun one of those eternal evenings. He could not help but to feel and admire what was around him. As Zephyr swept the broad plains that lie before his sight, Man felt a burning desire; the craving to be, even though just for an instant—ephemeral as himself—, the mighty wind. The thought of wind flew across his mind evoking thoughts of times long-gone, and even those of times to come. Man imagined the past and the future merging as one in Present. Zephyr had seen the days of yore, and would live to see the death of Father Time.

Man was overwhelmed to think of things so far beyond his reach. Desperate he did cry out in distress; a cry so deep it could have made consciousness itself give a shriek. The wind proved impassible at his screams. To this, Man broke into laughter where he stood—the wind roaring around him, menacing— and thought a rather comforting thought; that, as immutable as the wind was, it was unable to feel. It could run across endless fields and shake forests rooted in ancient grounds, yet it could not take pleasure in it nor appreciate the solemnity of the dignified trees. The wind was on the skin like soft petals, yet it could not feel the tenderness caressing back.

Zephyr, with all its might, could not entertain thought; without thought, unaware of himself, Man could not possibly exist—and what business has man, then, to be the wind if the wind does not think, does not feel? Man’s craving died, gradually decomposing into lukewarm afterthoughts.

Sundown

Profound thoughts aroused
under the intense twilight,
when day and night meet.

Le Penseur and his vexations

In the end, what we should pay attention to is not our thoughts in themselves, but what we think about our thoughts.

If we latch onto a thought, it is not the thought which matters, but the latching. No matter how genius a thought it could have been, if we adhere to it it stagnates and we are not geniuses, but close-minded idiots.

If we advertise a thought, we achieve a similar result.

If we are reluctant to harbor a thought, then this thought has shamed us.

If we lovingly and intensely admire a thought, only then we are well-justified to think it.