Visceral


Everyday / Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

I woke up this morning tasting life in my mind. Feelings, emotions, thoughts all compressed into one moment. 24 hours of these moments. Intense expression. Distance suppression. It seemed like I had floated away, and all that was left of me was free to wander. And see. And think. And feel. In visceral clarity.

I wonder how many have days like this? A day when you can just breathe the air, and feel it rushing through your nose? As I lay down to sleep in the afternoon, sunlight dappled the curtains. Light edged its way to my floor. And I slept. Deep, refreshing sleep that can only come on days when your senses are enhanced. Sleep works the other way for me – I struggle to sleep on most days because all life is dulled within me. On a day like this when life awakens, I can sleep. Almost forever it seems. People merged into their self. I felt like writing. I felt like peeling away all the layers I have carefully built up over the years. Layers that people wanted me to build. Some wanted me to be the ‘old’ self – in love with life and laughter, walking a road without a care, impulsive, and crazy. Yes, crazy. I don’t think I deviated from being crazy. The crazy here was the good madness – of living on the edge without ever crossing it because you know you can never be that mad. And then, I crossed it. I peered down the ravine, and tumbled headfirst on the rocks. When the head hurts, you call it a migraine. When your mind hurts, we call it madness. Craziness of the bad sort. And as my mind bled on the rocks, I watched as everything my soul held, including itself drifted itself out, away, and up. Lost in the blood.

Some others wanted me to ‘nice’ to them. Observe the courtesies of human communication or what I call the hypocrisies of talk. These wanted me to less sarcastic, and I did. My sarcasm drove them mad. If only they knew what madness really is! Today, as the sunlight dappled and kissed the curtain, and made sweet, fervent love to the dust clinging to those drapes. I realized its not my sarcasm that people fear. My sarcasm was never sarcasm. It was just truth couched in words not gentle. And it is that truth that people feared. I know that very often I can look deep into the curtains that people draw over their souls, and laugh at what they have kept in that room. I can feel sad. I can feel compassion. But, usually people don’t need THAT from me. They need only me to be a version they like. A version they are comfortable with. A version who will not tear down their carefully-built image of themselves. Should I be that version? Not anymore.

Somewhere is me. Somewhere within all the people’s perceptions of myself. Somewhere within my own perception is me. Egoistic, pompous filth I may be. But that bloodied mind of mine lives. And as long as it lives, then life does. The rocks it lay smashed on have turned crimson. Yet, there is a breeze, and my mind can lift itself in weariness and call out to its best friend – its soul. Its only mate.

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