Cruel! Distaste and bitterness cling to my chest, sink to my stomach like a hunger that will never be satisfied. All at once, these things comes and they kill me even as they keep me alive. The suffering is the only thing that makes me real, to know that in this tortured sense of existence, in this penetrating loneliness that, if nothing else, at least I am alive and feeling, that my thoughts can grasp the surface of this startling existence. The words cascade across my mind and bore themselves into the images provided to me. Thoughts upon thoughts of endless tortures, of things that are pained and are paying, never ending through the countless breaths, through the rise and fall of days–somehow hurting again and again. In this, that which I see, I become aware of my own existence as a pained being. Nausea.

I read these works and watch these movies in such a short time they overwhelm the senses. Plato declares a world without regard to sensibility,  lost all sense of direction. Franz Fanon divulges the twisted existence of the forever suppressed ”black.”  The Memories of Matsuko tear my heart to pieces, give me a glimpse of God, these people who, in all unlikely attempts to be nothing but good people, find themselves in the worst hell imaginable–and still wake up again the next day to live on, to dream, to forever retain that “be”. And this, most striking of all, Galatea 2.2, brings it all together in words and images that are too much for me to comprehend; the dam has collapsed once again and I am rent asunder. I am in pieces, my mind shattered by the own reality of my being-here. Loneliness, never understood, never comprehended, confronted daily with the endless struggle that we–us insufferable semi-conscious, wistful creatures–lay before us, fighting, bickering, hurting, competing–all for the next breath, for the hope that this one will contain within it some ounce of joy and understanding.

This is life, and I feel it. I feel it so that it becomes my essence, my core. It is the depth on which I function, the never ending scream that forever contains a sigh and a smile. It is insanity, to take another breath. All our sanity is unraveled by our own existence.  And here we are in tatters on the floor, strips of cloth for our pained minds to hover over and read like horoscopes.

I am all words. This is me, right here. Touch me. I have few stories to tell and they all have the same ending. They end with these same thoughts, the same abstract refrain. So we move on. In suffering I float above the clouds; in the disembodied pain I feel myself, in the ether I have become grounded in reality. The ground on which I stand is the blood of a billion wistful hearts. Their existence matters to me and we are enlivened by each other. Thank you, I declare to these dark red ashes, for allowing me to feel through this startled unavoidable obsession for one more day.