The Quick and the Dead

I am fighting an existential battle. Not a war of bullets and blood, but of brains and soul. I have never read Nietzsche, but I like to imagine him a macabre sort of fun at parties in life despite the public perception of his posthumous reputation.

I don’t know what the purpose is to life. Why celebrate and laugh; why create and read; why travel and live? I have no idea. Death comes for us all. Could be a brain aneurysm, could be an auto accident, could be old age after 110 years. As the Lord Denethor muses in the Return of the King: “why do the fools fly? better to die sooner than late!” meaning that at least a heroic death before the gates of the White City of Minis Tirith is preferable to a long, lingering life.

Of late, I seem to have clothed myself in the cloak of despair and embraced the cold, clammy hand of meaninglessness. I go about my day. I smile. I pat the dog. But there is no joy behind my eyes or in my heart. Why should there be?

When death comes, and come it will, and no one will well remember my name, my voice, or long think on my deeds, what is the purpose of breathing words, or etching a name, or doing any deeds at all? I have no idea. Is doing things their own reward? Is living for the moment, the here and now, and for the immediate alive-ness of it all? If so, I find little pleasure in any of it.

I used to write poems, short stories, essays. Now my pen is full of ink and my page is dry as the desert. I used to take pictures, capture the beauty and fun of things. Now I have 24 exposures and the film, though wound, is blank. I used to live to enjoy, and to laugh, and to experience, but now I linger. I have a friend who longs for an ending, and I don’t know what to say for I would need to have it said to me.

I’ve quoted before on this blog words of lifting up, of hope, and of courage. I read them now and I feel not their import or their meaning. Their ringing is muted, and hollow, like a broken bell unable to resound loudly throughout the town. A thunk that quietly, and suddenly, peters out into air and dirt.

What am I to do? Unless a quick end renders me dead, I may look forward to more years yet on this dying rock than I have yet lived. I used to spend my time burning in the fires of rage, and feeling deep things. Dark, but deep things. Now the palette has breadth, but lacks the depth it once had. All through a glass darkly?

I want to create, to live, to enjoy, to smile and feel it. I cannot. I don’t know what purpose there is in any of those things. I am not suicidal. I don’t want to die: I want to live. I guess I don’t know how.

There is no happy ending to this one, no hopeful speech or rousing hurrah. Just a crying out, not in pain for that would require something that could feel pain, just a weak, pathetic shout of “Why!?”