Entry 14 - On Suffering and Death <Date Illegible>

There’s something very cold in me. Something that is not, quite, human. I want to see it. Really, I do. But it always hovers just out of reach. Sometimes it seems like if I just strip away the social graces and outer superficiality, I could almost see it. But I can’t. It feels like a mistake to let those things go. As if I couldn’t get them back. I question things I already know the answers to, wander when I should sit. I’m cruel. Makes me wonder if there is something about me that is different or if everyone has this and I’ve just been blind to it in other people.

It comes sliding along my skin and pooling in my eyes, darkening, softening rigid lines. Proud bones that know only sharpness. The same eyes that watched before—cool, hard, like frozen earth all locked away. Thawed. Languid, soft touch over the hard edges, silk to the stone, still caught in that statue’s paralysis. Unmoving, white marble carved and polished moves, breathes.

Textures form breath by breath. Waves of hair, supple skin scented and elegant. Dark eyes open, for one, deep and waiting. Watching. Holding the world in that first gasp, the first breath that whispered change across white skin.

Breathing together now, waiting, balanced in frozen stillness hearing words that will never be said, seeing pictures that will never exist, feeling…deep first. A rumbling in the core, beating with her heart, slipping along tendon, muscle and sinew gently. The beginning and the end. Both. Even as I have her, it fails. Liquid eroding stone. A heart beat. One, two…and nothing more.

It seems as though there is something missing in life. Some color gone unseen, some sound detectable from its absence. There is something missing from the good I eat, something missing in the air, from conversation, art, language. I like to think that magic-that undefinable ether has been blocked from me somehow. That I’m waiting for that immaterial touch that gives true identity. A name. A real one. Like it’s something I’ve forgotten.

Does everyone have that hole in their soul? A hole that can’t be filled with anything? Only distracted? Sex, drugs, hobbies, entertainment. Anything to avoid that crushing, melancholic grief. The only thing that eases me is in physical challenges (sport) and really good movies or books. Sometimes, entertainment just makes that hole deeper. Why? Like just seeing all the wants and needs and possibilities in those books and movies makes me emptier. Why? What if nothing ever eases that? What if desperation is the natural state of life?

There’s so much loneliness.

Is happiness just accepting the constant grief? Like filling up the hole in your soul, opening your heart until it holds the entire expanse of existence and you can see compassion and love within the never ending cycles of hate and fear. Neither can exist without the other. Like with poison. Even the deadliest can be used for something, including healing, if taken correctly. Fear can be debilitating or enlightening. Overcoming it can give you confidence and strength that’s simply impossible to get any other way. Negative emotions, thought, actions can be seen as the best teachers. The best guides. Without them, you’d still be the uncarved block with no direction. Each choice makes you different. Alters the pattern slowly and subtly and the shadows give it depth.

Destruction and death can renew life- clear out the old to make room for new. Scrub out all the decay and purify it. No wonder Kali has such an interesting mythology.

The modern world seems shrouded in grey – in mediocrity and shades of deceit and self-deception. And, worst of all, bland conformity. Even West Point isn’t a school for warriors, it’s a factory for sameness. An interesting question will be whether I can survive there or if I’ll be morphed into something I can’t be proud of.

“Every generation takes from the past what it needs to make sense of itself.” If the purpose of life is self-discovery, is the purpose of death self-actualization? Realization of the spirit in its purest form?