Sunday 11 September 2011

The riddle of existence


Peeling away under the autumn moon, Jack sat awkwardly still amidst the night’s silence.  Blood pumping, blood rushing, layer by layer his skin dries and cracks before peeling off, floating calmly as it waves goodbye, down past his waist, down past his thigh, mute contact is made with the cold hard floor like winter’s snow, it melts, it is absorbed; back to source.  

Dying in the midst of mind madness, a flash of his delusional self breaches the boundaries of normality.  Like a schizophrenic atom, with no starting point and no destination, his eyes roll around fitfully stunned and dazed, starring out in a sea of pure purple haze.

The tiger can lick his cub but, like Jack, we can only lick our wounds.  No longer sound in mind, consciousness becomes fuzzy and stretched, time dilates to a ringing silence.  In the world Jack is, but out of it he remains.  He crawls in doubt and misery under the dusty carpet of youth, yet underneath this spell of his own terror, an optimistic thought blossoms like a Bonsai tree, and then dies as one.  Like lightening, it rips through the fabric of darkness with dazing shine, making the smallest drop of dew sparkle with vibrating colour and verve.  The heart once black turns red again.  A shine so sharp and white blinds Jack from the beaten track that lies; termites there may be on that road ahead, yet, his view becomes one with the sparrows; perfect knowledge and truth is fully acquired…slowly, though, he begins his descent into the dust below, that flicker of hope wilts away like a lonely flower, his plagued mind returns for another haunting.  In anguish Jack cries but sheds little tear; all the while Gaia sniggers silently under a rusty stone: “tis all an appearance, an illusion, a dream”.

Meditating beneath the great oak amongst the daffodils and worms, Jack puts existence on trial.  Yet, with every question thrown and thrashed, with every quip about the raging seas that kill, about the fox that kidnaps the chicken’s young, even of the dying petal that hangs; nature stands silent, nothing to say, nothing to justify, a silent witness to the sorrow of a single human being.  Raged and confused Jack turns to the shadows beneath him: “No meaning” they say, “You are one of us, welcome to the inverted world”.  Still, with every insect that passes by, with every leaf that falls, the door Jack walks out from is walked back through again.

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's very nice, Roberto. You make the absurdity and pain of human life so clear and colourful like this autumn leaf - so simple and at the same fascinating with its beautiful death...