Avez-vous vu le Fantome?
Man gets on a subway, dies, will anybody notice?...this post is not for the faint at heart, you have been warned, sorry rather tell ya first lol.
After all I have seen both imagined and real there is still one thing that i can't grasp. I was beginning to perceive that no matter what swirls in my mind or in front of my eyes i will never be able to grasp death, that moment precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are dead, and then in any case there is nothing to understand, or else you are not dead yet, and in that case, even with the rifle at the back of your head or the rope around your neck, death remains incomprehensible, a pure abstraction, this absurd idea that I, the only living person in the world, could disappear. Dying, we may already be dead, but we never die, that moment never comes, or rather it never stops coming, there it is, it's coming, and then it's still coming, and then it's already over, without ever having come. That's how I'm reasoning anyway, very poorly no doubt, but without your sanity I'm probably not doing so great.
For our lives are just that, a moment and then the end, quickly and unnoticed. For a long time we crawl on this earth like caterpillars, waiting for the splendid, diaphanous butterfly we bear within ourselves. And then time passes and the nymph stage never comes, we remain larvae-what do we do with such an appalling realization? Suicide, or course is always an option. But to tell you the truth suicide doesn't tempt me much anymore, I've danced that danced and played that funny game and yet here i sit telling you and you probably don't believe, not that i care. There is only one person (or two if you count the other person in my head) that needs to believe my past, and he lived it. If i was to resort to it again, i wouldn't play Russian roulette anymore, obviously that leaves the off chance of basic math that you'll walk away, hence...me...here. No if i was to do it again i would defiantly do it like this: I'd hold a grenade (hey if a uneducated nomad can make em outta spare car parts so can i) right up against my heart and go out in a bright burst of joy. A little round grenade whose pin I'd delicately pluck out before I released the catch, smiling at the little metallic noise of the spring, the last sound I'd hear, aside from the heartbeat in my ears. And then at last, happiness, or in any case peace, as the shreds of flesh slowly dripped off the walls. Let the cleaning women scrub them off, that's what they're paid for, poor girls. But as I said , suicide doesn't tempt me. I don't know why either-they say its addictive if you fail, hmm guess I'll never know. Maybe it's an old philosophical streak, perhaps, which keeps me thinking that after all we're not here to have fun. To do what then? I have no idea, to endure, probably, to kill time before it finally kills you. I'll stop there, we could go on forever.; I invite you to continue on your own, until to ground opens up beneath your feet. As for me, there is no need: for a long time already the thought of death has been closer to me than the vein in my neck, as that beautiful phrase in the Koran says. If you ever managed to make me cry, my tears would sear your face.
The conclusion of all this, if you'll allow me on more quotation, the last one, I promise, is, as Sophocles said so well: Not to have been born is best. Schopenhauer has written roughly the same thing: It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on Earth, every satisfaction is on transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer. Yes, I know, that makes two quotations, but it's the same idea: in truth, we live in the worst of all possible worlds. And ultimately we are all dead men...
After all I have seen both imagined and real there is still one thing that i can't grasp. I was beginning to perceive that no matter what swirls in my mind or in front of my eyes i will never be able to grasp death, that moment precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are dead, and then in any case there is nothing to understand, or else you are not dead yet, and in that case, even with the rifle at the back of your head or the rope around your neck, death remains incomprehensible, a pure abstraction, this absurd idea that I, the only living person in the world, could disappear. Dying, we may already be dead, but we never die, that moment never comes, or rather it never stops coming, there it is, it's coming, and then it's still coming, and then it's already over, without ever having come. That's how I'm reasoning anyway, very poorly no doubt, but without your sanity I'm probably not doing so great.
For our lives are just that, a moment and then the end, quickly and unnoticed. For a long time we crawl on this earth like caterpillars, waiting for the splendid, diaphanous butterfly we bear within ourselves. And then time passes and the nymph stage never comes, we remain larvae-what do we do with such an appalling realization? Suicide, or course is always an option. But to tell you the truth suicide doesn't tempt me much anymore, I've danced that danced and played that funny game and yet here i sit telling you and you probably don't believe, not that i care. There is only one person (or two if you count the other person in my head) that needs to believe my past, and he lived it. If i was to resort to it again, i wouldn't play Russian roulette anymore, obviously that leaves the off chance of basic math that you'll walk away, hence...me...here. No if i was to do it again i would defiantly do it like this: I'd hold a grenade (hey if a uneducated nomad can make em outta spare car parts so can i) right up against my heart and go out in a bright burst of joy. A little round grenade whose pin I'd delicately pluck out before I released the catch, smiling at the little metallic noise of the spring, the last sound I'd hear, aside from the heartbeat in my ears. And then at last, happiness, or in any case peace, as the shreds of flesh slowly dripped off the walls. Let the cleaning women scrub them off, that's what they're paid for, poor girls. But as I said , suicide doesn't tempt me. I don't know why either-they say its addictive if you fail, hmm guess I'll never know. Maybe it's an old philosophical streak, perhaps, which keeps me thinking that after all we're not here to have fun. To do what then? I have no idea, to endure, probably, to kill time before it finally kills you. I'll stop there, we could go on forever.; I invite you to continue on your own, until to ground opens up beneath your feet. As for me, there is no need: for a long time already the thought of death has been closer to me than the vein in my neck, as that beautiful phrase in the Koran says. If you ever managed to make me cry, my tears would sear your face.
The conclusion of all this, if you'll allow me on more quotation, the last one, I promise, is, as Sophocles said so well: Not to have been born is best. Schopenhauer has written roughly the same thing: It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on Earth, every satisfaction is on transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer. Yes, I know, that makes two quotations, but it's the same idea: in truth, we live in the worst of all possible worlds. And ultimately we are all dead men...
posted by Iudex Yasha at 12:45 AM
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