Darling,
let us indulge indulgence,
that Epicurean cure.
Let touch be our salve,
my lips be your balm,
and let us yield
to what we feel —
what, my dear,
could be more real?
Let go of thought —
be free, my darling,
think not.
Break that dam,
embrace the rains —
surrender, my love,
surrender, and let your heart
take the reins.
And I look out to a sick, lonely world.
I am sick and lonely.
And I am enchanted by all of creation, its love and its beauty.
It’s love. It’s beauty.
And I am despondent
at the hatred and the venom,
the wrongness
and the blight.
I fear for the world
as the beast swallows the Sun —
cast are we
into the night.
But I’ve seen
a certain kind of Sunlight
fell from the heavens —
caught by none other
than the miraculous gleam
of my best friends’ eyes.
…
Life itself. I stare, I stare. It shifts, illusory, feigning fixedness. It is a solid liquid, the coldest fire, burning ice, benevolent evil, malevolent goodness. The darkness is blindingly bright, the light is its own shadow.
I’ll never know who I am. I mimic the world out of sheer adoration. Water! Water! Water! Just when I am certain of my reflection, I touch. Ripples spread outward, the image changes, now that’s the real you, what were you thinking? I touch again, the cycle continues. I would be Narcissus if there was a self to admire.
I was staring at a pond. The ponds are pupils. The pupils of every passerby. Every friend. Every enemy. Every world leader. Every vagabond. I see me, but it is not me, my selfhood is not localized, like a drop of water in the ocean claiming the ocean as itself — the ocean claims the drop as itself.
Individualism is a prison, you form a self and are separate. You defend your cell bars with your life.
Collectivism is a prison, fall into line. All of our Selves are nailed to pseudo-sacrificial crosses, die unto yourself for some greater, false “good.” Die for us. Die for us. Die for us.
Where is the freedom?
Is the freedom the liminal space between every opposite?
I have this thought, this suspicion,
that each of our greatest blessings are also necessarily our greatest curse,
and that each of our greatest curses can, if we should so choose, become our greatest blessings.
Desensitization, the enemy of presence, of gratitude. May I never forget what a gift it is to awake to a home filled not with loveless jabs, but with sweet song. That frayed nerve at the bottom of my spine will get the message eventually — that there is no threat to stay primed for. Time’s lazy waves will lap at this old rock. It will erode this old pain.
…
Periods of so-called solitude — they weren’t solitude at all. They were a rekindling of a forgotten connection.
The fall of modern humanity is in forgetting the beauty of what some may think is “anthropomorphic” projection; but truly do I tell you that we are always projecting ourselves onto the natural world — so if you see the natural world as lacking in soul, inanimate, and unintelligent… well, you get the point.
These periods of solitude can only be considered solitude if one regards the only relationships worth maintaining as being with other humans. Those are important; however, there are other highly important relationships widely forgotten.
So, when you see me talking to the Moon, the ocean, the stars, a tree… you might see insanity, but truly, I am remembering. I am honoring. I am learning. These great teachers always have lessons to whisper; sensitize yourself to the subtle. There is always something to be heard if one would only listen.
A life characterized by an inexplicable longing, an incommunicable yearning, that abates when basking in the sublime.
The spirit of the Romantic, erasure of the boundary between humanity and nature. Toes in dirt. Hand on bark, fingers tracing that natural Braille.
this world has told me so many times: “follow your gut. follow your gut.”
well, guess what i found out?
my gut’s full of shit.
The music of your laughter is color returning to the world; it is springtime after the longest winter.
Secrets of my being, secrets I’ve kept from myself.
Truths too painful to look at, covered in dust, buried without my consent, memories of me, buried from me, buried by me.
I’m cloaked in midnight. I extracted literal, concentrated midnight, fashioned it into fabric, and cloaked myself in it. And what of my desire to be seen? How, pray tell, am I to be known like this?
These competing desires to be known or to fade into obscurity. These competing desires to hide or to shine. These competing desires to love or to run.
For all of life, something must die. All life that you see is built on death. The whole of creation, the flow of life force itself through all of creation is the ouroboros. You are the snake that eats creation’s tail. You are the tail being eaten by creation’s serpentine mouth. All that sustains you died as it became you. As you die, so too will you sustain another life.
Take me to a cemetery so I can meditate on the secrets of creation. Take me to a graveyard that I might be confronted with truth.
Here’s the cruel reality of all that is, ever has been, or perhaps ever will be: all this suffering and all this chaos is a part of the jungle. Life itself. There are predators amongst humanity like there are predators in the animal kingdom. Just as a predator will kill and eat upon the flesh of another to sustain itself, so, too, are there predators amongst humanity who will, without remorse, exploit others to sustain themself.
Oh, and of this cruel, cold fact — would you like to know what makes it even more cruel, even more cold?
It isn’t the fact that, unlike the predators of the animal kingdom who will kill the prey they sustain themself upon — a mercy to be sure — humanity’s predators instead keep their prey alive while they feed. Yes, they vampirically suckle upon their blood, but they will leave just enough so their prey can stay alive and of value.
No, it isn’t that fact. It is the fact that, unlike the jaguar or puma or lion, who will stop killing after it’s had its fill, who will stop killing after its eaten and stuffed its stomach, there are humans who have bottomless pits for bellies. Forget the fact that they ignore all other ways to sustain themself without preying on their fellow humans; no, they will not just choose to be a predator where they did not have to, but they will also continue to prey on others far, far, far, far, far, far, far beyond what was ever needed to sustain themself.
We call this greed.
Is it wrong that I have such a fascination with your edges? That I wouldn’t mind if they were to leave red tally marks all over my body, one for each time I fell for you?
Is it wrong that I miss the sting?
Is it wrong that I miss the release? Is it wrong that my body longed for the pain, is it wrong that my spirit was already self-flagellating? I made what was inside outside; I wore the scars proudly to honor the pain inside me, I was done looking like I wasn’t in pain. I was done with the bleeding, the bleeding, the bleeding, the bleeding that was visible only to my own eyes.
It was like I just… at last… wanted to dive into my own suffering. I don’t want to hold it together, how long I’ve held it together. How long I’ve held it together, I don’t want to be held together. I want to be held, not to hold myself together, I want loving arms surrounding me, not barbed wires of repression and repression and repression and self-deception.
No, I ripped the barbed wire off and it left gashes bleeding all over my forearms, my thighs. That burn meant freedom.
I hope you can understand as fucked up as it sounds.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 