T H E E N D C O M M U N E

VI : An Obol for the Ferry-Man

Sometimes I want a respite from the ever awareness of death. I want a hole to retreat to, an opium embrace, a careless void in which to ever take refuge. n these moments I want to become a hermit of emotional reclusiveness, a stranger to angst, a prodigal son of hedonism. But that is a strange enterprise of a life, and certainly no healthy approach to dying. Sometimes it is so easy to become the cistern of human sin, to drink from oneself, to host feasts of indulgences in one's own very personal honor... to suck, taste the marrow of virtue, but to spit it out. To become disgusting and weak but for a moment, to incarnate the spirit of lazy, uncultured gluttony, and to give oneself the luxurious, self-coddling privilege of simply ignoring what should not be ignored. Sometimes I want shout as if a child: “you, go away, wicked one!”, for I don't want to be reminded all the time that human life is weird and absurd and, on top of that, dark and nefarious and mischievous... I am very well aware already, and I just want a breather, a break, a short pause sometimes. But a short break easily becomes long then longer, when you despise what you ought to return to. But however much this inclination of escape and this vulnerable call to spiritual shelter pumps my heart and coarses through my veins, explodes in my mind, I cannot close my eyes to what I want hiding from, however much I want it closing these eyes. Truly, one has to find a cave obscure, a Hira of one's own, in order to flee the ever presence of the false kings, the doxies for celebrity and power, the thieves and those cold of heart, the dishonest jesters, the propagators of sin and evil, the molesters and tormentors, the wicked influencers and corruptors sermoning their pugnacious histrionics, and all the floggers and strikers and intruders and attackers moving about in the dead of our nights. But whenever I feel this need to escape, and when I so do, when I allow myself to get stuck in these morasses of self-pity and sloth masqueraded as moral indignation, afterwards I feel a heavy feeling of guilt, of shame and of vitriolic self-contempt. Because I am not some lazy, torpid person or some promulgator of limp, idle ideals - my eye is fixed on the sun! And as a pinch of salt into the sores of a world stricken aburst, I continue my rogue spiritual terrorism: God condemned me hereto, and I shall raise a living hell just for that very reason.