The Worst of Times

Life has shown its true face: non-negotiable, leaving no room.

Everything around is illusory, yet presses right up before your eyes, leaving you nowhere to hide.

This is the worst of times: knowing what you want, but unable to get it; knowing you are drawing closer, but needing time.

Giving up was never an option. The only option is to move forward.

You are right here in the present, in the petty scramble for gain — no poetry and no faraway places, to hell with poetry and faraway places; I no longer believe in any of that. I still read novels, out of curiosity. A few days ago I read Gabriel García Márquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and desire churned in my body for over a week. The benefit was a profound sense that I am still alive, still have the urge to fuck over the whole world; the side effect was realizing how out of place I am — wherever you put me, I look wrong.

I also read The Little Prince, and forgot it as soon as I finished, feeling I would never meet such a thing, that it would always go on like this — rushing blindly, living carelessly.

I sleep later and later; there is never enough time, no way to idle. My eyes move from one screen to another; the moment I finally close them, my brain starts its racket, all stream of consciousness, from regretting the start to regretting having started, exhausting every possibility of how each thing might unfold — and the conclusion is still arising, dwelling, changing, ceasing; formation, dwelling, decay, emptiness.

Every turn of the body in memory, every glance, is laden with meaning: a snake hidden in the grass, a line of ash stretching a thousand miles.

Stay vigilant at all times. Time is no saint.