The human world hangs in a dark universe. Like a glowing, red terracotta lamp. The kind that lights up living room corners of people convinced of their aesthetic tastes and can afford convictions. Little black bugs, flies and mosquitoes buzz around the warm spot of life, swarm it in increasing frenzy. Lust for life hums in relief. The vast expanse of lifeless, lightless universe around it waits patiently. Like a pet python that knows the chicken thrown inside its cage has no escape. Certainty gives one the patience of a saint.
And the world goes on spinning. Ever so fast. But not more so. In its pitch-perfect way. Every day, every hour, every millisecond spinning toward an absolute unknown. Perfect in its calculated motion. Perfect on its axis. Spinning. Like a merry-go-round. Round and round and round and round. Nauseate if you must, but don’t fall off.
Don’t take your feet off the ground. The ground is haloed. It is the warm spot of life. Where the sun doesn’t turn you into cinder. Where the moon doesn’t suck life out of your lungs. Love, laughter, lust, even if available in carbon copies made in triplicate, give you reasons to dream. Holding hands and smiling babies divulge meaning. Sustenance is to be found. Stay on the ground. Off it there’s only floating emptiness. Without light, without life. Causeless. Ceaseless. Helpless isolation in a darkness without end. Floating in dead cold. Going nowhere but going all the same. It’s so black out there the Grey in here is beguiling. Don’t take your feet off the ground. Nauseate if you must but don’t fall off.
You have seen them before. The fallen. They are everywhere.
At the bottom of ravines and cliffs.
Splattered on concrete pavements next to tall buildings.
Hanging from ceilings and trees.
Bloating in sewers and decimated on train tracks running through every city.
You have heard the stories. The shotgun in the mouth, empty sleeping pill bottles by the couch,
needle sticking out of bleeding veins, an overdose of something not really sane.
You have seen them stare mutely from obituary columns that say – You Left Us Too Early.
In Fond Memory, it is not.
It’s a scar.
The mark of sheer brutality.
Incomprehensible as all that lies in the dark is. Unreasonable, it is.
The calling card left behind by some invisible, invincible enemy.
Whose cold, calm hands drain away the red of life with manic precision.
Leaving us with the blue of pain, and then, the black of absence in our lives.
The black void of goodbyes never said and the hellos never to be said again.
Of loss. Of grief that pales only because the horror is too much.
The living cannot dwell in emptiness for long.
We must keep spinning. In the dark. Against the dark. Spin.
Round and round and round and round. Nauseate if you must but don’t fall off.
There’s some white in grey but none in black. Hold on.
