“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
1. God Gives Us What We Want
I should find love. Life is treason without it.
God gives us what we want. The dark little wishes that form like mushrooms under a steady night rain—lust, desire, envy, fallen stars.
One day you get it, and you lose it, and then begins the heart-twisting quest to get it back.
God gives us exactly what we desire—my fellow sufferers and scar-bearers of this awful magic—love—poison that flows deep into the brain and veins.
That is what you shall get—all that you had wished for, like new blades of grass from the deep soil of summer rain—only to be cut down again, and again.
2. Exile from Love
Love is a disease.
God wishes you to be happy, but He also wishes you to be free.
So you want freedom? Here it is. Take your awful freedom and wander the earth like Cain.
Go forth and find the dark-eyed women of your desire. They lie in foreign lands where He has promised to protect you.
Walk without a home. You have already left it behind.
You leave the blood of your sacrifice in a trail behind you.
At every campfire where you rest, the universe waits above you—the same cosmos from which you were born.
Wolves howl like ghosts, and ghosts trail like wolves—always one night behind you.
In the desert, it is not sin that drives man into the wilderness, but the hope of learning how to disappear.
3. The Desert
Love, born of sand and dust and wind, is an illusion.
Ah yes—the yesterdays when we fell in love beneath the eaves of evergreens.
A love in eternal spring. Bright. New.
I knew her for years before we became lovers—best friends, soulmates.
HA.
Since the Beginning of Time, we have believed there is someone who completes us—a missing piece.
Perhaps we are all jigsaw holes, searching for the one shape that fits.
But do we only look through each other, seeing not each other, but the world beyond?
Step into the light, my son, and fly like doves into the clouds where crystal palaces await.
May your love be christened in starlight.
That is what we are told. That is what we are sold.
We wish upon things that have already passed.
The stars we see are already dead.
Black holes waiting to consume what once was.
There is no light. No hope.
The story is over before it begins.
We are destined for the same end.
4. Oblivion
Do you think the Infinite sees beginnings and ends?
There is no time for what is infinite.
The beginning and the end are the same. All that happens between them is the same.
The only question is—do we live forever also?
And if so, why did we ever live, if we were only meant to die?
This was always ours—this life, this love, this fate.
We met, we fell in love, and we refused to believe anything could stop us.
We would live forever. Wouldn’t we?
A beginning can be worse than an end.
I laid down my hands and sat before my chips, chain-smoking in silence, watching the game.
You think your stacks stay the same?
To live, one must play the game. To play, one must be prepared to lose everything.
Time. Faith. Courage. Money. Weight. Sanity.
Even silence has weight.
Time heals all? No.
Time disintegrates. It removes.
Eventually, it makes everything new.
But don’t celebrate so fast.
You and everything you know and love move on without you.
Come on then. If you think you’re brave—come on.
A sandstorm comes this way.