My Curious Heart

The words continue to fail me. I have asked favors of them, requested their compliance with my most personal wishes, and made demands on their time in ways that seem to have upset the balance between their willingness to assist me in my venture, and their need to take roost in more fertile soil and grow into something with service. I make altars at their feet, offerings to tide their gods, and yet nothing will do.

In some sort of unseen alternate universe, clarity simply is, and comes without purpose, taking us all with it like a wave of calm in a sea of unrest. In this world, in our world, or perhaps just my world, there is a concerted effort to battle that which rages and threatens to demolish all that might dare take position and mount an attack. And to define that which is set on the offensive, one must work within the confines one's own logic.

Me? I have found myself in a place of intense personal turmoil. In order to make a mistress of words, I must find a way to handle the sources of my chaos and turn them to my own use. Unfortunately, doing so would only encourage additional chaos, feeding on its tail and rolling away into the tall grass that lines every passage.

I am in a locked groove of my own making, and this time there is no way to pretend that anything could ever improve without my being the catalyst and agent of such change. But perhaps this is simply a platitude for those who are happy to find no joy in platitudes, a salve for that which festers.

No, no, this holding pattern, this barrier between sanity and madness, this barrier between security and disease, this wall built around this, my most curious heart, will surely crumble under closer scrutiny.

Never before have I been so succeptible to the turning forces of pain. Not even in this life so replete with stories of personal agonies and overly sensitive mileposts has there been a chapter that rivals this one. I could not concoct, were the words to arrive without haste, a tale to rival the heft of this one in which I find myself embroiled now.

And right now, scrutinizing is all in the air. you can smell it on the breeze, the birds whisper my name and hold their wings aloft, the insects hum a song of judgment that chips away at my exterior. And all around me there are infinite varieties of opaque undertow, sweeping my feet away and leaving me gasping for air in the rising tide.

There are days, well, there are days that consume me from within. These are the sorts of days that take great pleasure in kicking me, me lying prone on the cold hard floor. With the passing of time through the uncharted whirlpool, it is becoming readily apparent that these angry days, so full of bitter scorn, have conspired to keep this process from handing over anything bigger than a size too small to measure. This is a time of microscopic victories and epic loss. This is also a time of axiomatic upheaval, ripe, glorious, and eternally present, and also fleeting and temporary to the point of being nonexistent.

This most curious heart. This, my most curious heart. How it has led me behind its whimsy...

How it has confined me within the walls of its labyrinthine horrors.

For this my curious heart, it has grown from a single cell, a single feeble cell into a child.

A child awash in the confusion of being so new.

I was that boy, the boy with the fears that always found room at the inn.

I was the boy with the constant companion of himself, an awareness of self that bordered on agony.

This boy, whose very own curious heart kept fists raised, words aloft, forces at bay through sheer will, and who was always uncomfortable to sit at the table with the unwanted guests. This child with the skills to garner loose change in the cup held aloft. This child with the need to please and to give comfort, but always at the expense of his own. This is the child that now is this man, and yet this man is no longer a child. In fact, though the resemblance may be there in theory, in practice, these days are borne from different stuff entirely. These days, for this child, with this most curious heart...

I have said too much. I always do, always will.

And yet, It bears repeating.

The words continue to fail me.

There is something I want to impress upon you. There is something that eats me like a cancer, something that opens the door to any passersby and offers itself like a Victorian whore with rotting gums and bloodshot eyes. There is ugliness there, right in there. Can't you see it? Lift the corners and have a look. It's there, I am on good terms, and we play when no one else is around. You can't see it? Look again. It's there. And then behind that, deeper still, do you know what you will see?

You will see nothing exactly. You will see exactly nothing. You will be privy to the grandest secret of them all. You will bear witness to the crush of emptiness that fills every crack of this man and tears him limb from limb from time to time. You will pull up a chair and be a guest at the opulent home to nothing at all. You will be charmed by the seductive qualities of the eternal space that screams through every second, that lies at the bottom of every moment, that always exists, leering, calling out, howling like a perpetual silent wind. This is the source of fear. This is the core where there is no core. This is the base from which all must come. And this is an impossible truth in a man, a child, one with a curious heart, and a cross to bear, and with forces to fear, who must answer to the emptiness, and offer it all that there can ever be.

And I am here to tell you, it is never ever enough.

One day none of this will matter. It may not matter much now, but in the end it won't matter a bit. One day, the road will collapse on itself, the story will evaporate into acrid dust, dotting the landscape in foul carnage. No one will notice but all will be affected. And nothing will be sated, because nothing ever is.

And there it is. Dawn. The first rays, encroaching on the night, sending all that is made of hunger, woven in the fabric of desire, rushing for the cover of darkness. I sit upright, maybe for the first time. I stand up, as the man, and I face the sun. But I am burned by its brilliance, and blinded by it intensity. Blinded through eyes clenched tight, but not immune to the unrelenting power of the sun's rays. And so I am forced back down, on the soil that has held me up, to face the atonal and gutteral howls of the emtpy wastes that make me less than whole. And I am entirely at its mercy for now and forever. This is simply the way it must be. Don't be foolish and think you have anything to say about it.

I am not weak, and yet, I am the weakest man there has ever been. I am not afraid, and yet, I am consumed with a fear like no other. Maybe I have been left at the side of the road to fend for myself without any tools to speak of. Maybe the truth is so unspeakable, so unwholesome, and maybe so utterly simple, that I am unable to see it.

Maybe my lot is one of solitary passage, of longing. Maybe my life is a string of unsteady steps, loping, foolishly searching footing in an alien landscape. And maybe I have no business dragging you into this whirlwind of confusion and emptiness. Only time knows the outcome. I am powerless to fight it. So I simply carry on. God damn, I hope I am doing the right thing, because this heart can bear no more sadness. I am no longer capable of facing the explosive energy of failure, and I know how close it always is because I can smell its breath. The hairs on my neck have taken note, and the sweat on my brow confirms it. This time, no matter the outcome, I am taking the way of hope, real hope, and hopefully, I will stave off the toothed jaws of madness at last.

So you see, these words, these words which fail this man, these words which trip up this child, these words which are the accomplice of the unspeakable, they will speak the truth to this, my curious heart. And there is a place for you, beside me, though the lights may dim, and the voice may grow silent from time to time. Despite it all, the place remains, and you have but to sit beside me, close your eyes, and listen...