by Blair Chen
Art by Catherine Hwu
Issue: Metanoia (Winter 2017)
Your life goes in a haze, thinking and feeling and breathing and shouting and laughing and crying and dying.
You hear the trees rustle and see the moon shine, feel the cold wind and smell the air and touch everything. You think, “ how nice!” but the things don’t respond. Oh, perhaps you imagine the trees lifting you up or the moon smiling at you or the wind caressing your face– any madman’s delusion that might cross your fancy.
You might look inwards, at the past, improve yourself perhaps, write a book, build a monument, make something that will really (yes, really!) last the ages. Something that will rock the socks of those other madmen who look at what you’ve built and vividly hallucinate ideas of their own.
You’ll talk with those other people, ponder how much your lives fit together in this fucking shitty-ass world. You’ll cry and laugh and talk and maybe feel whole for once. Whatever. The moment passes.
Then, one day, one day, you’ll really start to think. You’ll figure out why you’re here, perhaps, the real meaning behind all these feelings you have, and maybe even-
No.
No, you fucking idiot. You won’t. One day you’ll die. Dee. Ai. Yee. Die.
Ashes in the sea. Bite the bullet. Cash in the chips. Depart this life.
Hope it was a good one.