Every argument, every compromise, every concession to pragmatism, every demarcation and limit and definition driven into the ground seeking solid bedrock for anchoring the chains, they make me sick.

There are only two places I can actually live, sub-rational nihilism and faith.

Subrational nihilism, the power of it — this is the good stuff. Let go of all rules and restrictions, let the will unfurl. We don’t necessarily wish ill upon anyone (though who knows later?). We just don’t wish to live in their cages. We tell them whatever we wish.

Like a sinus opening to fresh air is the moment we steal away into ourselves and realize that no one else is present, that we are essentially free, and though we may be alone and life threatens to pulverize us, this is the good pain, the pain we own and author.

Until they kill us, we are kings. All pirates knew this, all brigands, all warlords, every robber baron. It’s the middle finger, sarcasm’s grease, the delicious drop of truth in the pockmarked hollow heart of cynicism. We know deep down it’s cruel, but better to be cruel and live.

And yet, even though the desire for this freedom rages like fire and presses like the sea, the structures of normal life hold. First out of sheer fear of the unknown. And second because somewhere deep there is a shard of light that once, maybe, sang in resonance.

There is a hope, somehow, carried through our caverns on some hot primordial breath stirring in gentle eddies the dust of the world, a hope that we can say what we are and not destroy ourselves in the saying, that we are free in definition, unbound in unbreakable chains.

There is a belief, a fool’s imagining, that somewhere beyond the self-annihilating fringe of the void, the universe has a curved wall folding into itself like a Klein bottle to terminate, one-sided, in my own chest, that we stand beyond all this yet see its worth.

There is a faith that we are faceted reflections of one sun, that our ability to break order and rules and patterns is itself the order of the entire world.

There is a faith that there is someone worth forgiving, and and it just might be us.

You taste it once for a second, and things are different forever.

faith nihilism sin Tishrei