Cycle of Suffering
Hiding in silence is just as magnificent as hiding in darkness. And if you combine these two great primal forces, you can attain what you have always yearned for. Every moment you craved them:
Relief. Respite. Steady reflection.
Above, there was a mysterious rustling, the kind of sound that could be made by ancient clothes, moth-eaten and swaying as He, now and then, stirred within the temple of His calmness. However vast His mind might be, the wretched body, alas, still made itself known. It reminded Him constantly: with numb muscles, stabbing pain in the lower back, and the pricking of needles in His fingertips.
Thus, He had to shift His position, trying to find more comfortable postures and stretch His legs as much as possible to ease the aching pain in His knees. The cramped space allowed little room for maneuver, draining the strength from the fragile vessel of the human soul.
But He was strong not through flesh, but through Spirit, Thought, and Vision.
And it was to them that He surrendered, gazing at the sliver of light seeping through the crack between the door panels. The light looked quite serene, already weakened under the burden of the evening sky. And only it could dispel the ancient sorrow, to which any truly thinking mind is always devoted—or rather, enslaved. Their eternal confrontation leads to the collapse of barriers that shield serotonin from the ever-watchful apathy.
How complex and unfathomable is the moment of transition from a coherent, ambitious mind to a somnambulist lost in existence! For if you reason in such flat categories as your presence in the present moment (which, as is known, exists simultaneously in three dimensions, embracing and enveloping its kin: the past and the future), you might well feel happy.
And yet, in just one insignificant moment, you are thrown into the arms race between those always locked in a hot phase of conflict: Life and Death.
They are called by many names: the Two Sisters, Ouroboros, and the Great Cycle. Yet only He understood and still realizes that they do not exist.
Humanity simply seeks to clothe in words the processes it takes part in, for by naming something, you assign it a comprehensible meaning. Thus, you file it away under "All Clear," and then you no longer have to think about it.
But is it really so? Is existence and subsequent decay trivial? Are they truly unimportant?
To Them—not at all. To Him—likewise. But for entirely different reasons.
They, the People, merely live in their familiar reality. And then it ends, unceremoniously depositing them into a crematorium or whatever other institution rids the world of its accumulated wealth, stripping it of its human capital. But with Him, it was not so simple.
The point is, He does not exist even now.
He does not see His body, though He feels it—yet is that really so important? The light streaming through the crack faces no obstacle from it; in its diffraction, it bends around Him, seeking out the hems of a long tweed coat—or rather the quarks, gluons, and other members of that vast family.
Time is just as unimportant. Now, yesterday, or ten years hence—this place will still be ruled by the same dimness. And within its flows, His thoughts will blend. Hunger, cold, birth, death—all are irrelevant, for thoughts will continue seeping through the fibers, the dust motes, and the synthetic resins that steadfastly bind the walls of the Pagoda of Thought.
The physical existence, as the unknowing or the thoughtless might call it, may end. But reflections will never leave this place, remaining as an echo, an imprint, which bites deep into the very same walls, no less real than any material analogues. And this does not mean the casting of a soul or, even less so, some phantasm, some irrational ghost threatening the house's inhabitants with its howling.
Reflections are simply reflections. They are neither more than one would wish nor less than one could imagine. These shapeless apostles of the never-ending stream of consciousness exist precisely where they are meant to be.
In the space of a particle board wardrobe.
And even amidst this ping-pong of ideas, where Pascal's thinking reed bent under the blizzard of premises, there was a vacant spot, reserved by a coarse knocking on the wardrobe door. And right after it, a voice rose from the very depths of the abyss:
– Dad, are you in there again? Seriously, how much longer?! Mom's been looking all over the house for you—you promised her you'd put up the shelf over the fireplace. What the hell are you doing in there?!
Ah, it was her! A random fluctuation in the cosmos, whose petty gossip did little to do her honor. How could she have been born so basely, not through the collision of arguments and proofs, but simply by tearing through a woman's womb? Or was it a C-section? Not that it really mattered, given the result.
And this consequence, perhaps of not the most deliberate choice, now demanded that He engage in the most mundane renovation of His family's bodily dwelling.
"Verveling en niks anders as verveling nie!" — Which, translated from Afrikaans, means: "Boredom and nothing but boredom."
The knocking grew louder, and He was forced to use His still semi-existent invisible limbs to maintain the fortress's structural integrity under bombardment from enemy trebuchets. The first missile struck from above, and He grunted, ducking his head, as a hanger bearing a once-beloved cardigan crashed down upon Him.
– What's wrong with you, Dad? When people at college ask me what my father does, am I supposed to tell them: "My dad sits in a closet"?
"What's wrong with that?" - He thought defiantly. - "Is this not a modern incarnation of Diogenes? How could such a vibe fail to appeal to this individual—namely, the young lady also known as My Daughter?!"
– I'm calling Mom! You can deal with her yourself! I get it, you need a place to relax, but could you maybe just sit in the garage like a normal person? Or at least in the bathroom? No, after this mess, I'm definitely gonna need therapy, or I'm gonna lose it.
The function of this young creature was not just to affirm the weight of the Chaos Theory but also to enlighten. And such a revelation caught Him off guard. Flailing His legs, He managed to bump His head rather hard against the wall. For:
Life is the wooden box of a wardrobe, for within it lies the Meaning of Existence.
Death, on the other hand, is the mindless desires of family members, masking their attempts to subjugate a free soul behind the shield of an unmounted bookshelf.
And if they refused to acknowledge the truth, then He was ready for it. He had awakened that which always longed to break free.
It was true. It was time to come out to the world.
He was a Philosopher!
He was and would forever remain so.
And only after this revelation, gained through such unbearable struggle, persecution, torment, and deprivation, did He finally emerge—or rather, tumble—out of His wardrobe into a new reality, brimming with the burdens of everyday life.