What is Left is All There is

April 25, 2008

In moments, sometimes brief and sometimes extended, that I am able to maintain a fantasy about the great profundity of my life, I am just fine.  Not a happy fine, but a maniacal, tortured, driven or ecstatic fine for sure.  These fantasies have a stupor-like effect on me, drugging me up and blurring my vision and dulling the pain of I-don't-know-what-anymore.  The pain could be childhood trauma, or the toxic human world bent on self-destruction.  It could just be the inevitable suffering of life -- the passion, the angst, the inevitable loss -- the soul banging its head against the wall of the body.  Of late, as my twenties draw to a close, I have been less able to maintain my fantasies.  They appear to me like the shifting shine on shallow puddles that dry up quickly.  I find myself stranded with great visions and am commited regardless.  It no longer gives me the same adrenaline rush.  There is no sense of grandeur, just a knowledge of what I must do and the human frailty and clumsiness which makes it so hard sometimes. 
   
    I feel alone here, very alone. 
    In my aloneness I want to destroy myself
    and some days I do,
    little by little, shamefaced and sorry. 
   
    Today I recognized something new, the world left over when delusions die.  The world that is always there.  The world of grass and trees and weather and bodies and words and gazes and dogs and cats and children and food.  After my fantasies fade and fade so quickly now -- what is left is all there is and I wonder if that could make me happy.