My values and ideas are dated. It is as thought I’m fighting against a demon that has been vanquished. I feel slightly insane. At the same time I am shocked at people’s passivity and obliviousness to the demons existence. It is there! Can they not see?! But it is not. How do I reconcile my acknowledgement with their denial? Is there a demon? Am I deluding myself?

I have not been able to analyze the life here to be sure enough. What if the demon has died already? Has the demon died already? They say so. But I don’t believe it. It is like returning from war and expecting bombs to keep falling. I am still afraid. I am still on edge. I am still acutely aware and yet I am not. My energy leaks away, analyzing trivialities, all for protection and none of it is translated into useful knowledge. I know how they move, how they talk, I know how to identify them from several feet away and yet I do not know how to put it down in words for others to know. I don’t know how to stop this. Do I want to stop this?

I am fighting against something that no longer exists. Thus, I must be insane. But am I? Am I really?

Doubt.

I fear I will lose myself in my little ideas and thoughts, and die. I fear I will die having done nothing to turn my little thoughts into big actions. I fear death before I have been able to untangle myself from the tediums of everyday life, to transcend the needs of the day to day (money, food, living space). I fear death before i have transcended the everyday and changed it so it no longer needs to be transcended.

Every Day We Begin Again

Every day we begin again.

Every night as you drift to sleep thinking of tomorrow, what is it you’re looking at? She stands there, between the far end of the horizon and the place where your sight gives way to blurry globs of colour. She does not speak to you. The only sound you hear is the wind as it blows away her scent, co-mingled with the wet-earth smell post-rain, and the taste of iron lies on your tongue.

Every time I turn to her, she is gone.

She comes wearing new dresses each day, all wet-edged with grass. My hands are numb with cold and I cannot see if she asks something of me.

I keep walking.

Every time I turn to her, she is gone.