The pain of existence

by xyzauto

Posted to Utterances on 2001-08-03 09:49:00

“The pain is real! It is unrelenting. It cuts and it burns. All of the conceptualizing and romanticizing has been finally manifested in cold reality. I have been pinned to the blotter of reality like a moth. My body feels the blade. My body is painfully aware of its place in the world. My mind conceptualizes, sympathizes, and even tries to humorize. The mind is apart, yet wrapped through the very tissue it tries to separate itself from. It is in the body and an integral fabric of the self. It must share the physical, as well as the psychological pain. The physical pain gives immediate cognition of the fact that I am indeed at the very center of my own universe. My reality runs through me like a sword. I can feel it twist within me. Limited frantic movements away from and in reaction to, is my response to this harsh reality. Within this limited movement I can control my own feeble destiny. I at once perceive myself as the object of the pain, and at the same time attempt to transcend and defeat it. It keeps bringing me back. Mocking me. Humbling the self. I am at once all important and insignificant. I am the most beautiful butterfly and the ugliest moth. Life is acutely painful, dying a thousand times worse. No wonder man chooses the anesthetic of day to day oblivion.”

Christopher Cole
The Closer’s Song