Curing the soul

I don’t know which is harder, being dragged through the unbearable layers of a black hell, or sitting on the sidelines watching helplessly. Lying or being lied to. Living in a world of deception where the façade is voluntarily man made, or waking up to the reality of a pretended world. Holding a glass or reaching for it. I don’t know which is harder to understand, having sense of the destruction or causing the disappearance of mind and soul.

On any given day, we may stand or we may fall. There is no telling who is next and there is no telling who can stand. Once the sadness is so deep that no tears will fall then the soul will merge with the body and give up its fight. The outside and inside will separate and the sick part will watch the ailing part disintegrate into oblivion. The substance will shrink and leave a hollow shell. The mimicry will only be a result of involuntary muscle contraction, yet it will disperse any doubt cast over its authenticity. Can the sun help?

Rilke, Van Gogh, Beethoven, Rothko, Tennessee Williams, the guy you knew in school, the friend of a friend, the actual friend: all whose souls have succumbed to that insatiable hole. The desperate well to where creativity drives the critically genius and the ordinary: there is no distinction. Going down to the sound of the most pleasant verse cannot glorify the tumble. Bowing out with a last stroke on the canvas cannot make the exit glitter. Yet they try.

The example of one cannot be the rule for many. The testament of a soul that had been cured by physically removing parts of the body cannot become a rule, merely an anomaly. There’s a more profound quest for those who watch their souls drown in the sea of their painful existence. But the sight of victory brings greater displeasure and there is no telling when the outside will mould to the inside. Fear and pain keeps us on our toes because this formidable dark cannot be a force that overwrites things previously established.

I don’t know which is harder, being dragged through the unbearable layers of a black hell, or sitting on the sidelines watching helplessly.