January 26, 2010

The Sardaukar are closing in!! What to do, Paul, what to do??!

Do you also do that? Sometimes when there's a captivating book you read that really sucks you in, you get sort of carried away. There are moments when you even try to think of solutions to the protagonist's predicaments! (Hey, there's some tongue-twister! Try saying these last two words quickly 20 times!) At least that's what happens to me when the book/videogame/film/tv-series is REALLY good. Provided there's nothing serious going on in my own life - nothing that makes me worry or ponder or lay awake at night. You really need a carefree mind in order to be able to ponder about irrelevant stuff like that.

Sometimes when something absolutely grave happens in your life, something crushing like, say, your girlfriend breaks up with you after a long relationship, it seems there's nothing that can lift you up. You hear all the advice, maybe even read about the "key to positive thinking" or some other crap but in the end it all doesn't ease your mind at all. It's yourself you're doubting. You're in search of all the negative aspects that might have been the cause of the breakup - even if those weren't the cause but only outer circumstances you personally couldn't change. You end up tormenting your mind over and over again. And there's no way out of that. Especially not when... well...

...did you ever hear the person who broke up with you say "I just need time for myself"? If so, you might have thought about it a little while. You might have also come up with the impression that there's a sheer endlessness of thoughts that declare this sentence as a complete shitload of crap! For starters, we humans are alone all our lives.

In the 1956 sci-fi novel "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke there's a tribe of people who have one collective mind and thus are never alone. Those people pity us "regular humans" immensely saying "how awfully lonely you must be in your seperated minds".

If you live in (or visit) some random big city you'll notice: the frickin' place is crowded with people! And most of these people stroll from A to B with no company but their own thoughts. They're alone in their own minds. Each person seems to resemble a world of his own, without any company.

No matter how much we bond with another person, no matter how many things we share with others, no matter how intimate we are towards other people - at the end of the day we're all alone in our minds. (That's one of the reasons why sleeping next to another person feels so comfortable, too. So that we can at least be next to each other and share what we can.) No one else will ever have the insight we have of ourselves, no matter what we do.

So why would anyone choose to be completely alone instead of at least sharing what we can share?

Also, if said relationship was limited to seeing each other at weekends because of living apart from each other - WHY ON EARTH should someone need any MORE time? You realize you had 5 days for yourself while only 2 days of spending time with your loved one, don't you?

Doesn't this sentence, this hardly bearable "time for myself"-crap simply translate into the much more logical "I think I'd prefer to look around some more - maybe there's someone other than you I'd rather share my time with!"...?

... if it IS like that: SAY IT, GODFUCKINGDAMMIT, SAY THE FUCKING WORDS!!!
Man, how's making up phrases easier than saying the truth?

Oh, if you thought this blog entry might help you with that "tormenting your mind"-stuff... there's only one way out. And no, I don't mean taking your own life.

Contrary to what I might have said about life, death, resurrection, The Maya, the Beyond and all that in previous blog entries - and contrary to the lasting impression left in me by the breathtaking journey into the afterlife I regularly take part in through the solo album of Riverside vocalist Mariusz Duda, "Lunatic Soul" - when it all comes down to one thing, there's only one reality I do believe in.

There's nothing after you die.

"What will survive of me
A cardboard box with thoughts inside
What will survive of me
My little escapes from real life"

─ "The Final Truth" by Lunatic Soul

We humans are the only creatures that are aware of death. Dogs don't know they'll die. Cats don't (or at least we think so - who knows what's in their mystic little heads anyway?) and all the other animals don't either. We're not satisfied with that uncomfortable definitive fact, of course. So we constantly think up things that might occur after we die. A light at the end of the tunnel, Heaven and Hell, some resurrection process we have to go through in order to live again someday, some afterlife harem place with tons of virgins or waterfalls of milk and honey...

I could list hundreds of fantastic outcomes, all of which would be based on hope; all of which would be some moral Karma-thing by which we lead our lives. You know like... in order to get reborn or get a great seat in the front row in Heaven with lots of pleasures - just be good during your lifetime (or bad, of course, if you're one of those badass suicide bomber mofos). It's ridiculous but at least it serves a purpose, I guess.


Sorry, got off the track again... what was I about to say? ... Oh yeah, the solution to that "tormenting your mind"-thing. It's not ending your life - that's what I wanted to say. Cause that would be plain stupid as you wouldn't get any positive consequences out of that. Suicide is pointless as you're not relieved of any pain because relief is a feeling and you don't feel shit after you die - so you couldn't even enjoy the lack of pain.

No no no, that one thing you can do is something different. It's one of the hardest things to do - yet it's the easiest choice you'll have - cause there's no choice.

Let time pass.
Try to live your life.
It may be hard but it's always better than nothing at all.

That's all.
Nothing else to do.

And I'm sorry about that, I am.