muses

do too little, and they say you aren't trying.

do too much, and they say you are overbearing, trying too hard.

amusing way the common mind works.

thoughts

there must be a division between the instincts of nature - passion, emotions, feelings, desires and all things common with animals - and the capabilities of human intellect, namely the capacity for reason and will.

Reading moral philosophy is enlightening - slowly but surely it is dragging me out of nihilism. Sure, there still isn't much of meaning in life, but the pursuit of the Good has got to be the most valuable enterprise in this meaningless life; to pursue the Good for its own sake, not for any power but simply because any rational man must pursue it. Reconciling definitions of what is "Good", however, takes more effort: Aristotelian ethics and Kantian ethics provide two really different conceptualizations of the Good, yet I think/feel that something is missing.

My nihilistic conceptions of society has not yet faltered. I still believe that such ideals are impossible to be carried out in flawed humanity, but at the very least I shall try for myself.

exist.

I wake up, finding myself strangely out of place in my pajamas and all; I'm in a field, with roses and lilies lolling in the light spring rain. The hills ran ad infinitum, and the great expanse of nature overwhelms my senses. Such beauty! I take a breath, and I can feel my soul instantly rejuvenating. I feel so young again, like all those aches were just illusions. All the stress at work, all the angst from relationships, all the loneliness - blown away by the spring winds. I pranced, became a jog, became a sprint down the hills. I am alive! Such wonders reaffirm my existence; I exist for this, not for my work or my love or anything else; I exist because I can, and I will! But as I proclaimed my existence, I remembered a distant dream; some undone work, unpaid taxes and bills, failed relationships - it all began to manifest.

A dark lightning struck across the panorama. The landscape shattered. The hills tore apart like a ripped painting, an abandoned artwork forsaken by its anonymous artist; The light spring rain became a summer storm; The roses wilted, turned black, died. The winds roared, no longer on my side. My world shook violently as it fell, crumbled to pieces as always. I did what I could to protect myself, whenever my reality collapsed - I went to sleep. 

I am in a dream, and the alarm clock rings 7 o'clock. I went by boring routines like brushing my teeth (why am I even dreaming of such mundane things?) and washing my face. I wore what every man in society wore - a suit, tie, black leather shoes - and went down to hail a cab. At the crossroads I brushed my shoulders with this young man - he did remind me of my younger self - and went to my workplace. How many years has it been, and how many more years shall I stay here? Does not matter, must work. 

I sat down, and began to start work. Pan out and you'll never even realize I exist. I exist because I must, because I am. I am but a cog in the Machine.

I can't wait to wake up to my beautiful reality again.

blank

words loaned are all I can muster,
a mind of void, empty and cold.
plucked wildly, ideas without luster,
so to fill up this empty soul.

a prophecy.

Am I seeing the present, or looking into the future? 

The present is but a prelude to the future, and it is not hard to access the eventual fate of an event given that there are necessary conditions available. 

I see all these, but my mind is too plagued by sloth to do anything to change this eventuality.

I see the end, I see the friends, I see nothing more than unhappiness and sadness.

But that is not a completely undesirable thing. 

I see all these, so I feel the pain now, before it has already happened.

So eventually when it does, I won't feel so bad - maybe I might even feel relieved that it has finally occurred.

Of course you can say that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I guess that is just how I am now. 

When all you have are bad experiences, you really can't psych yourself for any good things to come by.

Happiness

Joy is uplifting, but not for me.
a plague that haunts, wherever I be.
All things that live, it did pervade
but I remain in my own charade.
"Come to me!" I shouted out,
in childish hopes it will bear some clout.
Alas the gates shut down on me.
Happy? I shall never be.

Two Parts of One.

Everything is perfect. I stand at the edge of the cliff right over a majestic blue dragon, the great river that dominates the region. Flowing serpentine across the pastoral hills and majestic mountains, it was awe-inspiring to say the least. I glance at all that surrounds me and see nothing but the great work of Nature. I indulge myself in the stunning view. The scenery of the beautiful countryside flowed into me uncontrollably as I soak in the awesome beauty of Nature. Nothing can go wrong now. I am held in Nature's warmth and glory. I can almost feel a catharsis surging from within. 

Only to be stopped by an abrupt thought: I realized that I was alone, and nothing could be beautiful anymore without you. Everything was perfect.

lovely poem on the mortality of men.


"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away". "- Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Evanescent

I stand at the busy crossroads once again, amidst the busy pedestrians with their busy schedules and busy lives.

One man in suit and tie brushes my shoulder. "Sorry." he said, before hurrying off, presumably to his workplace where he will work at until his life force has all but escaped from him. He is not alone. They are all over the streets; people who are nothing more than puppets of society, mannequins without souls. Their eyes were lifeless globes of void. There is no drive in those eyes - that drive has long since been devoured by the beast called Conformity. They work not towards anything, not for anything, but simply because they have to. I see it all, and wonder why more people are not seeing this. This is the zeitgeist of our society, a dead droning hive-mind moving towards nothing, striving towards nothing, but Thanatos. Gone is that brilliance of ages past, replaced by nihilistic hedonism and cruel realism. The self blurs in the backdrop of modernity.

Will I stand down, let the beast devour me? Or will I take my stand, my last stand perhaps, and battle? For all my heroism, I know deep down in the darkest reaches of my soul that someday I, too, will fall to the beast. I will succumb under the weight of Conformity, lose myself, and join them. Individual thoughts are never strong enough to face the will of the Crowd. 

As the crowd at the crossroads continued to pass me, I felt my soul draining away. "It is the beginning of the end. I am joining this farce, and I wouldn't even notice soon enough. Very well, take me, you beast! Put the flames of my passion out!", I mused. I can already feel I fading away into We. My thoughts were slowly melding into the hive-mind. I felt myself disintegrating.

The crowd began to subside. The pedestrian lights turned red. I am alone once again. I felt my thoughts flowing back in. My evanescence began to lighten up. I could feel myself materializing again, breaking free from the Crowd. My existence is re-affirmed, yet my existence fades away. Society no longer recognizes me, but I do. I exist again, but We cease to be. My thoughts are my own, for now. 

But in the recesses of my mind, I know. Someday, I will cease to exist. 

I laughed as I mused and hurried off the crossroads.

Time

Touched my soul she already has,
slowly right beneath my skin.
Enfeebled my mind she already has,
crippling my thoughts til they wear thin.
Of life and death, She takes and gives,
She is chaos, a being of pure frivolity.
Of society and family, she tears and weaves.
She is order, the keystone for society.
She is Time, and she will never be mine,
never enough for any of our kind.