The tree you once climbed or the battlefield you once fought on will still be there when you've gone and to some,
there's a feeling of being cheated, being relegated to just a minor-player in the grand show that was your life.
The wind still rustles the leaves of the tree long after you've passed and there's no echoes of your exhilaration of
being high off the ground. The throb of pulsing blood in your balancing body tells you you're alive, but the voice
is really just sound of a working machine. The poets got it wrong.
The grass struggles under the snow of a long forgotten combat zone and the bones of the fallen soldier were
merely food for the plant that never knew his name. So unfair and yet, so real. The grass didn't judge you or
mourn your death, it used you and moved on. Survival demands it.
The ignorance of being unable to reflect on one's past is a two-edged sword. Whether the curse of evaluating
one's conduct at the end of the race is only a human condition, we cannot know. How can we conceive a sincere
evaluation of one's own existence, when the built-in system of survival demands you destroy any danger to that self?
The dying snail never cries out that it failed to change the world or make a difference, just as the wide-eyed soldier
cannot reasonably collate his past deeds as bullets tear into is body on the battlefield. They both perished without
someone to mourn their passing. Gone like the stored vase that cracks in an attic of frost. Nobody saw and nobody
knew.
It's only in the time given can we measure ourselves -or to put it better, in the time we carve out by our actions.
We kill to survive and bullshit ourselves with tribal morals. We slay the other because a God or evolution didn't see
the movie and had already issued their plans after the molten lava had settled.
The words said: "You. You're on your own, now get moving"
So we did. We fought our way up from the mud, we destroyed everything in our path -including each other and
now we look at the sunset and wonder if we'd done good.
And maybe -just maybe, that's the burden we're meant to carry towards the shadowed veil that awaits us.
A dark reward for the rudimentary need of a collection of cells to exist and survive and a self-aware brain to steer
a safe passage. A pretence of a set of principles based on a philosophised logic dripping with historical gore that
we've convinced ourselves will be the ticket that gets us into heaven.
In the sophist playground of our minds, we put out the bonfire of self-guilt as the leopard and alligator look on.
Do they envy the monkey that thinks that way or are they evil for licking their lips?
Meanwhile, we juggle with our thoughts and pull the curtain over the cave entrance.
Did we do enough...? Will some part of me go on after my heart goes quiet or is all this questioning just the faint
laughter of a vicious truth that the snail. leopard and the big bastard who likes golf courses knew full well?
We're here and then we're not here, so is there somewhere else or are we no more vital to the turning Earth than the
fragments of vase wrapped in faded newspapers? Stories of conquests and tales of achievement, written down and
used for nothing more than storage.
Humans measure themselves through their actions and the dichotomy of good and evil, that eternal set of scales that we
humbly pray will allot us something we cannot fathom until the moment of death.
But what if there's no weighing of past deeds? What if the imaginary next place isn't there? Surely there's more to me...?
The terrible questions not answered yet.
Time is the place where we burn and those flames draw the sweat -not from our bodies, but from our minds.
We char in our self-guilt and confused queries of why me, but the same animals mentioned above already know.
If it wasn't you who survived, it'd be someone else and your built-in systems won't allow that.
So check the bolt on the door and the nearness of your gun. Now... pull the tab of another beer and give thanks to
those soulless ageing cells in your body that watch the night.
there's a feeling of being cheated, being relegated to just a minor-player in the grand show that was your life.
The wind still rustles the leaves of the tree long after you've passed and there's no echoes of your exhilaration of
being high off the ground. The throb of pulsing blood in your balancing body tells you you're alive, but the voice
is really just sound of a working machine. The poets got it wrong.
The grass struggles under the snow of a long forgotten combat zone and the bones of the fallen soldier were
merely food for the plant that never knew his name. So unfair and yet, so real. The grass didn't judge you or
mourn your death, it used you and moved on. Survival demands it.
The ignorance of being unable to reflect on one's past is a two-edged sword. Whether the curse of evaluating
one's conduct at the end of the race is only a human condition, we cannot know. How can we conceive a sincere
evaluation of one's own existence, when the built-in system of survival demands you destroy any danger to that self?
The dying snail never cries out that it failed to change the world or make a difference, just as the wide-eyed soldier
cannot reasonably collate his past deeds as bullets tear into is body on the battlefield. They both perished without
someone to mourn their passing. Gone like the stored vase that cracks in an attic of frost. Nobody saw and nobody
knew.
It's only in the time given can we measure ourselves -or to put it better, in the time we carve out by our actions.
We kill to survive and bullshit ourselves with tribal morals. We slay the other because a God or evolution didn't see
the movie and had already issued their plans after the molten lava had settled.
The words said: "You. You're on your own, now get moving"
So we did. We fought our way up from the mud, we destroyed everything in our path -including each other and
now we look at the sunset and wonder if we'd done good.
And maybe -just maybe, that's the burden we're meant to carry towards the shadowed veil that awaits us.
A dark reward for the rudimentary need of a collection of cells to exist and survive and a self-aware brain to steer
a safe passage. A pretence of a set of principles based on a philosophised logic dripping with historical gore that
we've convinced ourselves will be the ticket that gets us into heaven.
In the sophist playground of our minds, we put out the bonfire of self-guilt as the leopard and alligator look on.
Do they envy the monkey that thinks that way or are they evil for licking their lips?
Meanwhile, we juggle with our thoughts and pull the curtain over the cave entrance.
Did we do enough...? Will some part of me go on after my heart goes quiet or is all this questioning just the faint
laughter of a vicious truth that the snail. leopard and the big bastard who likes golf courses knew full well?
We're here and then we're not here, so is there somewhere else or are we no more vital to the turning Earth than the
fragments of vase wrapped in faded newspapers? Stories of conquests and tales of achievement, written down and
used for nothing more than storage.
Humans measure themselves through their actions and the dichotomy of good and evil, that eternal set of scales that we
humbly pray will allot us something we cannot fathom until the moment of death.
But what if there's no weighing of past deeds? What if the imaginary next place isn't there? Surely there's more to me...?
The terrible questions not answered yet.
Time is the place where we burn and those flames draw the sweat -not from our bodies, but from our minds.
We char in our self-guilt and confused queries of why me, but the same animals mentioned above already know.
If it wasn't you who survived, it'd be someone else and your built-in systems won't allow that.
So check the bolt on the door and the nearness of your gun. Now... pull the tab of another beer and give thanks to
those soulless ageing cells in your body that watch the night.
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.