Sometimes I wonder why I write, actually quite a lot, especially recently. I have a need to write but I don’t have anything to say. It’s as if my whole life echoes through my head and I look for something with meaning. The only meaning I have is an acute sense of a painful past. I live a life without meaning and dream of nothing. I hurt so much I don’t hurt anymore. I don’t feel, no love, no hate, no fear, no excitement, no anticipation. Just hollow memories of an intensity and emotion that was not mine alone. Intensity that would grab at the very nature of people lift them up and dance among the clouds.

But that was then and this is now. And old cliche but what are you going to do when it fits. Now my life centers around waking at six going to work were I carefully work to do nothing of importance and make no decisions. I can’t be allowed to make decisions or think. And so I meander through my painful work day. Day after day I meander through. And I come home with the great aspiration of being able to watch My so called life. So my life is caught up in the drama of a made up 15 year old girl. Why because I lack even a life to vicariously live through.

Months without allowing any sort of feeling because right on the top of the stack of feelings lies her. She just sits there waiting for when I think I’m strong enough to feel again and she rears her head and I can feel the pull of her. All this without even seeing her. Just the memories rip my heart apart. Like it all happening again. It’s always happening again… and again. And so what am I to do. Do what I always do pick up a pen, look at an empty piece of paper and just begin to write. Whatever wanders through the imperfect bit of grey matter I like to call a brain for no particularly good reason.

If my mother read that we’d have to have a talk, though she probably wouldn’t call it that any more but it would still be the same thing. Thus is the unchanging nature of my life.

So I write to create something new and different, but usually all I do is re-write what I’ve already said and written. And so now I seek a new phase of the writing. I look for something new, a coherent phoenix form to rise me out of the mire to a new level of expanded thinking and creativity. It’s harder than you might imagine without any emotional stimuli except perhaps the occasional frustration.

Besides, its all been done already. Or at least that’s what I’m told.

I see a story, I don’t know what it is about yet, but it takes place over a dead body. A body lying on scorched Earth. A child, no not a child a woman. Her. She kneels next to the body. Again tears pour down her face. I seem to be fascinated by tears. They seem to be prevalent in my writings that mean anything. So she kneels pounding her fists on his chest. She yells and screams. Tells him he can’t be dead, tells him that she needs him. But he lies there passively dead, all but oblivious to her. He doesn’t feel her fists or hear her sobs. All he knows is that he is feeling very alone. Like a lost child who needs his mother.

He’s convinced that he was someone once but he can’t seem to remember who.

I used to know who I was. Long ago, I had purpose and a sense of direction. I had dreams that used to surround me and keep me safe. Impossible dreams, dreams of wonder and fancy. But one by one they were systematically ripped from me. Until I can no longer dream of dancing in the clouds. I can no longer believe in truth. For what is truth but a point of view? And who can you really trust? A lover? No, they lie out of convenience? An enemy? No, they twist things to their advantage. The common man? There’s no such thing, just dullards and geniuses. Lost souls and Leave It to Beaver clones. So what is the dead man to believe. Does she care or is she just embarrassed over having outlived him by such an apparently long time?

Loss of memory could be taken a sign. Ultimately he has just a few moments to ask himself what he believes. In a few moments he will either find the truth or simply cease to exist. He is not an uncommon man he is likely to try to believe something in these last moments anything is better than thinking it is all for naught. It is hard for us to understand what goes through his head for he is dead and we are alive.

The chasm between life and death adds it’s own special insight to the nature of reality. It is an insight of desperation resounding down the very core of us all. It is so easy to believe in a god, in Heaven, in Hell, Nirvana, Valhalla, Karma, the Tao of Pooh. Anything not to think of the void. The void scares us. We do what ever we can to try and avoid it. That’s why we read USA Today. There’s no death in it just statistics. Real death has a flavor, a smell, a taste. Ultimately a feeling, a lonely painful void ridden feeling.

In his eyes she can see that he’s already gone. All that’s left is for his soul to find a better place. But still she tries to plead with him as if he can still hear. As if he still understands the concepts that bind her to this world. The bonds don’t seem so strong and they don’t seem to mean so much any more.

Her tears still pour and her cries can still be heard. She sits there next to him as light begins to fade. What little energy and sparkle he had fades into a abyss and he is gone.

Can you imagine being next to him? To watch a light fade from a man’s eyes. To see the spirit go. Knowing somehow that it’s your fault. Knowing if you were quicker you might of saved him knowing that you drove him to it.

Again and again she broke my heart now she seeks to make up for it by crying over my body. Tears of embarrassment and convenience. Lies and heartless self interest. For my soul journeys to Deaths own gate leaving not even this story to be remembered by. Soon the body will be little more than fertilizer. Whitman found immortality in that, I only find despair. My memory will crumble soon after my body and I’ll be nothing more than an interesting footnote in a yearbook. A yearbook crammed into a shelf full of other identical books in a room full of identical shelves.

Thus is my legacy to the world.