Journey.

 Another late night, spent alone in a lab. Another sleepy evening spent grinding iron, and kicking against the cobalt. Another average day spent sleepwalking through class. Another deadline forcing my brain to move from its sluggish slumber. Conversations with people that drag on as we are never quite able to say what we want to say. As we put unhealthy food down our throats, talk about how much suffering has been put on our plate in the chatter of a dishonest bourgeosie acquaintance, my mind grasps for something deeper. And in that grasping it gets submerged again, in limerent fantasies of someone's beauty, of the desire of being posesesed or possessing - reducing ourselves and others to playthings or objectifying them in our pedestalization.  Just commit to someone, to something, to some cause, to some greater purpose. Let this sisyphian struggle be over - with all the rationalizations bolstered by the chatter from an unserious world. 

And then, when the game is up, when all has been seen through, it changes gears. It is rather beautiful actually, in how it operates. With all the chattering now replaced by cowering - in the face of stready breaths and a firm intellect, a healthy body and a perhaps stagnant awareness that all the while does not give up. It is not glorious, it is not perfect - yet it is all I have. This is my journey, my desperation for truth. And now it switches gears again - to self doubt. Who are you to embark on this quest? The world will leave you behind in its wake, if you so much as dare to walk the other direction. It pulls the soul out of me, tries to grab me by my imagination - with elaborate models and intellectualizations or fantasies - that of sex or that of ambition. The whole theatre moves in the foreground, hiding an absolute barenness. A plane of awareness I shake to set foot on. 

As soon as I step foot here, every single happy neurotransmitter in my brain has dried up. And again the mind clutches me back, telling me I've acheived something in having written about this map I've created. But no, this is further. These words are more important than whatever fingernails are figuratively being dug into my skull. There is still further to go. Is there a green beautiful garden with sunshine and flowers across the fence? perhaps not. Perhaps all there is is more weeds and undergrwowth, to trip over and fall on. Or perhaps there is the dryness that plagues the back of my throat this instant. 

Yes, there is always further to go. And I am convinced that I must set out absolutely alone. I am grateful to fellow travellers who are on their own journeys, but hitching a ride is disservice to the other's truth.  The direction is unspecified, the path unknown, yet I know that I am not in truth yet. And I cannot settle, no matter how much my mind demands me to.  

Namaste.