In the face of rising nihilist violence, the tone and pitch of our private song is key. My own perfect sanity demands I maintain irrational exuberant joy and motions of immortal jouissance at the fringes of consensus reality facing off with a smile of hope daring the archons to bend.
What is the will of the Lord our God? Those who claim to know are sure to be Liars… or Silent Kings and Queens of the Underworld.
“Death, like so many great movies, is sad. The young fancy themselves immune to death. And why shouldn’t they? At times life can seem endless, filled with belly laughs and butterflies, passion and joy, and good, cold beer. Of course, with age comes the solemn understanding that forever is but a word. Seasons change, love withers, the good die young.
These are hard truths, painful truths—inescapable but, we are told, necessary. Winter begets spring, night ushers in the dawn, and loss sows the seeds of renewal. It is, of course, easy to say these things, just as it is easy to, say, watch a lot of television. But, easy or not, we rely on such sentiment. To do otherwise would be to jump without hope into a black and endless abyss, falling through an all-enveloping void for all eternity. Really, what’s to gain from saying that the night only grows darker and that hope lies crushed under the jackboots of the wicked? What answers do we have when we arrive at the irreducible realization that there is no salvation in life, that sooner or later, despite our best hopes and most ardent dreams, no matter how good our deeds and truest virtues, no matter how much we work toward our varied ideals of immortality, inevitably the seas will boil, evil will run roughshod over the earth, and the planet will be left a playground in ruins, fit only for cockroaches and vermin. There is a saying favored by clergymen and aging ballplayers: Pray for rain. But why pray for rain when it’s raining hot, poisoned blood?”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
God Hates A Coward
The Haunted Typewriter 