An Hourglass Affair

A gray ambient light completely surrounds the dreamer as he imagines himself at the apogee. To others it would appear that he is subdued, regressed, or nearly lifeless. In these moments he sees himself in a teetering position; half a step from complete despair, but inches away from a smile that brings him back to having the choice to decide when he is ready to culminate. In this moment he is reminded of the words of Kierkegaard: "complete despair is precisely the inability to die." His decision to smile causes him to suffer softly because he knows that he now must try to build his own home. For so many years he has been homesick for a place that never existed save for one instant in his mind.

That smile is a first step in conjunction with many first steps. Each decision that we all make, he realizes, shapes the future that we create. It is a future that is never absolute; it is one that is expecting change whether we consciously make them or not. Outwardly he is projecting a sense of ease, demonstrating that he has no fear. All the while he is afraid of what actually does scare him; the things that are so minute and surreal that admittance of these things is detrimental to his psyche. That smile indicates that he chose to live, and if the part of him that is afraid over powers that which is willing he will never again be able to look upon a reflection of who he wishes to be. The dreamer is reminded of an adage, "The most universal human characteristics are fear and laziness," but thinks to himself that these traits are simply birds of a feather; and that acceptance of one coincides with acceptance of the other.

His beliefs were once known to him, though they now seem as distant as he in the apogee. The decisions of now lend more than experience, they are a chance for him to live what he believes and yes, they will challenge what he thinks to be true. In fact they will undoubtedly rip him apart in ways that will cause him to spend much the years ahead trying to ascertain how they were able to. This is precisely why they are so important, because they have been challenged him, because he has lived them, because he knows them. Not because he read about them, not because someone once spoke of them with reverence, not because others around him have an easier time accepting him because he believes what they do. That smile tells him that if he does not venture to the life of a philosopher he will loose what he is as a dreamer.

He decides that he wishes to live death, to live unto death as it were. This may seem obvious as everything that has lived has died, just as everything that is alive will die. But what recounts is not a cortege of events that ultimately leads to the result of death. To live death is to embrace it as a stage of life, to have experienced, conversed philology, to have lived tumorulously, to have given the very smile that began it all, to say yes to one instant and be joined by the populous of the mind.

The obvious conclusion is to break with tradition, to expel routine, to kick himself out of what is comfortable and force him to create new universes that will, in turn, cause him to destroy those and create new ones. Each time holding on to some part of the old and incorporating it into the new. The action of destruction is one that leads to creation. Good does not triumph evil, they need each other to exist at all. The light over powers the darkness each day at sunrise, and in turn the darkness prevails the light at sunset. As this is one of the most ubiquitous analogies of good versus evil it is not hard to see that for as much as the dreamer would like things to stay complete he knows that growth can only come from destruction. He does not have to forget the past, he must simply move on from it.