The Dismal Road | Teen Ink

The Dismal Road

January 28, 2012
By samwhoam PLATINUM, Granby, Massachusetts
samwhoam PLATINUM, Granby, Massachusetts
25 articles 0 photos 4 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


A world of grey and dismal shrouds surrounded him. He pushed forward, heaving his weight against the cold air around him. It was a cruel world. It was a meaningless world drained of all color and vibrations. Vague shadows flitted and danced under his footfalls, the sound of his breath pumping his legs forward in a synchronized rhythm. Nothing was on his mind, and he was in nothing, of nothing.
This was his escape then. The escape of reason, of thought, of the twisting spinning gears of reality. This is the physical joy, the emptiness of being, the threat of nothingness. Not everyone can undertake this disturbing feeling, the pouring of one’s soul into a little vessel and smashing this vessel with intense force and strength. To rip out the human heart, to allow it to beat weakly in the hand before gorging one’s self on its life giving blood.
This is how he felt in the grey world. A world composed of deep, dark mud, hidden pitfalls, torturing crags, and terrifying mystery. Yet he was drawn to its majesty. The thrill of the insane drives the man forward, deeper into this wyrd world. Thoughts of hell arise in his mind as he staggers on, his nothingness turning towards the humanity within him, the wondering thoughts that invade the purity of his hiding place.

He fancies himself on the road to hell, hurtling through a dim world of nothing, to try to be something. There is no point to our futile struggle to be something. There is no something to become. There is only the man within each of us. That is the being that struggles to escape the bonds of thought, the ever present demand to be.
So what then does this mean? He laughed at himself. It was just such questions he wanted to escape. Just such insatiable desires he wished to quell, to crush, and to annihilate. No, there would be no escape for him. His mind was too wily. The twists and turns of thought would take off at the demand of any number of pheromones and strange unknown chemicals. He was ruled by the beasts within him, and running, well it was an effort to place himself in a solitary state, one of bliss, no worries from the world around him.
He raised his hands to the dark sky, illuminated by no shining beacons, by hope filled light. There was only himself, only the single mind to lead out into clarity. The consciousness and the demands of all consciousness must be faced sooner or later, and his glory is short lived. He must develop that leader into something worthy of himself. Again he laughed. There is no something to be obtained, only the thing which is already within.
The wise ones have only realized common knowledge to be true. The old ones accept the facts. This is what makes them wise in the eyes of the searching. “Oh I see, you are no longer searching, no longer troubled, you must be wise. You have something.” The man snorted. Wisdom is but a fallacy in and of itself, nothing in and of itself and everything to the truly peaceful. Wisdom is to acquire serenity, inner peace.
Running he felt at peace, but it was a false peace. It is a chemical induced peace, a druggy method. He knew this, and accepted it for what it was, an escape, merely that.
But in it he felt alive. He felt so exuberantly alive he could not shun the obsession, the insanity. Perhaps only the insane can be wise, the wise insane. It is the masses that forever progress and never achieve, always search but never find, always eat but are never full.
He thought of all this twisting through the dark road of hell. Clouds of fear were pressing down upon him and the night whispering the fate of many to his whistling ears. No thoughts of destination or reason found him. No definite plan formed in his spontaneous mind. Empty, devoid, insane he stretched forward progressed still towards the nonexistent something, hope springing eternal in his chest, heaving faster and faster and his hope grew.
No human motive is as terrifying or destructive as hope. Hope and faith kill more, destroy more, and create more suffering than any other trait of mankind. We have the ability to believe the ridiculous, convince ourselves of the absurd, and talk ourselves into accepting and living towards ancient customs of deceit and idiocy. We created religion. We created politics. We created war. We are the genius inventors; we are the creators of the idea of a something. I must make a difference. I must change the world. I must be important!
No importance will ever fill the human psyche with the feeling of “completion.” No amount of wealth, children, religious zealously, political power, lovers, or physical achievement will bring the something for which we all desire, for it is nonexistent. In our intelligence we see a flaw. We are no greater that the beast when you break us down to the same particles, the same needs, instincts, ability. We need something. We need greatness on which to focus our intelligence. What can fill the void of desire? What can satiate the thirst for peace?
Accept the theory of a supreme nothing. Embrace the runner. Embrace the nothingness in which we all live, in which we all struggle. There is nothing, but we are something. The only fact, the only difference, the only special quality of note is, in fact, this desire. It is what separates us from beasts, this ability to create religion, to have such binding faith in a something. Perhaps it holds us together, makes us one in our nothingness.
We are all on the road, the dismal road of nothingness. The grey fuzziness surrounds all of our minds, causes us to reach out. Grasp not a philosophy, grasp not a faith, cling to no god be it material, spiritual, or of obsession. Instead of these quite unfulfilling tasks, for they are unending and torturous games, hold firm the notion of one’s intelligence and fasten it to that of those around one’s self.
We can merely build, and marvel at our buildings. We can merely love, and marvel at our love. We can merely see and marvel at the road beneath us.
He stretched at last to the breaking point, he felt his muscles complain, the bones ache at the punishment he doled daily in his escape. It was a never ending process, a thing to which he clung. His weary body creaking, the man headed to a quiet bed, where violent dreams would condemn the road, the road to hell.


The author's comments:
Those cold empty nights suddenly seem to call out and grasp us sometimes in their icy embrace. Here is a contemplation on one such a night.

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