Zen (it says this title has to be at least five characters in length) | Teen Ink

Zen (it says this title has to be at least five characters in length)

November 10, 2016
By Lydiah DIAMOND, Manhattan Beach, California
Lydiah DIAMOND, Manhattan Beach, California
66 articles 0 photos 3 comments

Favorite Quote:
"beauty is truth, truth beauty" - john keats


I am at once eager to live and uneasy about every
microscopic move I make, analyzing everything, worrying
over nuances of right and wrong, wise and unwise;
this is how it feels to me: I have a headache,


and a faint but perceptible emptiness that is
oddly physical. I try to think of it as a physical
sensation and not as a monster eating me alive
from the inside. Alive! How I would love to be alive!


Have I ever been alive? Maybe that day I
went to the museum, looked at statues of long-dead
emperors. Maybe the first time I read a poem
aloud. Maybe never.


Maybe I have been dead all along, and that is why
I am afraid to dance. My bones will fall all over
me. Decomposition is exasperating. Maybe being dead is
just a part of being human, a natural and absolutely


ordinary part of life. Convince me I am alive and I
will die in peace. For now I am at war with something
that may only be myself. I want to live without
thinking, to be freed from the burden of


thought; I want to be Zen, I suppose. To attain
elusive, abstract enlightenment. I have, I suppose,
been momentarily enlightened: that day I went to
the museum, the first time I read a poem aloud.


Or perhaps that was only excitement. There was
still a hint of uneasiness to it. I stared for a
long while at a nude, syphilitic youth. A foreboding
old man with a spear in his throat. I was afraid


for the poor youth and the foreboding old man.
And even more afraid to read a poem aloud.
I shall try to find enlightenment in the movement of a
cloud.



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