stendec

"Buy the ticket, take the ride." I like that line. Hunter S. Thompson. Life is a chaotic mass, a strange maelstrom of everything that has ever existed and ever will exist. Infinitely weird, terriblly horrific, and intensely beautiful. I am incredibly aware of my life, of my mortality. That aspect of my being which is alive, which pulses.

I remember January nights in Quebec City. To describe the cold is to describe the soul of the word frost. The air more clear than the very finest lead crystal, more crisp than a prince's collar. So intensely cold, the kind of cold that will kill you in a few minutes of naked exposure. Everything dry as the desert sands. What were little pools of water are now dark mirrors that crack like thunder in the thin air. Deep into the heart of night, the stars sparkling and reflecting like jewels men have only ever dreamed of lying on a cushion of nothingness so black you could dive in it forever; and below you, a blanket so white and glowing, it would make the purest virgin cry with shame. Nothing quite like it to make you feel alive, to feel the instinct of survival coursing within your veins. The reality of death a few layers of cotton away.

Such an incredible vacancy of life exaggerates life, the absence accentuating the presence. I feel like that now, walking along streets as devoid of imagination as those nights were devoid of life. Everyone sleeps, everything is hollow. And I burn, a constant illumination, a ceaseless awakening. And although I am weary, always weary, I am alive, I feel that instinct pulsing within my soul.

And I smile.

"Buy the ticket, take the ride." I like that line.