An Orthomyxovirus

I raised my head; slow, sweat pouring down my face like a pestilential waterfall. I don’t fear death, but I fear the suffering. I looked at the thermometer, 102.4, a new record. I swing my head in an arch, the environment blurs in slow motion. I am ready for it to be over, no philosophizing, reality has come to roost in a delusion-laced existence of extended discomfort. “Stop being a baby,” she says, “It’s just the flu.” True, but a more miserable time I have yet to have. I look on the world from a point external, fogged by vapid virus enriched blood. I don’t complain, too much effort, but the look of pathetic lifelessness hangs about me like a wrinkled suit. No starch, just let me lie here for a while.

for the love of wisdom

lonely is the sound of cicadas in isolation. my ruminations have come to naught. i have chewed on philosophical questions like a cow. eating my own sick repeatedly, attempting to get the last bit of essence from raw material. there is no essence. the process is the gravamen, injurious and full of meaning. even now, i find myself using language charged with meaning, learned through philosophical canticles. i no longer write like i used to, my words are clear and precise, but they obscure as often as clarify. perhaps this is best. all that i hold dear is ambiguous, should not my expression reflect this, a mirror of experience, obscure and complex. i am at a loss. absurdity is assuredly the hallmark of civilization and the education that replicates it. perhaps the surrealists knew more than they understood and merely misplaced it. the juxtaposition of the incongruous is reality, the illusion is that anything is incongruous at all. mighty subjective, but where do the subjective and objective meet? perhaps, where the awesome come into being. awesome: as in inspiring awe and terror. this is the ultimate state of existence. it is, however, much like a near death experience. untenable, except in small doses. otherwise it ceases to exist becoming mere existence. the great human power is adaptability and acceptance. that which doesn’t kill you becomes boring. i am constantly bored, i am discontent, i am alive and constantly dying.