On a rather surreal night not too long ago I was faced with a disconcerting question that we all elude – “Why do you run from yourself?” But when your vices come and dance in their splendor at every crook, where do you turn to look? And they’re intelligent, they know you, because they’re born off you – the mock tributes they pay to your power, strength and evolution and the twisted smirks when they end up succeeding. Naturally, our survival instincts take the wheel and we eventually find somewhere to look – the clear sky perhaps, but even that seems a little daunting tonight, doesn’t it?
Survival Instinct
Man is complex. A series of intricate hard-wired instincts that has made us last through centuries and adapt to the ever-changing design of the universe that we are sometimes arrogant in assuming that we understand. Possessing intellect and resilience that would leave us in cold-shock, we have refused to explore within. And in the end, what do we give in to? Our all-too-knowing vices – and oh, how they scorn at you! In an overdrive to survive the dreaded, predestined catastrophes, we forget the ones taking birth right here, on the inside. We’re always on the run – maybe that’s why Pink Floyd’s “Run” from The Dark Side of The Moon hits so close to home every time. Vices... our lives in a nutshell just a story of being on the run, away from the vices and the darkness that accompanies them.
“They are, my dear, going to be the death of you” the intoxicated voice slurs just the slightest, and I’m shaken back from my reverie. Maybe I have been thinking out loud… The death of us all, I correct him.
Lately, I have been feeling Dante’s Inferno coming alive within myself – are those it? The infamous demons that I previously rendered powerless over me? The nine circles of Hell seem all too alive and raging now, especially in the cold, eerie night where every inch of every leaf on every tree seems to be sluggish and graciously accepting the consuming silence of slumber. In complete and almost perverse contrast, there’s fire and turmoil within and I find myself able to barely contain it. I falter – again.
I wonder if my eyes give away the fire of those blazing creatures gaining life with every passing moment, for he’s staring at me. I am, once again, at a complete loss.
Have you ever felt alien in your own skin? And being the previously declared an extravert, it’s unsettling to the core. Tonight, restlessness seems to be getting the best of me, and even so, the irony of it doesn’t escape me. Why is it so that the world will always act in complete opposition to your being? The silence is overwhelming, and it seems to be trying to preach something… Follow in my steps... Maybe it’ll be easy. Try it. One breath at a time. The confused harmony I share with my world is odd, and it’s always the latter overruling me, my being, my core. If there is fire tonight, mighty world, do not put it out. I barely even know it yet, I beg.
“Let it…” says the intoxicated one at a battle with nature now, for me. I am grateful and I oblige.
What follows is magnificent. Enlightenment or disillusionment? Maybe we’ll never know, but certainly one of those two. Befriend your demons, the Inferno our beloved Dante wrote and Stradano painted was not to be feared, but to be embraced.
1523 -1605 (Dante's Inferno by Giovanni Strandano)
Let there be fire, and so there was.
The nine circles of Hell are to be embraced – only then will you win. No other outcome is acceptable.