Good Intentions

I start the day with good intentions. I carry them with me for the whole of that day and if I manage to find a way of making something stick. I deploy those good intentions in a last ditch attempt at living my life the way I think I always intended to.

My life is a fucking overdraft. I’m in debt. The kicker is that I don’t know who I’m indebted to, only that it’s all going wrong and there’s a gang of consequences who will take a look at the ledger and come and collect. Mobsters. Confidence tricksters. Sharks circling as they sniff out the blood of fraudulence and apathy.

During the day, I’m walking wounded. A zombie trying to pass himself off as one of the living. I see others of my kind, but find no solace in their existence, or their apparent ability to survive the daily daylight grind. The cogs and wheels turn oiled by the lubricant of the hopes and dreams of people unable to do anything with the miss-sold reality they find themselves in possession of.

The narrative of my life is topsy turvy. Right from the start. I wake up tired and I know that I’m supposed to go to bed tired. But when it comes to the cool down lap I’m only just getting started. The previous laps that should have been run were disregarded and walked and I am forever playing catch up to a destination unknown.

There’s something exhilarating about the end of a day. I don’t want it to end and suddenly I have it within me not to accept that end. I can keep going where so many are dropping like May flies. This is the toothpaste tube that some would discard. Instead I squeeze and I squeeze and gold appears where once there was a dark recess and a promise of an oblivion of nothingness.

The night is where I come alive. Way past my bedtime, I look around me and ask why not? There is a compelling rebellion here. A rich seam of living that no one polices. I am free and in that freedom, I am me. This is my guilty pleasure and the weight of the shame of it presses me forth.

Now I can’t sleep. I’ve embarked upon an endeavour that I must complete in order to justify my place in this dark underworld. The night is a lonely place teaming with activity. I feel it’s energy all around me. There is always anticipation. An excitement that cannot occur in daylight. I am part of a fantasy that could become something more than the drab reality that lurks in the coming dawn.

I am not supposed to be here. This isn’t happening. This is who I am. I carry my lack of congruence with me wherever I go, but as the sun deserts the world and there is the threat of death, this identity of mine makes more sense. Now I am not supposed to be in the home of Death himself. I am a thief in the night. An impostor made good. My inability to belong in the darkness turns to my advantage and I feel my light at last. I catch a glimpse of my true worth and I merge with something that has always felt beyond me but belongs with me all the same.

No longer alone, I relax into a state that makes me make sense. That is when I drift into waters that are familiar to me. Familiar, but not safe. There is danger here and I am a part of that danger. Never am I closer to where I need to be than when I am here in the dark. Alone and aware of my fear at last.

I see movement in the shadow world and understand that this is my shadow come alive. A shade that will haunt my waking hours all the more. I have violated the borders of sleep and consciousness and there is a price to be paid for this. Yet I cling to the rewards and damn the consequences. I will sacrifice the hollow man that I am in the daylight hours for the beautiful monster that awakens once the best of us are tucked up in bed and doing their utmost to pretend that they have brought sufficient order to the chaos of the night.

Falling in love with the worst of me was a fortunate accident. I have no reflection here. I am only a suggestion. I can work with that though. There is a freedom of movement that allows me to dance and as I dance I at last hear the music of creation. I listen and I smile and I indulge in my own acts of making. I burn the midnight oil until the sun comes along to steal what little I have found and seek to possess.

I want the night never to end. There are secrets here and in the midst of those secrets is the secret of me. I am here somewhere in the confused mass of the early hours. I speak words of prayer in the hope of a revelation that lies just beyond my grasp.

And then the sun comes up and burns it all away. The fire of that callous orb ends my endeavours just as they are beginning to bear fruit. I emerge too early into the daylight. My roots shrink away and the fertile soils of the previous night crack and dry and deprive me of the home I thought I had at last discovered.

Our beginnings are in the darkness and it is to the darkness that we must at last return. This is my home. I have found a place where I can be. But the light will not leave me alone. The jealous light seeks me out and burns all meaning from me. I will endure. I will find my way. The darkness is calling to me and there is an endless magick there. An eternal night disrupted by a transitory impostor. Soon enough the order of this chaos will be restored and I will return to the bosom of nothingness. Never to be rudely awakened to a tired and pointless dawn that falters even before it has begun. A futile cycle of rebirth that can only ever end in death.

The sun sets and I come alive once more.