Alexander Theil

 

my head is spinning. the darkness around me is almost total. the flood gates of my mind are open. I can feel the seconds, the minutes pass.Incessantly, sand is trickling from the hour glass of my life.my closed eyelids are the screen for my brain’s projections. the reel of film is endless;  being produced as I watch. spinning beyond my control. images are appearing and dissolving without logic, without sense. the only constant in this chaos is the certainty, the unbroken promise of its return, after its noise is toned down during the day.what is it? why is it? the cycle in our heads, it keeps us occupied. spinning. spinning and weaving narratives of our little selves. of our lives. of yesterday and tomorrow.the mind spinning from theraw materials of myriad sensory experiences. many threads alternate, many yarns interweave. their composition always flimsy. never solid. never stable. unlasting. just like us.like our consciousness, our identity and memory, our material bodies.what we euphemistically call the “human condition”. the nagging,  intangible, yet so very certain prospect of our eventual demise. pushed to the back of our minds. mostly ignored. repressed.present merely as an abstract thought.its full realization maybe too much to bear.fighting it off: atedious,grueling effort.        when the day’s noise dies down, the night’s silence threatens to take over and swallow us whole. it is in this silent darkness that we come closest to grasping the totality of death. the inevitable cessation of our existence.when I was younger, I used to imagine what death is like. if you silently meditate on the idea long enough, you reach a point that feels like someone suddenly taking off your blindfold, and you realize you are standing at the very edge of a high cliff.vertigo.it reminds me of the famous Nietzsche quote about the abyss. that if you gaze into it long enough, it also gazes into you.     maybe that’s why at night, we unconsciously turn on our inner noise to drown out the silence. we keep busy turning the wheel, spinning the yarn: the illusion of progress.we think motion is progress. progress is good, is what we are told, therefore motion is good. but motion or stillstand. progress or stagnation -it eventually leads to the same state: death and decay.time is indifferent to our actions. born into a losing struggle. our attempts at self-deception never entirely successful. Increasingly less as we grow older. watch others grow older.watch people disappear without the earth so much as skipping a revolution.slowly spinning in the dark vastness of space. the planet’s life incomparably longer than ours, yet just as inevitably finite. like the entire universe. expansion and collapse. the eternal cycle of life and death.           maybe.