godless-pariah

[godless-pariah]

— Gwen Benaway

[godless-pariah]

Use me use my viscera to keep you warm.

Use my spine drink my marrow and play it like a flute– use it as a sign a warning, a promise.

Don't caress my cheeks, don't whisper to my ears, don't carry my name in your tongue and keep it between your teeth.

Don't recognize me before I even make myself seen.

Go right to the neck– right through me.

[godless-pariah]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘we were put on this earth desperate, hungry and willing.’

[text id: in a sharp set of knives, i looked for a hand to hold. / i could not stop myself from needing to belong somewhere, even if that somewhere was a burial ground.]

[godless-pariah]

pain. gouache watercolor 2018

[godless-pariah]

Anaïs Nin, from a letter to Joaquin Nin, featured in Reunited: The Correspondence of Anais and Joaquin Nin, 1933-1940

[godless-pariah]

"My final act of love is to dispel the illusion I conjured of you. It is an act unto myself."

Anonymous

[godless-pariah]

I DO MY BEST ON THE MARGINS,

when the perils of yearning is more than building a pyre

for the body, when cutting off the tongue to prevent it from

speaking your name over & over again like a hymn becomes

a practical solution. I so want to be acquainted with January

in a way that doesn’t swell my wounds of you. I wake with

carnations swaying in the mouth, a good use for the sweetness

that stems from your name—one day, you’ll hear your name

from the mouth of a lover, and it will all click, how everything

was in praise of you.

[godless-pariah]

I’m holding all my longing between my stomach & my throat.

Yves Olade, from Slaughterhouse; “Mercy”

[godless-pariah]

Nikolay Punin, from a diary entry featured in The Diaries of Nikolay Punin: 1904 - 1953

[godless-pariah]

Franz Kafka, from a letter to Felice Bauer written in 1912, featured in Letters To Felice

[godless-pariah]

- Wednesday January 22nd | 01:31am

[godless-pariah]

Devin Kelly, from “The Old Catcher Considers the Failing of His Knees"

[godless-pariah]

— David Cronenberg, Consumed

[godless-pariah]

[godless-pariah]

[godless-pariah]

Nuance

Relishing you on my knees isn't about

Devotion. It's got nothing to do with

Humility either. It's unadulterated self

Indulgence with a hint of gratitude

For letting me sate my gaping appetite

To wrap you up in sweet subjugation.

✒️ F. J.

[godless-pariah]

7/2/23 1:56 am - Aphelion

     Ever since I was 11 or 12 years old, it has always happened the same way. For months my soul feels as if I am in a crowd of loved ones, close enough to reach out and touch, to smell, to feel the secondhand warmth emanating off of. I am comfortably snug in the center of humanity. Then at some ill-fated moment, with no warning, I blink, and when my eyes open all of the people that surrounded me are in the distance, with an immense and unfathomably deep chasm between us. They are so far away from where I stand that I have to squint just to see what they are. There is no warmth. There are no smells. No touch or sensation. Simply a gaping horror along with a vague impression of the existence of other beings more or less similar to me in shape, with no way to communicate or interact.

     The sudden realization of that immense chasm between me and humanity. That is what has turned my brain in circles ever since I can remember.

     Is the initial closeness the reality, and the chasm simply a wicked lie my mind masochistically entertains? I would love to believe that… But would the nature of evolution really create an organism which tortures itself with unnecessary and inactionable falsehoods? One that sends itself into useless negative spirals, decreasing its chances of livelihood and its capacity to thrive and reproduce? What use would that serve? From everything I have seen, the biological imperative  - the goal of life itself - is not truth. It is the propagation of more life. Our systems unconsciously edit information, change memories, ignore sensations, and will gladly misperceive reality in any number of ways if it helps us live and thrive. As such, it seems much more likely that the human organism would tell itself a helpful lie than a useless truth, and much less so a useless lie. 

     Knowing that, I feel nauseating dread creeping up from my belly. The faint smell of putrescine enters my nostrils as the possibility finally emerges: Is the closeness itself the actual lie? A precious illusion my mind holds onto for dear life — an act of love to spare my soul the torment of the horrifying reality of that chasm? Maybe these periods of despair are simply moments when my mind loses the willpower necessary to keep locked away that terrible truth lurking at the core of humankind; That every one of us are, at our cores, where it matters most, utterly alone, and always have been alone, and there is nothing in the world that can or will ever change that. That the idea that one person can even remotely fathom the soul of another is a grand illusion we maintain in order to keep ourselves alive, knowing if we were to see the truth for what it is we would descend into existential madness and drive our species extinct. That we are all adrift like stars in the universe, visible to each other, yet infinitely distant, forever wandering further apart as we continue to differentiate and increase in complexity, forming our own solar systems made up of various parts of ourselves and small remnants of others, forever haunted by the distant memory of the brief feeling of oneness we experienced before being violently expelled from the heartless womb of the universe.

     Throughout my life many of the thinkers I have respected most have spoken so highly of the superiority of truth, that we should seek it at all costs, stare at it unflinchingly. But as I’ve grown older I’ve started to be less focused on objective truths and more focused on useful truths. I think there are too many truths for the human brain to hold at once. It makes more sense to focus on the ones that help, that serve a purpose. Maybe human intimacy is a lie. But why does it matter? What can truly be done about it? Would I choose nonexistence? Would I turn myself back into dust to escape the burden of knowing? Nihilism used to feel courageous and exciting, but now it just feels cowardly and whiny. In front of humanity is a beautiful garden, and behind them is the chasm. Are the “bold ones” who turn around and stare at the pit in despair truly more noble than the ones who decide they would rather look at flowers? Or are the wisest among us instead the ones that have consciously faced towards the garden, realizing they can’t look at everything at once, and that nothing useful comes from knowing we are fucked?

     And I wish I truly could do that. Fully accept the more helpful reality. I believe I succeed for the most part, these days. 

     Yet every so often, when I embrace a loved one, my arms surround them, yet in my mind I see them far in the distance, a tiny black dot, too far away to hear, to touch, to smell, to hold. I am adrift in space. Acutely aware that, from the day I was born, the deepest part of my soul has been on its hands and knees, gnashing its teeth, weeping into the emptiness. Rending its throat raw and ragged, wailing for what it has lost.