Burying the dead

"Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb?"

Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931)

Soundness

"A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world."

John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

Hate

I'm a sinner, and my sin's hate. I deal, hatch, and sometimes receive, dents. Anger sure has a sharp edge, but disappointment is trenchant. Hate knows no confines, nor is limited by age.

I certainly hate my next-door neighbour, and he deserves to be despised: he is an over-sized sloth. My next of kin I also loathe, for other reasons – just as throngs of people do, but they curb their feelings. I hate all day long, and through every season. I hate men according to my humour, but there's no one I hate so much as her.

I'm a good hater. Denting souls has always been my sport. I started hating from an early age, yet I thought for a long time that I loved. I was wrong: love does not exist. It is a variation of hate, a lesser degree of detestation or, ultimately, its absence. Breathing hate makes life more purposeful, and keeps its balance.

To hate anything or anyone does not pave your path to hell, it only precipitates the inevitable. Soon or late, severance and disenchantment come in the way. Such is life. The end of our affair would have come down upon us, later than sooner, had I hated her less than I did.

Hate is all about jettisoning, all about torching all to the ground. It's all about digging ten thousand graves and looking at your calloused, injured hands, and grabbing hold of the shovel, wincing and carrying on. Hate must have no end.

Hate puts colour to my life, puts shades under people. Hate begets more hate. Love doesn't beget more love, it begets jealousy. And jealousy is so just one step away from hate. Yet jealousy didn't happen to me, nor to her. No, it was pure, blind hatred that grabbed a hold of me by the guts.

Some people hate themselves because they can't hate anyone else. I understood why she did what she did and the way she did it – I understood – hence I could no longer hate her. I daresay she hated me more than I did her, then; I outloved her in the end – she won the hate game. To love yourself when you can't love anyone or when no one does, that proves too difficult a task. Only those who have god can do that. Love is a burden. Hate lifts everything up if you hate with your whole heart, unless you add the smallest drop of love – and it drags the whole thing down to the ground like lead. This is why I confine myself to hating myself only, lest the little good will there is out there contaminates me. One is never too sure what hopes can do to oneself.

Hate filters the sentiments while love let them overflow. Hate makes you methodical and meticulous while love allows the passions to roam unchecked, stifling the self at will. It's better to hate for a good reason than to love by principle or by default.

Yet it always has to do with fatigue. Whether we feel our bones break because we hate until it hurts, or whether we get tired of hating – it's a long, enduring, arduous business, hating is – we hate a little less, and we are vulnerable. We let something akin to love, or empathy, seep deep into ourselves. This is intolerable, it's enough to make anyone mad or a recluse. I chose.

Hate is now all I have left.

Eidolonguage

"For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears."

Octavio Paz, poet, diplomat, Nobel laureate (1914-1998)

Wrath

I am a thing of anger. I am angry as never before.

Why did she do this to me?

I thought we were - I don't know what I think we were

but she was with me. With me!

What was the whole point? I swear I could kill her.

I'm sorry to disappoint but I'm not going to let her go.

I'll fight teeth and claw. I'll fight her if need be.

What she did was absurd. Look at the mess she's left.

Why did she do this to me, to us, even to herself?

She should have been honest, she should have talked to us.

Out with all her petty secrets! Out with all the festering pus!

She is insane. Insane. Or bipolar. Or both if you can be both.

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

She was the reason I was thinking,

the reason I woke up in the morning and not in the afternoon.

It was her who made me stand up, stick out my chest and move on.

How I hate her now. I am a thing of hatred.

How I loathe to have to go on on my own.

Yes, I hate her. I hate her now as much as I hate God.

Perhaps more, for God washed his hands clean of us for a good reason.

Her? How she did this makes it clear: we were nothing but gnats,

threats, thwarts in her delusion, pallid, crippled spats,

shards of reality in her carefully constructed queendom.

Yet she had made me come back to reality;

she had smoothed its sharp angles, had made it bearable –

yet slightly dreamlike and unstable in her oddity –

She was what I looked forward to on the evening way home from work.

She had made me expect when I had given up on hope. She.

I hate her guts now. Say that she comes back,

smile on her sleeve, glitter in her cat's eyes:

I would torture the truth out of those,

and leave her to her fate, let her to her reverie.

The genealogy of the catastrophe

is distinctly laid out before me:

agendas, memos, diaries –

I should ignore these,

ignore the pain, ignore the shock,

feign, spurn, mock –

keep the things under lock and key,

pay the fee and dash –

bury her five furlongs deep –

burn her – burn the whole world along

and sweep the ash under the rug.

She lived the lie till the end,

drank the cup of deceit to the dregs.

She believed it as she birthed it,

like a crooked infant one yet cherishes.

Shameless, consummate liar!

You nailed us with scornful pegs.

You are evil. Dizzyingly evil.

Uncaring and vile. Full of bottled-up anger.

I in turn am a thing of wrath. Of blood and wrath.

Eager to slay you, and you only lest I follow your path.

Yours are the furious actions of a mad solitaire.

Furious and savage and hurtful and rash.

Yet one thing I have to give you credit for:

you know how to finish off with panache.

Friends

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us."

Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

Soldiers are society

"Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it."

Paul Fussell, historian, author, and professor (1924-2012)

Envy

He was such a nice boy! I never thought such an horrible thing would happen.

It's all just so sad. And dark.

The world's mad, mad I tell you.

Every day I watched her buy a sandwich from the shops across the street

– always smiling she was – and then head to the park.

She was always smartly dressed she was. And open.

Them boys who hang around the pound store she always made 'em turn them head rounds.

The lady from Oxfam said she always dropped in on her way to the park to put a penny in – mind ye, penny's a way o' saying she dropped a coin more like she was.

I always thought she was like I was when I was young like her, only she was prettier. And neat.

Shame people say. It's all so horrible what happened.

Her so young and all. Terrible! Terrible.

She was all I could think of,

She was all them girls dream of.

She was that and more. We was so shocked when we heard.

How could no one see what was happening right under our noses? Are we so blind?

Poor boy. Poor boy. And us all thinking him a pity.

I don't know how he must've felt but it mustn't've been pretty.

Betty I think her name was.

One can't play some games.

One can't be some things.

Or life's not worth living.

Jealousy

I am consumed with jealousy. I cannot think. I cannot think clearly.

She could be on her own; she could be with friends. She could be somewhere new; she could be at work; she could be feeding the squirrels with her sandwich during her lunch break. She eats so little. She should eat more.

She could be at a bar, snogging a drunken man, a sober man; she could be drunk herself.

She could be on the phone with her parents, telling them of her weekend in Brighton. She could be on the phone with her brother, telling him of the problems with her computer. She could be chatting over the sales with her friend Sarah.

She could plan to meet her ex.

She could have chosen that dress because she heard on the radio the day would be sunny. She could have chosen it because she fancies it. She could have chosen it because it was a present to her.

She could be wearing it because men look more intently at her. Some crane their neck.

She could be jogging; she could be doing her grocery shopping; she could be taking a shower.

She could be jealous too, and not willing to speak with me.

She could think me an idiot. She could think I'm pathetic. She could think I'm hopelessly in love with her.

She could just be out for dinner with her friends. She could be looking at them only. She could shut herself to the world outside. She could rebuke every suitor, every gazer, every playboy in town, in the world. She could open her arms to them, make them happy and make me sad.

She could have dirty thoughts, sweaty reveries of her having sex in the toilets of a bar, or in a car, with strangers, with colleagues, with her ex, with her friend Sarah, with me.

She could dream of worse things. She could stay with me because she's happy, because she feels secure, because she has no one else on her list.

She could be anywhere else I'd find fault with this.

She could be on her own, minding her own business, I'd find fault with this.

Everything she does sounds suspicious. Everything she says, wears, smells, buys, eats, seems suspicious. Everywhere she goes. Everyone she meets, calls, chats with. My life, because of her, is a hell on earth.

She could be with me, forever. She could think of me only. I could be the only thing on her mind, all day long. She could be with me, but ultimately I'd find fault with this too.

I am consumed with jealousy, and every day I watch her kiss her boyfriend goodbye on the doorstep to her house.

Mayhap

"When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.""


Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931)