Music, you great delight. But perhaps you are an even greater metaphor….?

The Nihilist: “Nothing matters.”

The Musician: “What’s that?”

The Nihilist: “Yeah, I’ve figured it out! Nothing matters. Look, everything ends and it’s all for naught. I’m so clever indeed.”

The Musician: “I don’t know man, I like some stuff around here.”

The Nihilist: “Just Look, everything ends and there’s no stopping it, so why even bother? Why care at all?

(Musician begins to play a song beautifully with his instrument)

The Musician: (head nod)

The Nihilist: “This is a great song, what’s it called?”

The Musician: “It’s called, “This Song Will End…”

The Nihilist: “Fuck…”

“One does not refrain from playing music because the song will eventually be over. One just makes and then gets to hear the music, while possibly inspiring another to dance…”*

“There, in the depths of your Understanding -where Your mentations are born- exist an easel and canvas. Before it you stand with a brush. In a similar Space, I stand as well.

We can paint in black and white, for the only thing required for a Depiction, are the nuances between Light and Dark. The contrasting of This vice That. The abstraction is not born, it is defined away from something else.

Black and White Will suffice, it’s true. Could we not -at any Step of The Way- Depict in full color instead?

For the Great Canvas is only made more Beautiful with fine Distinctions. When all things are Present and the Spectrum is represented completely, that is when it’s full beauty can be seen.

It is the same with all Arenas: Oils and acrylics, Words, and People alike.”

“It is when you are in the darkest of places, that a small light is very big indeed.”

Coincidentally, nothing had gone to plan. Things had been let go of that were never suppose to go away.  Some of them were never suppose to be there to begin with and yet, They had appeared and were gone All the same. Frost began to form on the little green Leaves that sprung up from the ground, in abject spite of the harshness that had found the lands in which they were growing.

A little field mouse would dart across patches of gravel and then shoot back into the underbrush.  So difficult to spot, unless perhaps you had Beene endowed with the curious eye of a pup. Had You been fully grown, you would Never see the field mouse. Too quick, too small, you might as well be looking for an imaginary friend but why would you? You with all the concerns of an aged Wolf. You who had to figure so much out. No, the field mouse, the Sunset, the Play, these would not be the only things you would Miss as Fall slowly pulled away and the Dogs of Winter inched ever closer.

The time had come, it had gone and with it, so many things.  But as the Turning of the Wheel brings everything closer to something else, what beauty could still be Captured just down the Trail, amidst the mirth of an unforgiving coldness? For how long?  And to what depths might it resonate within? Could you hold onto it, even through the cold?

And so it was that the Wolf had put his head down low and sniffed at Things Unseen.  The smell giving way to images forming in his mind at once and Something told him to cut through the trees, up into the hills, toward the river, toward Life. Long is the journey, narrow the path, soft the pads, and hungry the jaws.

It was nightfall before he knew it. Time to dig. He had just about decided to lay his Grey head down on his paws when he heard the hooting of an Owl humming through the trees, ringing out from the distant Night sky.  He blinked his eyes. Once, twice, they shut them and tried to go to sleep.

You are a mortal creature. Bound to a single link in the long chain of time, performing your very small role in the here and now.

We all realize where the “here” is. It’s the “now” that we cannot understand. And where there is a void in understanding, the fear of the unknown rushes in, swiftly and relentlessly.

How long do I have? Better not do that! Isn’t that destination very dangerous!?! You know cigarettes will kill you!? I don’t think it’s worth the risk…

You will die. It’s the only thing we all understand that stays constant. Yet amidst that deep understanding, raw fear and insubordination. We do not want to come to grips with our mortality or worse, we decide never to Live at all.

So what to do? Who to turn to? Where to go? What to believe?

The attempt to answer any of these questions will still leave you feeling consumed with the void. For all of those types of questions demand of some external force an answer coming from within. Until your Own Voice beckons or commands, you will thrash, writhe, and wonder with the immaturity of a small child.

Become your own guiding voice. Look within and disregard the external. Answer the Voice that says, “I should!” and silence the shouts that Ring, “You can’t.” It is here that the longing of your soul ascends to the realm it belongs. For your soul was never intended to be bound to chains attached to anything of this Earth.

“…But then he thought of her.  The girl he had known, the woman she had been robbed of becoming.  He was happy for a moment but then as quickly as a light from a candle is extinguished, so too had his happiness disappeared.

Tears began to collect at the corner of his eyes, mixing in with the sweat and salt.  His breaths turned from deep, to erratic.  In the wildness of his breathing and pain, the light of the ember grew and something began to happen.

He had become like an early man, forced by some unseen threat into the safety of a cave.  He was kneeling, his head brought low, feeding a tiny ember with his breath.  It began to grow slightly, his efforts never ceasing.  It would soon combust.  Being helped along by the man, it finally burst into a small wavering flame.

He continued to feed it life with his own.  Something felt different and as he kept on, he knew he was feeding into it.  He was no longer starting a primitive fire by crude means.  He understood now, that he was a slave to it, feeling more imprisoned to it as it grew in size.

“Breathe out, breathe out,”  it called to him and soon the flames had grown high enough to lick at his face.  The heat was intense.  The pain should have been insufferable but he did not hide from it.  It was burning at his eyes and he could smell the singeing of his hair.  Soon enough, it poured out from his nostrils and it began to swim down into his throat, passed his teeth and into his lungs.  It -the thing he had given his breathe to- had now become his breath and liquid fire shot out from his mouth.

He had never felt so good, so powerful.  He had never seen anything as intense as the flames that were leaving his body.  He smiled as flames splashed against the walls of the cave, charring the ancient place and lashing out savagely around the rocky enclave.  He knew what he was, what he had become, something mythical, make believe, and terrifying.

“I’ll burn them all to hell and they’ll scream the whole way there,” he said out loud as his wings stretched wide in the cave, his tail and horns scraping against the rocky formations that seemed to be holding him back now, more than giving him shelter.

Suddenly he was caught of guard.  He looked down at his claws and wished with all of his heart -that part of his heart that was still the heart of a man’s- that the face he was imagining was hers.  He knew better.  A mass of flames spewed out of him that seemed capable of burning down the cave itself, even scorching the earth above.  Flames encompassed all of that in his periphery, until all he could take in with his eyes was white, bright with a heat unbearable.

When it was over and the intense light from the inferno had subsided, he noticed he was no longer in cave but instead on the white salty sand of a place he had tried to forget…”

Have you been been a victim of evil? Have you been traumatized or physically hurt? Emotionally, mentally, or otherwise?

If you have, you might be asking yourself, “Why?”

Why is a great starting point when trying to figure out anything. Why will give you at least a baseline understanding of what Really happened.

However, what emanates from why only works if we’re being honest.

So think. Remember. Think some more. That friend that, “Screwed you over…” did you allow it to happen? Was there ever a moment where something didn’t feel right? Perhaps a moment when you had the thought to say something or be confrontational against a feeling of unfairness. Maybe you knew you were being taken advantage of.

What did you do though? Did you sweep it under the rug? “We’ve been friends For so long , I’m sure it was nothing…”

You know now only what you knew then. Only now you want to play the victim? Which -by the way is fine but not helpful- is like walking into a cell.

In that cell you have no real visitors, just the faces of the past whos’ words you slowly contort to better help frame the platform which you seek to use to gain sympathy.

Though sympathy “feels” nice momentarily, those feelings are fleeting. When they are gone and you’re awake late at night, what then?

Better to own your life and your mistakes. Better to stop wasting one more second “reliving” the terror of some awful experience.

Share the lesson, forget the pain in time.

“Suffering is for the Weak, pain for everyone.”

Do you wish to be the last pawn standing?  Oh, my mistake… you’re no pawn!  Are you a Knight perhaps?  A King!?!  A Rook..?

It makes no difference.  Connect the dots.  Reverse engineer how it is you got to Here and you’ll see that we are all pawns.  But pawns -if given the chance- can be quite powerful indeed.

Shall we?