Isolation

The electrical essence of the soul

by Mich

THE STORM SAVED ME

The storm saved him. Another night in isolation. And then — the sky flashed through the window and five seconds later the crash of thunder.

The sky had come a-calling.

Who doesn’t like a good thunderstorm? He listened to the rain pounding on the roof and on the fronds outside the window. Another flash. And three seconds later, a thunderous boom. The storm was moving closer.

The lightning bolts and the sound of the thundering sky was a dramatic opera. Nature’s passion drove out his loneliness. He felt closer to her. He felt she came nearer to earth, and to him, with the mystical storm. And if he chose to, he could feel her presence. And he chose to.

She wasn’t making a personal visit, he wasn’t crazy, but her spirit was closer to him, the electrical energy of her soul was part of the storm.

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Looking for the dead

by Mich

You are the eye of the storm and the sturm of the drang and you are dead. Deadeye Dick killed with a stick, a stick in the eye, eyeing half the world and the other half can go to hell.

You know it well. You knocked it out and blocked it out but still it rises, reprises, haunts and taunts and you crawl into the crawlspace, a crab from nebulae looking for the dead who died in bed except for Will who locked the door and died on the floor and your brother a pallbearer watching you as Ave Maria broke hearts and finally departs, the wind so still on a graveyard hill.

You saw the light and the light was black. You ran down the other side and ran out the back but the back was gone and you were back inside. The nightmare, a repeat performance, no curtain call, an audience of one, name of mudd, verbal assassin, do you like Jules Dassin?

All you do is watch movies. At least they motivate you to move from the bedroom to the livingdeadroom. How about Melina Mercouri, mercurial hot blooded sexy as hell but all was not well in the state of Greece, the junta, the punta gorda, the fat point and the fascist coup, Melina mercury rising too, a famous figurehead who fought the fascists and then the bastards were dead.

Well, that was something. You wake up and the day is slowly stopped, no traffic outside, no wind, no sun. There are no birds.

The loneliness wears you down. The death of conversation murders you in hot blood. Isolation makes you insane in the name of the lord and the sun and the unholy ghost.

No army of angels, no heavenly host, oblivion obliterates all. It obliterated your wife and all her thoughts and feelings and memories and it obliterated your Will and it obliterated your will. You became weak. You saw no one and talked to no one. Inside the vacuum you became a cleaner and rubbed yourself out, Eraserhead of Birkenhead, mind suicide, not of the body, the body still stands and sits and drinks and smokes and tokes, a token of your love in memory of the lifelove obliterated in oblivion where all the dead do not exist.

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The silence of the gunshot

by Mich

Paying for our sinsDrawing by Franz Kafka

We are shut in and shut out. Perhaps we are paying for our sins. Sins against our wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. And they, at least the ones who are still alive, are paying for their sins against us. A harsh penalty for all, but maybe we deserved it.

Many of us are in solitary confinement. The isolation is the hardest to bear. In total despair, you take the gun from the drawer. Young beautiful girls and boys who have only begun to live. Loneliness can be worse than death. Death becomes instant release. You don’t even hear the gunshot. You will see your dead loved ones before the gun falls from your hand.

Or you won’t. That’s the chance you take. If you don’t see them you won’t know it. That’s the fail-safe feature of the ungodly plan, so we don’t exist in an eternity of misery. The Godly plan has a different outcome. You can read about it in the Bible. Millions have. Millions believe in the Godly plan.

Belief in the Godly plan requires faith, and faith is the most elusive creature in the human psyche. Even if you think you’ve got it by the tail, it’s hard to hold onto. It’s Jehovah’s jackrabbit.

You could spend all your days and weeks and months and years in isolation just trying to grab hold of that jackrabbit.

If you do manage to get a firm grasp on it, hang onto it for dear life. It will take you home, and all the isolation and the loneliness in the ungodly world will be but a moment in hell.

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