Invasive Thoughts

Greetings Ghouls and Goblins of the Internet,

While it may not be Halloween, certainly we should enjoy a good fright here and there. I hope you find my writing to be a treat, if so then provide an example of one of your invasive thoughts. No tricks here reader, I have only the best well-wishes for our well beings.

I fixate on the failures of organisms
Aorta ruptures, internal bleeding, a homeless man seething,
It's not that I don't want to feel pain,
I just don't feel comfortable in my own skin.
A puppet zipped up into a flesh straight-jacket.

The following is a segment focused on writing out a few horrific thoughts I have wriggling in my brain. Like the momentary vision of an auto accident in your rearview mirror, these fleeting glimpses of the void serve no purpose other than to provide us a frame of reference to experience life with. Lacking this we move through life unappreciative and blinded by an illusion.

It was there that I saw the brains of a father cast upon the walls
like a double-barreled divination.
It prophesied that the daughter would always be scarred.
It was in the bones
Bored into the structure of shattered memories and broken homes

In the same way that horror movies can safely stimulate us with the possibility of the monstrous, the disturbing phenomena of intrusive thoughts are symptoms of the underlying human condition. I experience these aggressive, sexual and socially blasphemous thoughts as the result of prolonged stress and a lack of human connection.

Their bare neck exposes soft flesh.
Gentle skin posing a question to be answered
by one distended maw.
Glut oneself on the blood and flesh of prey.
Excess ends in sucking marrow.
tongues lapping up arterial fluid
The dim evening sun warps into a rotting flesh wound
Pale green light accents the sanguine red.

These thoughts are entirely natural. Projecting shame onto them would create a feedback loop of aggression and shame. A most toxic system of thinking. They would chose to force their will upon their mind's maelstrom instead of deescalating. Resistance to darkness can in itself be a destructive force towards cultivating a properly socialized perspective that can work cooperatively.

We alone are accountable for our reaction to the world. The individual can only control themselves, the external world and Others within are external to these sole moral agents.

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

My blood is deafening in its screams to be free from me
and I want to be free of it
The reddish hue colors my world like a painter’s slit throat over their final canvas.
If art is an evoker of emotions then this death was a goddamn masterpiece.
Something practiced for my entire life.
Feeling my heart stop slowly until I heard the tone of death.

A stoic relationship to mortality is needed for a healthy or beneficial relationship to invasive thoughts. These fascinations of danger can lead to moments of exhilarating creative drive. These flow states are similar to those described by occultists and chaos magicians.

This form of play is a safe observation of the cliff edge. Exemplars of these values will keep a proper distance from the void while staring into it. The ideal vigil is not one of solitude, as human connection is our roots to flourishing in this endeavor. With this we might foster a meaningful dynamic relationship should foster towards ourselves and our Other.

It is impossible for us to lose our humanity, but all to possible for us to cease being humane.

Keep your stick on the ice,
Xander of Xanadu