the great below
"I was born bad," he tells them.
A deep inhale is all it takes, and The Other... his face goes gingham.
"Not bad as in evil. Good and evil are only circumstantial. Eternal struggles, damnation, salvation, not as perpetual as you'd think. I mean--" He trails off for moments, his words dot dot doting out of his mouth as if tracing the path of a butterfly.
His flesh feels heavy and constricting but his thoughts break apart into particles unseen, sluff themselves of the existential coil. Smoke, he observes, wafts upward slithering into the nostrils and gently caressing the air with even the cat's slit pupils dilated, aware of the smallest movements. It's like biting his tail - so difficult to tell where one thing begins and the other ends.
Everything so ophidian, and he understands now why they call it chasing the dragon.
"--the Buddha's teachings," he continues, "unlike the bible, is not about the metaphysical. Reincarnation isn't about anything intangible like... like a soul or a spirit but, like the bible, everything about it is all a metaphor. It's just a metaphor for genetic memory. It's about accepting your body for what it is and all the punishments through karma, it's what you've been inheriting since the conception of our species. You're stuck with it, so you may as well just let it all go and fall back into the ocean..."
It becomes so hard to hold his thoughts together.
"Tell me more." The Other asks, but it becomes so hard to hold his thoughts when they are only clouds or stars that escape in a steam from his head.
He watches The Other and knows by watching him - the concentration of his eyes, the inflection of his voice, and with his posture - he realizes everyone can only see themselves through the eyes of everyone else.
"That's what I mean. I wasn't born good or evil," he says. "I was just born wrong. My genes...
I was just born bad."
A deep inhale is all it takes, and The Other... his face goes gingham.
"Not bad as in evil. Good and evil are only circumstantial. Eternal struggles, damnation, salvation, not as perpetual as you'd think. I mean--" He trails off for moments, his words dot dot doting out of his mouth as if tracing the path of a butterfly.
His flesh feels heavy and constricting but his thoughts break apart into particles unseen, sluff themselves of the existential coil. Smoke, he observes, wafts upward slithering into the nostrils and gently caressing the air with even the cat's slit pupils dilated, aware of the smallest movements. It's like biting his tail - so difficult to tell where one thing begins and the other ends.
Everything so ophidian, and he understands now why they call it chasing the dragon.
"--the Buddha's teachings," he continues, "unlike the bible, is not about the metaphysical. Reincarnation isn't about anything intangible like... like a soul or a spirit but, like the bible, everything about it is all a metaphor. It's just a metaphor for genetic memory. It's about accepting your body for what it is and all the punishments through karma, it's what you've been inheriting since the conception of our species. You're stuck with it, so you may as well just let it all go and fall back into the ocean..."
It becomes so hard to hold his thoughts together.
"Tell me more." The Other asks, but it becomes so hard to hold his thoughts when they are only clouds or stars that escape in a steam from his head.
He watches The Other and knows by watching him - the concentration of his eyes, the inflection of his voice, and with his posture - he realizes everyone can only see themselves through the eyes of everyone else.
"That's what I mean. I wasn't born good or evil," he says. "I was just born wrong. My genes...
I was just born bad."