Criminal

Like a man who is compelled under water by some strange amorphous and invisible force, forced to hold his breath and swim according to a course he does not see any true relevance in doing, to the point of almost drowing, and then: granted that quick little gasp of breath to keep the process running, he emerges at the surface, with the chilling fingers of ephermerality gliding down his spine, takes his air, always only enough to keep him alive minimally, and irrevocably minimally, and down again, again – to the depths, to follow once more that useless path, that seeming self-inflicted psychological masochism, that destruction of all potential for curiosity and the particularity that works with it, and then, at the end of the deal, to be reproached by those within the same generation for being uncreative, without style, passion, anything that signifies life – that is every man under the constraints of education; and only the geniuses – those who see the world in a fundamentally different light – are conscious of themselves continually drowning – the rest have never yet lived –, are conscious of the fact that it takes open air, even if the air is contaminated with antagonism, to actualize themselves through their expression, through their striving for themselves, are thus capable of juggling the essential with the instrumental – for, after all, education is instrumental. All are forced under the pedestrian imbecility of education; better to call it a form of execution for those who are constantly being annihilated under its reign, better still to call it an embalming process for the stillborn. As soon as education was enlisted by the spirit of gravity, it died as a means to foster uniqueness. Proof: as soon as you resign yourself from the common route of overwhelming yourself with studies, you are cursed, treated as a pestilence, condemned as idle, unambitious; even more incredulity is heaped on those who drop the studies of school for the life-instilling experiences of men who also were impervious to the corruption of systematic digestion. The student finishes his studies, and like a dog shakes himself clean of the muck he has raked in – and like a dog he never becomes clean –, finds himself plunged into the world, almost certainly involved in something he comes to find as distasteful – it takes inwardness, particularity, to know what you want to do – and so the conclusion rolls down: he dries up under his despair, follows what gives him money, takes up sports, hunting, other useless nihilistic chores, she tacks on friends like they were magnets, both become attached, enchanted by the black magic of consumerism, and so death has a hiding place. Education has given man the world in exchange for a soul by which to absorb it; what was meant to be a walking stick that aided the wanderer where his heart begged him has now become his heart, therefore he is heartless, aimless, lost, dead. How hard it is to keep one’s uniqueness in this world! It takes either religion or obstinance – and all religion is a type of obstinance, but religion is in eclipse. Marriage? Yes, marriage is a momentary salvation; but soon the lovers who depend on each other with such unbridled aesthetic passion suck up those unified qualities that make each other attractive. We have nowhere to reside except ourselves, but such land is against our super-sensitive tastes, for it involves pain. Whither shall we go? We are bound to die by repetition.