Our Need For Consolation is Impossible to Satisfy

without faith, I dare think of life as an absurd wandering towards a certain death. I did not inherit any God, or fixed spot over the earth from where any God could oversee me. Neither did I inherit the disguised turmoil of the skeptic, the cunning of the rationalist or the burning candor of the atheist. Therefor I dare not accuse those that believe that in which I doubt, or that ones that make of doubt itself their cult, as if it where not itself surrounded by darkness. I would also be accused for I am certain of one thing: Our need for consolation is impossibly to satisfy. How can I live happily then? I search what can bring me solace like a hunter searches its prey, shooting without hesitating every time something moves in the forest. I almost always hit emptiness but sometimes a dead pray falls on its feet. hastily I run to take it, because I know how fleeting consolation is. | bend down. I have it! but what do I have, between my fingers? If I am lonely, a loved woman, an unfortunate travel companion. If I'm a poet or prisoner , an astonishing arch of words, a sudden suspicion of freedom. If I'm threatened by death or the sea, a warm living animal, heart that beats sarcastically, a solid reef of granite. Being all of those, its always little what I have! The ways of solace: if I search for some, others haunt me without me summoning them. they whisper, hateful.

They fill my room with muttering: Pleasure: "give yourself away without limits" Talent: "Use me as badly as you use yourself! My thirst for fun: "only gluttons know how to live!" Loneliness: "despise Man!" This desire of eat: "Hurt, Kill!"

Narrow is the edge of the knife! between two dangers I balance: on one hand the glutton mouth of excess threatens me, on the other the bitterness of the miserliness that feeds on itself. And I refuse to choose between orgy and poverty, even if that means the sacrifice of the fire of desire. I am not free in my actions, so all can be forgiven. But this knowledge does not suffice. What I look in life is not an excuse but exactly its opposite: forgiveness. And I realize that if I don't take into account my freedom, all solace is deceiving, mere reflection of despair. In fact when my despair tells me"lose all hope, the day is but a moment of darkness between two nights", there is a voice that says -"be confident night is not but a moment of darkness between two days". Humanity does not need words though; it yearns for consolation to enlighten it. And even those that want to become bad-act as if any action can be defendableshould be at least good enough to notice when he achieves said consolation. It is impossible to know when twilight will settle, impossible to number all the cases in which solace will

be needed. Life is not a problem that can be resolved dividing light by darkness or days by nights, but an unpredictable journey between places that don't exist.

Sometimes, by the sea, in the everlasting movement of the waters and the eternal flow of the wind, I feel the challenge that eternity sets for me. I ask myself then, what is time; and I find it is nothing but consolation for the fact that we don't last forever. Miserable consolation. There are nights in which, sitting by the fire, in the innermost room, I suddenly feel death surround me: in the fire, in the sharp objects that confine me, in the weight of the ceiling and in the mass of the walls; in the water, in the snow, in heat, in my blood. I then ask what is the very human feeling of safety and I realize it is but consolation for the fact that death is the closest thing to life. Poor consolation that doesn't cease to remember us of what it would wish for us to forget! I decide to fill all my blank pages with the most beautiful combinations of words that I can come up with. then, because I want to assure myself that life is not absurd and I'm not alone on Earth I unite them all in a book and offer them to the world. It in return gives me wealth, glory and silence. But I don't know what to do with this money, nor what pleasure to draw from contributing to the progress of literature for I only want what I cannot have - the certainty that my

words have touched the heart of the world. It is then that I ask myself what is my talent, and I realize that it is but a way to console myself of my loneliness. Pathetic consolation-which only makes my loneliness five times heavier. In that animal, that crosses the woods hastily I can sometimes see the incarnation of freedom and listen to a voice that insinuates: "live with simplicity, enjoy what you have and do not fear laws!" Excellent advice. But what is it if not a way of solace for the fact that freedom does not exist? Ruthless console-to those who know that Man took thousands of years to be but a lizard, rotten with indifference! When in the end I realize that this Earth is a common ditch, where Solomon, Ophelia and Himmler rest side by side, I reckon that both the scoundrel and the miserable have the same end as the sage. So, to a failed life, death can become a way of consolation- and quite an atrocious one, especially for those in life who wanted to find a way to cheat death.

I do not possess philosophy in which I can move like fish in the water or bird in the sky. Everything in me is a duel, a fight fought every minute of life between true and false ways of consolation. Some do nothing more that to augment the impotence and make the despair deeper, others are sources of temporary freedom. True and

false! I should say true way since there is only one truly real source of solace: the one that says that I am a free man, an inviolable individual, sovereign entity within its limits. But freedom begins in slavery and sovereignship in in dependence. the most clear sign of servitude is the fear of living. the definite sign of freedom is the fact that fear leaves space for the peaceful enjoyment of independence. It could be said it is necessary to be dependent to know the enjoyment of being free! it is certainly true. In the light of my actions, I see that my life seems to have had the sole purpose of constructing its own misery: the things that were supposed to make me free have always enslaved me. Other men have other masters. My talent makes me a slave to the point where I do not want to use it- such is the fear of having lost it. More so- I am so much under the influence of my reputation, that I hardly dare write a line, in case it will ruin it. And, when depression settles I am also a slave to it. my biggest desire is to retain it. My strongest pleasure is to feel that all that I am worth is in something that I think I have lost: that capacity of generating beauty from what in me is despair, heartbreak and weakness. With bitter pleasure I wish to see my own design crumble and see myself as well, under the snow of oblivion. But depression is a matrioshka doll, and in the last doll are the knife, the shaving razor, the poison, the deep waters and the jump to the great abyss. Of all those instruments of death I become a slave. They haunt me like dogs, unless the dog is simply me. It seems to me then that suicide is the

only proof of human freedom. However - I do not know yet from where or how- I feel that the miracle of freedom is nigh. And eternity, which moments previous tormented me, now stands testifying this access to freedom; this sudden and simple discovery that no one, no power, no human being has the right to force me to the point of extinguishing in me the will to live. What would become of the sea if the rivers do not go to them?

I am after all close to the sea and its science. no one can demand of the sea to bring all the boats, or fill the sails with wind. Equally no one can demand of me that I live a prisoner of certain functions. My motto is not duty above all, but life above all. Like other Men I have the right to a few moments in which I can feel excluded, in which I can know that beyond that anonymous mass called world population, I am also an autonomous unit. Only in those instants do I set myself free from everything that in my life has been a cause of despair. I recognize that the sea and the wind will not allow me to

survive and that eternity does not even remember me. Why should I remember it? life is only short if I measure it with time. Its possibilities are unending unless I count the number of words I can speak or books I can read before death takes me. But why should I count? I the end, time is worthless, useless measuring instrument that registers what life has already brought me. Actually nothing that is important and happens and makes me alive has to do with time. The encounter with a loved one, a caress on the skin, help at a critical moment, the cold blade of beauty- none of those have hours and minutes. Everything happens as if there was no time. What does it matter if beauty is mine for a second or a hundred years? happiness is not only beyond time, it denies all connection of it with life. Thusly, in one movement, I free myself of two burdens: time and the chores that are continually demanded of me. Life is not measurable nor is it a chore. The jump of a goat or the sunrise are not chores. How should human existence be so,deaf strength growing in the pain of perfection? and what is perfect does not perform chores. what is perfect works in a state of repose. It is absurd to believe that the function of the ocean is to exhibit ships and dolphins. Obviously it does- but preserving all its freedom. What other task i the one of Man but to live? make machines? write books?

Do whatever I may, I may just as well do something else. That is not what matters. What matters is to know you are free like any other element of creation. What matters is to know oneself as an end in itself, like a rock on sand.

I may even escape the power of death. The truth is that I cannot shake the idea that it is following me closely. nor am I capable of denying its reality. But I can annihilate its threat, avoiding placing my life on things as weak as time and glory. This is not a place of permanence: eternally facing the ocean, comparing its freedom with mine. The moment will come when I shall retake the path of the earth and confront those responsible for the oppression that victimizes me. I shall then be forced to recognize that Man has breathed life into things which at least appear to be stronger than Man itself. Even this recent freedom is not enough to fatigue them, only to make them sigh under its weight. However I can distinguish between the absurd demands and the unavoidable ones. And it is absurd to have forever lost a type of freedom: that which comes from having an element of our own. The fish, like the bird and the creature of the land had theirs. Thoreau still had its Waldau forest- but where is the forest in which todays human can show it can live free, unlimited by society's strict molds?

I am forced to answer: nowhere. If I wish to live free it is necessary I do it within those molds for now. I know the world is stronger than me. And to resist its power all I have is myself. Which is not little. If the number does not crush me I too am a power. And as long as I can push the words against the strength of the world, that power will be tremendous, because those who build prisons always express themselves worse than those who fight for freedom. And when all I am left with for defense is silence, then it shall be unlimited for no blade can crack living silence. This is my sole consolation. I know that the relapses in my despair will be profound and numerous, but the memory of the miracle of freedom takes me like a wing to an end that inebriates me: a solace that is more than that and that is vaster than philosophy: that is indeed a reason to live.