Rage

Boundless rage and want
Bounded by this mortal frame
Blocked by years of teaching, learning
Besieged by culture, moral, justice,
By all that's right and good and healthy,
It is trapped.

Yet it is there.
Yearning for you.
Years of waiting
Yoked by minds, sealed away:
You know it, you have seen it,
You have smelled it now.

Always craving more.
Awful, brutal, horrid want,
Awesome, massive width and scope
Attacking to arouse, amaze
Anarchy inside you grows and knows:
It will be freed.

Want.
Will.
Wolves and dogs
Wildcats, baying hounds
Wicked, evil, dark and wanting
It has smelled you now.

Lust.
Life and death,
Less or little, much or more,
Leech it from you, make you mine
Live within you, scent you, taste you
Love you, bite you, have you, want you, take -
It will take you.

More a beast than man!
Men have felt it, men all feel it
Men have known it, men all know it
Men have wished it, men all want it
Savage, simple, strong and surging
Searing, scouring, screaming, singing
Tearing throbbing thrashing taking
Take it all!

Wisdom from the Void of Madness

"Time Slave features Norman's social philosophy of male-dominance, and expresses an unexplained connection between female sexual subordination and the speeding up of the development of space travel."

--from Wikipedia's article on Time Slave, by John Norman.

Nothing Is Real

Tonight, I had many dreams.

I dreamt about Megan - about remembering her as a person, as a friend. About hanging out with her in the US. I dreamt about the US as a country, too. I dreamt about Tingvallagymnasiet, I dreamt about talking to a man breaking down crying in the seat next to mine in a lecture hall. I dreamt about some medieval fair, and people walking around with cardboard swords. I dreamt of watching anime with a group of people, and singing along in the theme song.

I dreamt about all this, and more. And when I woke up, it didn't feel like a dream.

More, it felt like I'd just lost a grasp on reality. And this made me think; I'm not going to pull the Taoist "Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly?" again, but honestly - those dreams roused more emotions than I've felt in almost six months now. They made me feel more alive than I've felt since I started studying maths.

And isn't feeling what matters, when you boil it all down? Isn't what you feel that's important about your life? Feelings are the only things that prove to us reality exists, or at least that reality exists as something more than shapeless, empty blobs. It doesn't matter whether or not I call ice cream "ice cream" or "hammersalt", so long as there's joy in eating it.

I'm not saying I've been emotionally dead the last six months. But I could be so much more alive.

I think I've forgotten how.