soli

Author: irfan

  • A Worm’s Diary

    A Worm’s Diary

    Is this me? The person in the mirror smiling into my own eyes. The first to grasp the meaning of the words that fall from my mouth—or the one who, not knowing what to do, punches walls and believes that the slightest physical pain will soothe the ache in their soul… I don’t know this person.

    I want to be the child I’ve forgotten. I don’t want to become someone else. I truly hate it. I spew mouthfuls of curses. I seize every chance to inflict pain on myself. I bite my lips to keep from unleashing what’s inside me. I resign myself to the fact that I can’t bring myself to say “fuck off.” I don’t deserve to be this person.

    My feet tremble with rage. I repeat to myself that no one must recognize who I really am. I want to be alone. I miss myself. I don’t want to offer my face to just anyone—yet they look at me and whisper only “hi.” Even if my entire body stood perfectly still, I couldn’t hide the truths in my eyes.

    I want to ask questions. I don’t even know why. I keep repeating myself. I’m so angry at myself. Living is the source of all pain. I’d do anything to escape this. Maybe only in eternal sleep will I find peace.

    With every letter, pieces of my soul vanish. I’m misunderstood—even by myself. I want to do nothing, but even that feels impossible. I can’t close my eyes for more than a few minutes. I can’t believe that the life replaying before my eyes like a film reel is mine.

    I don’t want to keep running. I don’t want to humiliate myself any further. I can’t escape—nothing can be as far from me as myself. I want to leave it all behind, but I don’t even have the courage. I lie to myself, saying I love solitude, but I never want to return to that hell again.

    Among people, I keep smiling. I try to tell them about my pain. For a moment, I feel relief, but it only climbs higher. Please, just leave me be. I want to leap from the glass skyscraper that haunts my dreams. I can’t bear the agony of living any longer.

    I don’t want to stop. I know if I do, I’ll start thinking. So long as I keep moving, I keep convincing myself. I tell myself over and over that my life isn’t worthless, yet here I am, feeling like a worm just for writing this. Again and again, I want to shout “fuck off”—to everything… to the ceaseless motion around me… to this outward shell I wear.

    I want to be free. From all of you. From myself. I repeat my own words in an effort to find strength, but nothing ever changes. I remain stuck at this same crossroads. I want to break my hand—despite all the measures I take to hide the bruises on my joints…

    And I laugh…

  • Metaphysical Nonsense

    Metaphysical Nonsense

    “All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”  

    Is it the inadequacy of our capacity for wonder that diminishes our metaphysical will to think, or simply a powerful curiosity toward God? We seek to integrate, dialectically, our hatred for the sensory world—with all its decay and corruption—with our quest for a flawless realm. Kant’s greatest naïveté lies in believing that from the concept of a transcendental world one could ascend to God.

    Though we know intellectually that the senses deceive—and that from birth we confront only “purely phenomenal” realities—we have still pursued truth within those limits. We have endlessly tried to unite our boundaries with our aspirations for the absolute. We searched for the “thing-in-itself” with our senses, yet we failed to extract identity from what we found.

    Plato’s theory of Ideas aimed, above all, to resolve the problem of ontology—just as Aristotle’s metaphysical substances sought it. Thus we deified these two giants, adorning them with meanings they never possessed. We shaped the history of thought by a desire to discover a truth we could not fully grasp. We draped the rules of logic over perception, then pitted that ornate perception against our sense of transcendence.

    The more refined and valued an object or a person became, the stronger grew our curiosity that thoughts might be still more precious. Yet no matter how far we advanced, we always returned to Plato. Whenever we tried to flee, we met him again at our point of departure. We perfected our systems, but always traced our origin back to a single act. We unified the totality of our beginnings and our fragments into one and the same singularity.

    We sought elevation: summoning seven plus five to gain knowledge of space and time. We concocted the absurdity of “synthetic transcendence.” We ended up alone. We staked our all on being unloved—but persisted in systematizing. We became certain that one thing could never be another, yet ignored the act of cognition that binds the two. We criticized relentlessly, only to uncover empirical realities we could not comprehend.

    We squandered our genius on the EPR path to ensure a deterministic universe. For the sake of not thinking metaphysically, we denied God’s fallibility—calling Him immutable, yet casting dice. Now we cloak the transcendent in our phenomena, and forget probabilities through induction. With each accumulation of knowledge, we continue to err.

    However hard we strive, we cannot escape normalization. Infinity or zero; zero or one. We remain mere synthetic fools.

  • My God… Why Do You Torment Me?

    My God… Why Do You Torment Me?

    We had agreed that the greatest revenge is to vanish from Your dreams. To cease waking in terror in the dead of night. To no longer behold Your sweat-drenched face beneath the dim light. To forget that You have forgotten, right there in the heart of darkness. To begin anew with the birth of morning’s first light. To witness the healing of a heart struck a thousand times. To know no more fear. To leave behind a shattered vase. To heed not the shards of glass embedded in my feet. To make peace with the blood that flows.

    At least this is how I fool myself: As if I do not see You everywhere I turn. As if I do not yearn for You even in my most secret hours. As if I do not tremble at the thought of losing You for even a single breath… I long to seek refuge by forgetting You. I know I love You, yet I pour oceans of water over the flames within my heart. I blend every moment of Your existence with my own. Even if You think I have forgotten You, I recreate You in each of my universes—and love You anew.

    I am ashamed of the tears I shed each night. I press a pillow to my mouth so You cannot hear my screams. I wish to erase Your footprints from the depths of my mind, yet I cannot bar the paths of my heart to You.

    My God… why do You torment me? My God… why do You make me feel so intensely?

  • I Wanted to Believe in You

    I Wanted to Believe in You

    I walk through streets that have grown alien to me. They no longer feel familiar. The scent of this body I inhabit has begun to unsettle me. My disturbed mind is caught in a constant act of flight. I find myself besieged by creatures that exhale decay yet have forgotten how to rot—an abandoned forest of suicide. I cannot conceive of life beyond my dreams.

    A bomb exploded, and I took refuge behind a pillar, desperate to escape. Time flowed like water. I felt the searing heat of flames rising on either side. Unfamiliar odors seeped from my flesh—I sensed a fire. Yet I remained oblivious to the acrid smell of my melting skin. I became utterly convinced that pain endures.

    The building reborn from the ashes. I came to tend the fragile hopes sprouting within its ruins. I was deliriously happy. I scarcely noticed the blood streaming from my arms. I felt vividly alive. I began to hesitate to give voice to my thoughts. I grew thoroughly accustomed to lying. I was certain this was how I would take refuge in the virtue of happiness. I greeted the faces I once knew with renewed love.

    But as brief as my happiness, my dream too was fleeting. At the very moment I did not want to be disturbed by the one from whom I sought upheaval, I was interrupted. Sometimes there are only moments: the smoke swirling in my mind scorches my lungs; moments like faith; moments when my heart outstrips my mind…

    I wanted to be baptized by you. I wanted to kneel before you. I wanted to believe in you.

  • A Single Sentence

    A Single Sentence

    The doors closed. Inside, there was only you and me. I could feel our breaths merging. When the ringing in my ears faded, the first thing I heard was your rising voice. Why were you so angry? Though I tried to defuse the tension before it began, I knew I’d failed. I’ve always been like this. I knew you’d never grasp the worth I placed on him. Perhaps you’ll never meet anyone like me. I tried to show off my superiority complex by remaining calm. My sense of alienation was nothing new.

    Through your mounting shouts I barely caught a few words. Why was I repeating myself? I thought about responding, but saw no need. I’ll never understand why my writing always surfaces in my mind during my tensest moments. Unspoken words turn into ink. What remains unsaid fills the pages. It shouldn’t be this way. Some things must be spoken—and, once spoken, truly heard. Aren’t most problems born from the failure to understand what’s been said?

    Even though I hate fighting, a part of me has always secretly enjoyed it. If I’d known, while still in my mother’s womb, that war—an indispensable force of evolution—would one day besiege our collective consciousness, would I have opened my eyes at all? A few blows to my chest brought me back. The voices rose even louder because I stayed silent. Then a single sentence slipped from my lips: I love you.