~H. Westchop

Oh dear reader, I worry for your safety and your mental health.  Much of the difficulty in fighting the darkness, in fighting the black wind which threatens to suffocate the light, is in the revealing of delicate and unfortunate truths, such as in my previous post.  It would be so easy to read of this world, to learn more of its inner workings and inconsistencies, to finally see the spiral of decadent decay, the wave rearing, curling, crashing, breaking and tearing us asunder…it would be so easy to stop fighting and give up hope, to let that wave sweep us from our feet because we believe that then the pain will stop, that the curse will lift, and we can just drift, drift in peace along the current…

But no! Never! Sadness reigns, but we fight!  And there is glory, romance, beauty in that! We all must remember that the darkness, the hate, the ugly and fearful; that will always exist and never end.  We will never be able to clear that wave, it will always threaten us and provide anxiety and torment, but the swim! the resistance, the digging of our feet in the sand with our teeth bared, salt water and sweat and blood dripping from our hair into the rising tide…that is worth something! The stubbornness to survive, to power your body through the wave, to swim and to tread as long as it takes, that defines success!

I will leave you with a villanelle by Dylan Thomas, one I often return to when the water seems too deep:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.