An observational essay on how to live your life knowing how horrible and hopeless life is

Things that have been written many times and sensed by millions, nevertheless timeless and faulty. Washed with tears of poets and mere mortals, so explicit and brilliant. An incurable ailment, famous, but with each in its own way. An ailment that bites into a wanderer, turning into a shadow of the wanderer, into his only friend. Oh universal loneliness of an immigrant! All your transformations, habituations, all that implies the evolution of the personality, can end with a mutant. And still, always, a stranger. Neither there nor here. Now you won’t go back, beaten by experience with eyes opened up wider than is possible, and there is no strength for forward neither, you only dangle like a balloon from a passed holiday somewhere in ‘now’, regretting and not wishing. Searching and searching for these ghostly ‘yours’, not according to the passport, but according to the thoughts, you are searching for what you have made up yourself, and so here you find something completely not right, but random and whatever there is. And it seemed that everyone was talking about it all the same, but why did no one say it? An old, worn and broken hurdy-gurdy.

From the gills to the ears, you’ve been coming to a human for so long, you have multiplied, stumbled, destroyed selecting the best, and leaving only a couple of unnecessary nipples, you arrived, you reached the peak of your best self, a self that doesn’t need you. Through millions of years, you invented and built a system for people in which people are not needed. We people, unneeded, victims of our own ambitions, we are born to die, and preferably faster, we rush to finish everything, childhood, college, love, sex, marriage, day, dinner, and then retire, and then retire from retirement. Because the system is so complex and unconquerable to reach the minimum circles of needs and comforts, we waste our whole life and usually die without receiving at least an echo of our desires. Life proclaimed beautiful is only a vicious circle, a rodent's wheel, where in false hopes for response you, a hamster, with all your four, like a tractor tumble on in order to reach the criterion of Ozymandias, transform all your essence believing that it's better for you, that in the finals, becoming what they asked, you will receive a magical prize consisting of prosperity, recognition, freedom, comfort, happiness and other flattering words, that in front of every one of those words will be your name. But the way is too long, in comparison with the length of a hamster's life. You are used and unneeded, tricked, and too old to protest and act now differently. Now you no longer hope, but are simply content with the cell that you have. Then the feeling of contentment, along with all the other feelings, disappears somewhere, you defecate lying down for the last time, you writhe a little in the agony of death and PUFF!

Realising all this and still having some life ahead, not dying yet, my question is how to live with this? Rejoice in the trifles, follow the leaders, get distracted, let everything go by itself, abandon all desires, love yourself unconditionally, trust others without demanding proof of their intentions? No. Each of these points is too controversial and relative, especially when theory and practice are such different poles. The overwhelming fear that I have only one life, and that I always have to choose only one thing, and sometimes not the one I want, and that the choice can be wrong and lead to consequences, call me paranoid, but can one live being devoid of such questions? Life is indeed too short to fill up your head with this existential rubbish, yet life is even shorter to keep on making mistakes one on top of another, and to find this fragile balance, to reach this long-desired golden middle seems absolutely unrealisable.

They say having a question is already half of an answer, so let’s consider this observational essay as that fifty percent of the answer and I would be very grateful to the readers if you would share your ideas on how to live your life knowing how horrible and hopeless life is. 

Prosaic Friday: Blinking

Blinking

The sun was leaving his street too fast. The street was longing for the light just like his soul was. Even when direct afternoon light was penetrating into every corner of this place, everything seemed to him invariably miserable and grim. Well, sometimes you just can’t help the way you see things, right?

He left his sleeping place and went out to the street hoping to catch up with the last promise of today’s sun. As always, it promised to return tomorrow. Either scorching or almost invisible, the sun has for already almost 5 billion years been fulfilling its promise to return, and it was nice for him to know.

Speeding up and wading between the tightly-planted houses, like air he was gulping the last gleam of the day. There, ahead, there is still a little bit, he thought to himself, focusing his gaze at the end of what seemed an infinitely sad street. The sky was dipping itself into the arms of darkness yet it was bright. Out there, above, the swallows were circling and crying incessantly. They were flying low, he could hear them. The atmosphere was pressing the ground with all its body. It will rain, he thought. Something superhuman and unfathomably painful was in their cry. Something too animal, something too wild for a landed human. After all, every blackfly on account for every bird and its offspring, survival couldn’t make them not to cry.

Along the way he thought that he could stay in the flat and bid farewell to the sunset from the window, but then, that eight-foot room would swallow him in blackness much faster. A bridge was very close.  The destination he was eager for. He crossed the road and took his phone out to take a picture. The picture was nothing particularly different from the other 90, but it was one more day that was born, lived, and was dying right in front of his eyes. He will not remember this day, they all have long been mixed into one but let it be pixelated and saved elsewhere just in case. That's all. He reached the remains of light and was saved just like the picture in his phone.

The bridge was empty just as he was. No people, no cars, no motion. It was getting dark quickly, hastily. Street lanterns were proudly showing initiative in the urban décor. An ambulance raced past. Nothing will help this day, he thought, call the morgue. For him, the night wasn’t a part of the day; it was a totally different dimension, with its rules, traditions, and way of existence. In these circumstances, he had nothing to do at night, or more precisely, in the night. A cold north wind in mid-July, the smell of alcohol digesting welcomes you past every pub implanted into the row of houses, sickly-sweet perfumes, meaningless electronic cigarettes, and people dressed as mannequins for real? Now anger was filling his soul. People. People make the place, right? They're unconditionally buying cheap flirtation and even the crudest attention, they admire each other's primitive intelligence, and now he hears the shouts of encouragement to a guy who just broke a bottle of beer. These people are narrow, flat, and happy fools, and unbeknownst to him, the envy has eclipsed the anger. Now a single night's darkness was not enough for him and he hobbled back home, to the smallest and darkest room in the world.

Cold wind has weather-beaten his thin skin but he imagined this city on fire with all the colours of the rainbow and it was warming him. Night. Infamous night. Go away and give me back my day, was he crooning on the way back. Empty like entrance of the house, lonely elevator, he entered the flat and quietly made himself a cup of tea, in order not to wake the rest of the monsters in his head. Today there was enough of them.

The door of the room. Closed curtains. Squeezed wooden bed between two thin walls. They are all too unfriendly. He doesn’t care, he closes his eyes and the thought of a new day that brings new hopes lulls his heavy heart. Light will come and all will be brighter. Light will come.

His sleep is instant and deep, he barely sees dreams. They are deceptive though comforting. He is too tired of them.

The morning. He feels it with his eyes closed, but only when he opens them there is no light. Is the night not over? Or have I gone blind? But there is no panic, it does not frighten him, he sees the dark with open eyes and it feels good, it feels like light and it doesn’t matter if there is no more light, because he doesn’t need it anymore.

A little later he woke up again to find a lock of dark hair on his face. The hair that replaced the light and darkness, the hair which makes both equally deep and light. Day 91. 

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Yellow imagination of lilac coat

- Maybe I have cancer? Or some other incurable dental disease?
She stood in the kitchen and looked at the autumn landscape of debris in her window.
- If there was cancer of stupidity you would definitely been ill, - her fussy mum said, and slammed the door. She felt as if little slippery worms had a bath in her head. They laughed and drunk champagne from crystal glasses that borrowed in the sideboard that stood in the corner of her skull. Their ties, jackets and heels were scattered all over the head. This time it was a office worker-worm, his worm-wife, and their worm-mistress. Outside the window, screamed worms-kids and all the time didn't let them concentrate on their orgasms. The dog began spinning around its own axis.
- Noooooo! Please don't! Okay, okay, let's go for a walk!
She dressed beige corduroy pants, terrible style, (which she had already more than 5 years and constantly tried to alter them, making it narrower and narrower, but style still intolerable),and stupid lilac coat, in the form of a bell.
She carried her vegetable dog outside and as long as he like frostbitten stood shaking his head  she began to watch the falling leaves. Under the feet was formed a real autumn carpet. I hate carpets.
-Lilac color is definitely in harmony with the yellow leaves, I make at least some creative effect in the world. maybe I should stay there until the wipers will sweep away the leaves? Then I'll know for sure that I must go, to another location in the search of harmony. I was born in autumn.
One leaf was falling so slowly, naturally. Waltzing in the space of earth and sky it is resignedly but proudly took its place on the carpet with its cousins. The other leaf, having made a few choleric rotations, spun around so hard that blew away itself into a puddle. Noble but nasty girl decided to help the trees to get rid of their old and not trendy attires and shook one of them thus caught under the Starfall of leaves. Actually this day girl was so bored and sad that she decided to have fun with such latest idiotic way.
The dog happily took a run and hit his head against the wall,  then stood up and ran on.
-Why are you doing this? The girl was funny and sorry for dog.
She imagined how dog turns into young puppy in a silk green scarf and leather hat with a cup of tea in the legs, coming to her, said - well, I must go, - make a curtsy, puts the pilot glasses and flies away in his doggy helicopter. She looks at the sky, wiping away the tears by one leaf of yellow carpet brotherhood and the helicopter writes in the sky "see you..."
He flies away and putting head down she sees a little piece of avian shit on her sleeve. She gazes into this picture and see how out of shit starts to grow a small narcissus flower, - Oh my god, avian shit is not a sign of money, it is a sign of flowers! Said out loud anxious girl. She hastily lifted vegetable dog and hurried home, telling him about perfect balance of yellow and lilac colours.
At home she has determined that flower grows out of her hand.In a such moments, you don't know who to call and what to say, but she began to search mobile, but returned to the kitchen where she had left a dog, was lying only green silk scarf, and in the sky was visible white stripe of helicopter.
She stared out the window when her mum came home.
- Are you still sit back? asked mum
- Mom, I'm definitely sick ...
- Oh please, just don't start over again, by the way, and where the dog?
- He flew away mum
- Sorry?
- I have something to show you
- What did you say about dog?
- Do you know any diseases when from the people grow plants?
- Sorry?
...