Day five. Amusingly, I miscalculated on Day 14, which should have been Day 15 if I planned for Day One to land on the day before I depart. It turns out that the day before I depart will be Day Zero. Well, why not?
As my departure approaches, my emotions churn, as I knew they would. They are affected by everything from what I have for breakfast (or if I have breakfast at all) and lunch to the temperature of pockets of air I walk through as I make my way from the building that houses “our” flat to my guitar lesson or to the supermarket or to the post office.
In an ancient epoch, let’s say sometime in 2004, I was drinking wine on an embankment overlooking the Vltava with a certain Zuzka. This certain Zuzka was the same Zuzka that was in a relationship with Michal and who also was the “best friend” of my then girlfriend Jana One. This certain Zuzka expounded at me about emotions. Feelings are the only thing that matter. Act upon them. Act upon them at the moment you sense them welling in your blackened spirit! She left out the blackened spirit part, but I’m sure it was implied in her delivery. I admit that I have left my spirit to roast upon the charcoal for far too long and far too many times. Be that as it MAY, this certain Zuzka insisted that I should obey impulses of sensations the chemicals sloshing around in my head give me and at the very moment they give me these sensations.
Right now, I cannot think of poorer advice from anyone I’ve known.
But I have taken this advice, subconsciously, time and again, and especially during the throes of recuperation from an alcoholic binge. Alas, those are the moments when my psyche is most fragile and I am wont to obey impulses spawned from quickly shifting emotions, mostly of sadness and solitude. In fact, I’ve made decisions that drastically changed the course of my life several times in that state. Were I only to wait a few days for my mind to clear and for discursive thought to reign again!
My point is that that certain Zuzka’s words were poison.
I’m not in the throes of recuperation from a binge, but I am feeling doubts, twinges of despair and other slow oscillations between questioning myself completely and knowing there is no other way forward. Discarding the hillocks and valleys, I strive to focus with the precision of my mathematical mind. It sorts through every event of the last ten years and makes comparative analyses. The conclusion is, of course, that there is no other way forward.
The extreme would be to say that sloshing chemicals should never be one’s guide, but I understand what is happening now is an edge case and emotions have to be discarded. In so-called normal life, I attempt to temper them, but not necessarily consign them to the pit.
Exuvia by The Ruins of Beverast bellows from my studio monitors. Black metal is certainly cathartic.
