Allow me to preface this piece by acknowledging the formidable writing
ability of this blog’s progenitor.  I must also praise the detailed chronicle of her
personal implosion, and later rebirth, both having occurred within the past year.
My words are simply meant to convey the perspective of a continuously evolving
existence running both parallel, and yet remaining deeply entwined, with said
events.  I believe that a similar rebirth occurred in this existence when an Idea,
combined with a Purpose and juxtaposed against both internal and external conflict,
reached a conclusion previously unimagined.

The Personal Day of Reckoning (The Individual Apocalypse?) can take many
forms: You can lose your mind and allow reality to dissolve, your Self retreating
into a bizarre, isolated netherworld far removed from any real Existence.  You can
snuff out a facet of life itself, including the Whole, to beget a premature end to any
number of components.  Or perhaps you retreat into the barren world of self-
destruction and abuse to prolong a suffering; a suffering that becomes valid only
under such depraved circumstances.  For me, the Harbinger came in the form of
someone who far surpassed me at what I had come to establish my entire identity
upon.  This arrival, and subsequent revelation, in turn began what I can only
describe as a Descent.  When you define the Self upon a singular act, the utter ruin of
such a naïve notion can result in an excruciating impact to nearly every sense.  The
Sinking begins, and the events that follow only proceed to magnify the quagmire
into which the Mind drops.

Even so, no matter how dire circumstances become, as you journey in life (or
stand fixed in place from an alternate point of view), people enter and exit under a
force that can only be described as Fate.  I’ve become a firm believer that everyone
who crosses the threshold of your individual existence arrives and departs for a
specific reason (be it asphyxiation, inspiration, or obliteration).  I can attest to the
individuals in my life who have made such a profound impact that both an Idea and
a Purpose arise and become defined by their presence.  I’m a firm believer that
once all factors align, the road illuminates ahead, regardless of how difficult the
journey may be.  The luminescence of this ethereal guide reveals the path through
the ephemeral void of Doubt.

In my experience, it’s never easy.  Any excursion has its truly memorable
(harrowing?) moments, such as being locked in a house with no power and no food,
in temperatures reaching below zero, and your only way of keeping warm is
burning someone’s stash of New York Magazines.  The ice forming on the roads can
so easily cause the flimsy vehicle known as Life to crash, detonate, and immolate
under an incompetent operator.  And yet, miraculously, you survive; you necessitate
living by finding something to live for, and an Idea that reaches deeper than the act
of simple survival itself.

A movement in the great composition of Life can last any variation of time,
but the length can ultimately be determined by a drive to begin a new chapter
entirely.  I suppose for some, this can be a means of escape: perhaps a step towards
some arcane goal or veiled, corporeal notion.  For others, it’s simply a continuation
towards a chasm; an Abyss from which there is no turning back.  For me, the last
piece was written over two years, and only recently was it finally brought in a full-
circle towards closure.

Acquired personal feelings penetrate the harshest levels of innate judgment
and/or prejudice, and I’ve found that, as the Descent may become the Ascent, so can
the Lost return home to witness the monuments constructed under their influence
through absence.  The Inspiration, the Purpose, and the Idea all combine into
something so much larger than what was previously foreseen through the lens of
nascent elements still emerging from the protoplasm of a life.  Art (and really life
entirely) still make about as much sense as ‘Limbs falling off, on a Saturday, at dusk,’
and yet perhaps, within indiscriminate scenarios, the Whole regenerates and
becomes stronger through the process of the Parting.  Out of that dusk arises
a ‘Thing that was now and now was, and I loved you here and I loved you then, all of
us together, and someone calls it Heaven.’

– Alex Cohen