The days continue to blur in a wild mass of crashing images, a kaleidoscope of haunted remembrances, a torrential downpour of melancholic sounds; of birds singing sweet siren songs, of the wind rushing furiously through the tall and ancient trees, of their leaves glistening in the distance. The immense abstraction of the human condition crawls its way into my senses. I can’t escape it. The nights are long. The stimulation – caused to my nervous system, by the higher dose of my psych medication – refuses to allow my body to slip into the deeper realms of REM sleep. Thus, my sleep is shallow, my dreams are long and infused with a dense texture of madness, my mind and body are weary from lack of deep sleep; I am delirious, waking through the night at the solemn and subtle sound of a creek in the house, or at the terrifying blast of cold wind against my fragile, Victorian windows, or even woken out of my shallow slumber by brutally realistic nightmares, the vivid sensation of falling rapidly through the air into a deep and dark void, or the mentally paralysing fear of finding myself deep underwater in the middle of the ocean, alone, writhing, screaming, ominous shadows moving in the abyss – like enormous mythological versions of Ted Hughes’ pike – yearning in my strange dream state for death to alleviate the horror of drowning in the insurmountable sorrow of existence.
If only everyone could know the sacred beauty, the angelic purity, the holy wonder, the exquisite serenity, the At other times, I am alive within a neon wonderland, dreaming fairy tales and whispering through the night with time travelling hermits, dwellers of ancient caves who chant sorrowful poems amidst candlelight and a deep cloud of smoke billowing gently from their primitive fire. These days are mystical and strange, illuminations cross my mind like a quiver, the scent of enlightenment stings my supple nostrils and I yearn forevermore for the endless path across the universe, the forsaken cosmic road upon which I bless my horrific nightmare pilgrimage, on and on and on, until my very soul melts into oblivion.
In times of deep connection with this mad world, when my awareness of the human condition profoundly heightens and I feel I can take no more sensory input, I sit naked and cross-legged in front of my large and ethereal windows and I stare up at the bright blue eternity that rests beyond the enormous tree line by the river – oh, to think of the centuries it took life, solemn mother earth, to produce such natural artworks – and I brood over all in silence, with my mind as still as the calm seas of dawn, before the great mythic waves of the final doomsday tempest rise from the depths of the ocean and descend upon humanity with the fury of a million imagined gods, to ravage the peace I hold so dear, as I gaze adoringly up at the sky and realise for the hundredth time how small I truly am, how small and insignificant, beautiful and strange, mystical and sorrowful we all are.
In other moments of contemplation, I stand, in a catatonic trance, looking out the bathroom window, as a great thunderstorm wreaks havoc overhead and lighting flashes before my very eyes, showing me just how futile and minuscule the length of our infinite-seeming human lives are, when viewed from a cosmic perspective. Each life is a lightning bolt. And so, I laugh and cry and let out all my strange insanity and dance naked on the lawn as the rain falls and the thunder erupts above me and the lightning flashes in bright neon illuminations, making me feel as if I am in the dream of an opium eater and everything around me is meaningless matter and I too am meaningless matter and so I weep and rejoice and wail poems and songs of the ecstasy of existence into the great void, that is damned and holy and lost.
Journal Extract by Stamos Mardou