to Purpose....or the lack of it !

48 hrs , tossing and turning amidst unquiet dreams and visions . The mind drugged by anti-histaminics and codeine based cough elixirs ; dulled yet receptive….searingly and painfully so, to a plethora of stimuli , of ever changing hues and shades that in an instant blind the eye . For the umpteenth time, in 48 hrs you resolve to read , you open your Sutton…before you comprehend, you find an hour, maybe more (in your state, time holds no meaning) has elapsed. Aghast you stare into the beleaguered text to find pencil streaks covering nigh 10 pages….yet you struggle to recollect a word that was written…and hence , for the umpteenth time , in the same 48 hrs , the book slams shut and you take to your bed.
You stare at the ceiling…..stare at the arachnid weave her traps , unmindful of all else save her next prey , her next mate….and her next offspring. What cares she of aught that goes on in the world . Is she really that different from you and bedraggled mass of delusional species that you call humans. Lying beside you, the 3 most unlikely bedfellows at the first glance…
…..3 volumes of Sandman - Heavens ! they should have banned these long ago , just like they should have done away with cannabis , acid, coke.
….Tolkien , of course. Can you imagine lying 48 hrs in bed and not reading a word of the maestro.
…and finally, and probably unusually, Dawkins’ ‘Selfish Gene’ (we shall see why, though)
….and flipping occasionally through these, you begin to think…..


…………it is all about the Purpose…purpose drives all to each and every end…without purpose, life as we know and define, it would cease to exist. However , you find in the whole thing a ridiculous oxymoron. If Darwin, Dawkins, Dennet and the likes are correct, as you do not doubt they are, then the whole gamut of evolution is purposeless. Things are what they are , simply cause that’s how the prevailing selection pressures over billions of years, moulded them. You , have no more purpose , than the stupid virus which infects you at the present moment, clogging your sinuses and nose.

The city folk had killed the cats and dogs because they might have helped spread the disease. Lacking the power , they imprisoned each other in their houses on the first suspicion of the disease. A rough red cross was painted upon the door, written on a paper the words – LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US.
The door was then sealed and a watchman placed outside , until all in there had been untouched by the disease for 40 days, or were dead.
She heard screams of 2 children high in an attic room, their parents long dead. A newborn baby suckled the milk, and the plague, from a cold breast....on the empty street , a corpse lay , waiting for the cart to take it to the plague pit.
……Despair walked the streets of London in 1665, the Plague year and she still stalks you. Her eyes look at you behind every mirror and sooner or later her hook will find your heart.

….you jump centuries , to a more familiar landscape…..


Plush offices and lounges , exquisite carpentry, tapestries of the finest (not to mention expensive) sort, spas, masseurs, billiards and bridge, golf and croquet. Ladies in their Sunday best sitting by the pool, the shimmering of the water in the glorious afternoon matched only by the dazzling jewels adorning the wonderful women, sipping tea and nibbling dainties .....outside, barely a stone’s throw away from this haven of luxury, in the streets a grubby little child carries a mangled, flea bitten monkey. Her mightily misplaced efforts at some kind of animal acrobatics at the traffic signal do not go wholly in vain. A few sympathetic coins are flung her way. He woos her with passion, fervour and relentless persuasion but he cannot understand her denial. She loves him, he can tell all too well…yet she keeps him at arms length. Not one furtive touch , not a single forbidden kiss, she waits….for the desire to channel to something more sublime….and then they make love, like flames…opening blending , burning…they make love like animals, like gods…………..

…and midst these scenes , walks a man….or one such being. There is something dainty in the fingers, but it is the eyes that enamour you, for they are golden like a cat’s. You are all marked as mine , he says, veritable honey on the forked tongue. You would fain ask , “ what dost thou desire?”.
“Everything, what else is there to desire. After all , being happy, and getting what you want are 2 quite different things. If you have nothing left to want, then you just wait until there’s nothing left to wait for.”
…the eyes glow ever brighter, like a forest fire.

…and so are all are lives wrought. Born into the rabble of desire and despair, dreaming often, delighting less often…and finally at death , being put out of our miserable existence. Some die at birth , some at 10, some at 100…..but each one has lived the same
, each of us have the same amount of time handed to us ….a lifetime…nothing less , nothing more….and in this lifetime, we forever struggle for our purpose , to justify our existence…and like as not, carry the questions securely into our graves.

All the talk of changing the world , healing its woes, making it a better place to live in , seem quite hollow to you…..even were it well meant, which in most cases it is not. But even if it were all well meant , and all perfectly executed…and sickness and famine were banished from human realms , no greed , no hunger, no wars, no genocides…..would that change anything. Would our desires be achieved, would we be free from want, would we forever escape the hook of despair….ha!

Suffer on , Humanity…. Be thou comforted in thy delusions of grandeur. For my part , I shall await, patiently, to look into her eyes, one final time.