short stories with tragic endings

L'appel du vide

Bukowski (1977) wrote "The Crunch" in Love is a Dog From Hell.

There is a loneliness in this world so great

that you can see it in the slow movement of

the hands of a clock

people so tired

mutilated

either by love or no love

people just are not good to each other.

He continues, "We are afraid... surely there must be a way."

Bukowski's last words inscribed on Earth say "Don't try." If there must be a way, then why does he suggest not to try? Trying is not being. Trying is a dream. When God knocks at your door – call it life, whatever you like. Call it existence – the name doesn't matter. It knocks, and you are nowhere to be found – you are asleep. You are trying.

Everybody gathers dust, not only is it gathered but people cling on to it. It gets collected in the mind – with violence. One can force the mind to stop by using chemicals, drugs, but again this is violent. It is destructive. A cheap way of becoming even more unconscious than already, so unconscious one cannot feel the misery. Something to make one utterly insensitive, some intoxicant, some painkiller that makes one so unconscious that one escapes into that unconsciousness and forgets about their anxiety, anguish, and meaninglessness.

Awareness is being, consciousness is being, and the dust that awareness collects around it is the mind. We are afraid, and thoughts are greeted with rejection. Because we have rejected part of ourselves, we have become crippled – paralyzed.

"I am absolutely responsible for whatsoever happens to me. Whatsoever happens, unconditionally – I am absolutely responsible."

Everybody is responsible, totally responsible, for their own being and behavior. This will cause sadness, in the beginning, because everyone wants to be happy – so how can one be responsible for one's own unhappiness? We always desire blissfulness – so how can one be angry? This responsibility we throw on the other. If one goes on throwing responsibility on the other, then one will always remain a slave because nobody can ever change the other. One of the most unfulfilled wishes in the world is to change the other. It is impossible. The other exits in their own right. Don't try.

Intellect versus intuition; logic versus love; consciousness versus unconsciousness; part versus whole; doing versus happening; death versus life; having versus being. The head versus the stomach. When one feels their "stomach turn" it is not the belly, but the core of their being is turned. This is misery – we are too much in the self. "I" is the polarity of "thou"; they are vibrations of the same energy. The energy that is typing though me is reading in you; it is not separate. It is the same energy out of which the whole existence is made. It is one whole.

Gurdjieff would say to his disciples, "Don't consider. Remember, never consider others because it is out of consideration for the others that the ego arises in you. It has to be cut, root and all."