The ancient Greek philosophers, the one’s way back, before Plato and before Socrates, believed there were two forces governing this world. The force that brings things together, and the force that brings things apart. One is called Generation, and the other Corruption. And all things, all matter and all particles, organisms: living and dead, are either coming together or they are falling apart. There are no gods, no deities, no ghosts. Only fusion and dissolution.
It’s 8:30 in the morning and I’ve shit four times since midnight. Of course, it takes alot of energy to come together and stay together. In a sea of presumed nothingness a random particles options in life are to disintrigrate into furthered nothing or to become something. And it is this natural force within all things to create pacts through solutions of energies, to synchronize two off-beat structures wherein the new organism is bigger, stronger, more adept in the face of the unforgiving cosmos. They string together internal fibers in the valiant effort of warden off destruction, in an act that can be called nothing short of love.
I don’t fight it anymore. I help it along. I revel in it.
If you place a rusty nail in a can of coca-cola and leave it overnight, the rust will have dissolved by morning. For breakfast I smoke two cigarettes and down a can of Pepsi. On an empty stomach I can feel the acids bubbling inside me, eating away at my insides. Slowly. It’s a process. And I help it along.
And the general, greater order of things is the corruption. The force of the cosmos is bleak and unforgiving. The time spent ordered, structured, composed, alive, when measured out, is miniscule compared with the time spent uncomposed, lifeless, floating randomly. It’s like a body of water suddenly immersed with heat from an underground geyser. The heat warms the water to a point when, at the bottom, bubbles form. And they grow and expand and they rise slowly and reach the surface, after a millenia of evolution through countless acts of beneficial lovemaking, it plops! during the climatic scene of it’s existence and explodes into the air where the droplets fall unassuming back into the waters.
The water is always there. And while there have always been bubbles, each organism is a perspective unto itself, and thus it’s time is limited. It goes whence it came … back to the water.
“You fool.” A face speaks to me from the mirror. I’ve returned to the toilet and am watching my face in the mirror. “Can’t you see it’s not the water that is rising, but another element altogether? One that only passes through the water?” I say nothing, but am watching him very closely. His head turns slowly, side to side, as if allowing me to examine his face. The skin is pale, yellowish, the eyes now dark and clammy. My stomach churns and I hear him groan, and a few drops of liquid drop from inside me and into the bowl. “It is the heat itself, the force that causes the bubble,” he explains through gritted teeth. “The water is a mere shell. Dust to dust. It is the heat that is released into the sky, and the water, that physical outer layering, that crumbles back down.”
Something let’s loose where it’d felt cramped and where my liver might be, and a quick stream comes out and I bite my finger to keep from yelling. I hang my head, half-exhausted, breathing long flowing breaths through my nostrils. There’s not the slightest hint of feces. The runs come from deeper.
You want to speak of the temperature? I’m thinking. You want to speak of heat? My stomach is beginning to calm so I wipe, dabbing gently the sore area. When it’s this bad I conserve the tissue by using it then taking it out and folding it in half, and using it again, then folding and using again, otherwise I go through a roll a day. This time I stare at the tissue for a long while then hold it up for this guy in the mirror to see. A dark streak of crimson red blood is streaked down the center. It’s so pure and unadulterated from anything but blood that it’s thin and seeps through the tissue and stains my fingertips a splotchy red, as if from a sponge.
“I’m only getting colder inside,” I tell the guy. The tissue is held next to his face, like a trophy, and there’s a smile emerging on his lips. “It is rather cold in here,” he admits. I shrug and half-nod, then finish wiping and judge that his smile was a fake. Based on the dry eyes I discerned there was no tingling in the ears causing the cheeks to pull back. Instead, the lips themselves were pulled back and compressed against the gums in a forced, unnatural way that only adds stress and irritation to the brain, which is then shown through the eyes. I try to conjure up some real tingling, some real heat, for just a moment, for either and for both of us, but I can’t. There just seems to be nothing there. But that smile is so deceptively close to authentic that I compliment him on his acting abilities then rise and he follows me up.
An organisms greatest goal is that of continued existence, especially in the face of decay.
In the center of the toilet the blood is thick and dark, swirling with interweaving strands like that of DNA, and it’s slowly seeping out and converting the rest of the bowl, which has turned the hue of a light pink. The tissue I dropped in there sits in the front, just immersed under the water. Having been folded and used and folded and used, its core is compact and a deep crimson while it’s outer layers are lighter, and their ends are curled out and softening and expanding, swaying gently with the water like the petals of a flower on the verge of full bloom, and I’m struck suddenly by it’s remarkable resemblance to that of a rose. Then I’m struck again, just for a moment, right before flushing, that in some sick way, that this is all quite beautiful.
Then I’m out.