You are gripped by a sudden nihilistic urge, which soon takes on a voice and begins to taunt you with the question, “why live?” Sun dapples spring greenness of the oaks. It is cool outside and the grass in the clearing looks inviting. Knowing that the voice grows feeble, and vanishes if you ignore him, you turn your mind to contemplation of this patch of nature outside you window; you observe a brown thrasher hopping about foraging for worms and a chipmunk running back and forth, chased by another.

You try to remember the haiku masters and Chan poets. Yes, to touch the seams of truth, if not its face, through this spectacle. You do this quite often, it now subsists for speech, and when you are mindful enough, as you are now, you even attempt to sing praises of this. He comes back (or perhaps he was always there), and his whispers grow louder: “So what? You have lived in almost as beautiful places as this before, and if you couldn’t you rebelled with your soul, and changed your circumstances, even if the cost later was high. Yet, you know this is not enough. Also, weren’t you shocked when the other day a man told you that you were the most positive person he had recently encountered because you were laughing at something innocuous, a cartoon in the newspaper perhaps, like a horse?”

You don’t want to answer him or even tell him to shut it. If you even look at him obliquely, he will invite himself over and sit at your table. And then you know that you will have to argue with him all afternoon, looking at his diabolical face. So you think of something else, books perhaps. You think of what you want to say in a novel, what kind of characters will live in it and speak for you, you think of how well it will be received, how you will find happiness through it. He laughs coarsely, “Novel. Bah! Too many novels around. Besides what will you write about? You can’t write about man and his struggles, his adventures etc because you really didn’t see much of the world so far. Your life is bound by a narrow strip of existence, and this narrow strip, topographically speaking, is terrifically flat. So forget this stupidity.”

You still don’t say anything back. You are resolutely staring at the changing sunlight in the wooded clearing. You begin to think, but adventures are just external requirements. The real adventure happens within. And you live in a world characterized by terrific amount of unvoiced inward suffering, and by a lack of attention, yes including yours. He grunts, as if he has x-rayed your mind, and already scanned these thoughts: “What makes you think others aren’t doing this already? And even better than you perhaps ever can? Besides if you are loaded up by this suffering you speak of, go see a shrink, or at the very least talk to someone. Why go about thinking of transforming it into fiction, and then writing it up?”

You know he is goading you to just to make you turn and face him, so that he can whisper that malicious question again and again, “why live?” You have answered this before, a number of times, by making lists. And to this he always kept yawing, “big deal, what’s the point? Is this really as significant as you think it is or you make it out to be?” The final defense you always offered is that you have to say something, and you can’t shut up till you say it.

And at this point, he always overturns the table and lunges at your neck canines bared, “you stupid chickenshit! So much desire in your throat to live, and yet you are scared to really love anything, including your desire to write, much less the ability to love anyone else. Look at you! You keep this nonsensical world spinning around, this array of people around you like planets. Yes, sir. You write to them nice square-block letters. Your mouth spews all kinds of thoughtful and motivational garbage, stuff you yourself don’t swallow. You think of yourself as the sun lending his benevolent warmth to a solar system, and yet here you are flapping your gills, drowning and droning of wanting to be Ba-fucking-sho!”

You don’t resist his claws. Isn’t strangulation sweeter when the hands are yours?