In Enter The Void there's this scene I memorized. The protagonist is with his sister on a rollercoaster, and they love each other. A cut happens. They are now kids in the back seat of a car with their parents upfront, driving through a tunnel. A loud horn sound is heard, and a heavy truck from around the corner crashes into them. The parents in the front seat are dead. Unless I'm in love or drunk, every time I feel happy, there is a cut like this.
Leo Tolstoy begins his Confession (1882) with the fable of an Eastern traveler. A man in a desert is chased by a beast into a well, at the bottom of which is a dragon. While he falls, he clings to a branch of a bush growing from a crack in the wall. The man licks the drops of honey that appear on the leaves of the bush. He knows that he will fall eventually, that the dragon will eat him, and that there's no other way.
Once he saw the truth, Tolstoy could enjoy life no longer. For me it wasn't always like that. In the beginning of my life, even though there was not much pleasure, I didn't have a problem with it. I knew that with time, it was going to get better and eventually it did. The death was still far away and the honey started flowing like crazy. I was 19 and finally free.
Old men don't grow wise, they grow careful. And I was certainly not. I went to jail, and all the fun was gone. Or at least I thought so. Facing charges that started at 8 years and went up to a lifetime sentence, I have naturally considered killing myself. And it seemed like a very reasonable thing to do, and I have bitten off a piece of my flesh that was supposed to contain a brachial artery, and in my imagination, that was supposed to kill me. Chewing a human arm is increadibly difficult, and after a while, I gave up on it and fell asleep. I was putting in a lot of effort, and it seemed like I made quite a lot of progress, but the blood didn't flow and the artery got completely lost in the mess. It became impossible to continue.
It was the early days of spring, and the almonds were blossoming. The birds outside woke me up with their song shorly after the sunrise. I hated the birds and I hated the world, but then I realized that the birds were actually fine, and I just hated myself for still being alive. The birds just reminded me of the truth, which I didn't like.
That day, they brought me to court, then to another jail. A lot of things were going on, and some stupid people told me it was going to be fine, and I believed them. Later in jail, it got pretty fun, and I have decided to have a look at it and stay there for a few months to see if I, perhaps, get a short sentence. My lawyer visited frequently, and he expected it to be 5 years, and that was exactly my suicide threshold.
I got many visits during the first 4 months, and there was no news at all. But one day I got a rather unusual visit, and I felt that this time there might be something. It was probably because I had seen him 2 or 3 days before, so there was no point in it unless something happened. I was walking in the corridor feeling very good because the uncertainty was about to collapse. He told me it was 2 years, and I didn't like it very much. But still, it was really a tunnel, not a corridor.
Корридоры кончаются стенкою, а туннели выходят на свет.
The experience of jail is a story for another time. Maybe watch Dogville if you are interested in it.
I expected liberation to feel good. I got nausea from riding a taxi and more nausea from the smell of bread in a bakery instead. I have immersed myself in things I used to like or wished to try, but they have given me no pleasure. I felt nothing, and I wanted nothing. Suddenly, Tolstoy was right.
There is nothing good about the enlightened state of having no desires. It turns out that Buddhism only makes sense if you believe in samsara. Life sucks but if you kill yourself, you are born again, which is a setback. Most Buddhist westerners don't really believe in samsara, and yet they don't see the elephant in the room.
It couldn't go on like this for a long time. I had a bad day, and I thought I could end it. Next morning I was trying to do a shallow water blackout by hyperventilating (very smart but didn't work), then trying to breathe in water while conscious (not so smart), then hitting my head with a rock (stupid), and then finally jumping from a cliff upside down. It was a Fight Club type situation. By the end of it, I figured out that my entire body wants to live, and I can't kill it. I used to know that consciousness wasn't important, but I had never felt it so powerless before. Someone picked me up almost naked, all covered in blood, sitting on a rock.
The feeling that I didn't have a choice was intensified by the inability to move because of all the damage. Surprisingly, it made me happy, and I have started to enjoy my days. In the morning, they brought me fruit, and I liked eating it. I started to want things again because I could not get them. Several weeks later, I was in love, and I wanted more things I could not get, and it was good. And I didn't think at all about what's reasonable and what's stupid. My body knew everything. The role of consciousness was reduced in my philosophy from everything to the little thing that should remind you to wear a condom. I didn't lose consciousness; I just started treating it like a bitch, which it truly is.
In Southeast Asia, there's this fruit called durian, and I bragged a lot about eating it. My friend asked me how it was, so I wrote a classical description of a large green, spiky fruit smelling like a trashcan full of dead cats with rotten onions and perhaps some vomit, and it's so potent it's illegal to take it on the subway. I also said I liked it very much the second time I tried it. Probably because I was in love and the girl told me she liked it, and I wanted to like it too. It turns out that if you approach a durian like that, it tastes good, and now it's my favorite fruit.
Being high, I later told my friend that durian tastes exactly like life and that The Vinegar Tasters from the Chineese painting were having the wrong thing. Just like the durians, life, if observed with a clean head, doesn't make a lot of sense, but if you say 'I like it', you do actually enjoy it. And the man in the well has no choice except that he can say that the honey is sweet, and it will become sweet, but maybe he needs to fall in love for that. And it's neither honey nor vinegar; it's durian. Really disgusting, but tasty if you want it to be.