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 to flow. 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.
Every time he came there was no news at all. But one day in late summer the guard knocked our stainless steel door and said my name just as he did many times before but immediately I felt that this time it was different. My lawyer came 3 days before, so there was no reason to come again unless something happened. I was walking in the corridor feeling very good because the uncertainty was about to collapse. When I saw Giorgi he was very happy. He told me it was 2 years and I didn't like it. But still, it was really a tunnel, not a corridor.
Корридоры кончаются стенкою, а туннели выходят на свет.
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 one believes in samsara. Life is suffering but if a man kills himself, he is born again.
I tried driving and in half an hour I almost killed a woman. Again I felt shame and I thought I could use it to kill myself and terminate the suffering. At night I smoked several grams of pure hashish and wrote a manifesto in vim. In the morning I tried a shallow water blackout by hyperventilating (very smart but didn't work), then I treid to breathe in water while conscious, then hitting my head with a rock to loose consciousness , and then jumping from a cliff upside down to hit a rock with my head. My body wanted to live, and I could not kill it. My mind was a part of my body. Someone picked me up, all covered in blood, sitting on a rock. I was watching a big statue of Buddha sitting on a mountain.
I could not go to the beach anymore because my body was damaged too much. It made me a little 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 was reasonable and what was stupid. The role of consciousness was reduced in my philosophy.
Durian is an exotic fruit only popular among the South Chinese. My friend asked me how it was and I wrote him a classical description of a large spiky fruit smelling like a trashcan of dead cats with rotten onions and perhaps some vomit. I mentioned that I enjoyed Durian very much but only on the second time I tried it. A girl told me she liked Durian, so I wanted to like it too. Approached in this way, durian is truly delicious and over the yeras I've spent an unreasonable amount of money on it.
I later told my friend that durian tastes exactly like life and that The Vinegar Tasters were having the wrong thing.