And the ghost grows bigger
And colder
And stronger
And every time it passes me by I feel it deeper
And closer
And deadlier than ever
And the void screams louder
And deeper
And more dreadful every day
And I know that this is the endgame
This is the quickening
This is the time when it all comes together
This is when the poison reaches the heart
This is the prelude to the final terrible act
When the void hits the flesh like a hammer
When the light has to mingle with the dark
When the black hole devours its children

And the Old Soul finally dies

And I am either liberated…. or destroyed.

And God as my witness, I don’t know which I prefer

Michael bertrand, dec 31, 2018

Told you I was going to start writing poetry.

At least I think I did.

Depression has been pretty bad lately. I feel like it’s all building up to something. Apotheosis, perhaps. Or some such thing.

Don’t worry,, my friends, I am not suicidal. This is all internal. Suicide is not even on my radar. The above bit of blank verse describes a spiritual experience, not a physical one.

So yeah, I have been more depressed lately. In those unguarded moments between distractions, my sense of dread at having to face reality and make decisions grows larger than it has ever been. I find myself sleeping as much as I possibly can just to escape these deep down chills I feel as the ghost of all my pain keeps barely missing me, as if teasing me with the sure and certain knowledge that this dance can’t last forever and when we finally connect, I will die.

But not like, death death.

More like the death depicted in the Tarot card Death. Not death of the flesh but a change so big that it changes who you are, and so in a sense it is the death of the person you thought you were.

It can be hard to tell the difference.

But this sort of Death sets you free because the Old Soul dying makes room for the New You to emerge, forever severed from the false idol of delusional self-image.

That is the nature of knowledge and growth. For knowledge to flourish, ignorance must die. And for life to grow, its previous form must die, like a snake shedding its skin.

Always remember : for every butterfly born, a caterpillar must die.

In the name of predictability and stability, I have resisted my own metamorphosis for a very, very long time.

As a result, I am a very old caterpillar indeed.

That is not good.

But I think I am ready now. Ready to surrender. Ready to let it happen. Ready to let myself melt into the primordial goo from which all life is born so that I might abandon all form and color and content and let myself be remake by the highest force within me.

Call that God if you want. I call it my Metaconscious Mind. Note the capitalization. It’s to denote that this is the highest, strongest, most sacred part of my mind.

It’s to tell you that my secularization of the concept of God should in no way diminish your sense of how seriously I take it or how much it means to me.

To be remade thusly is to be reborn, divine intervention or no.

In fact, I have often felt that the mystics and I were talking about the same things, just with different metaphors.

It even involves a kind of faith – faith that this transformation will make me a better person. Specifically, that it will let the stronger, healthier. happier version of me that has been growing inside me for so long finally be born into the world through the blood abnd screaming fury of my inner demons dying.

Being reborn is rarely a clean and pleasant thing.

So the coming collision is a resolution devoutly to be wished. The hot and cold circuits of my mind, as well as the hot and cold parts of my soul, will come together in a great cacophony of steaming, screaming, dreaming chaos and from said chaos will emerge whatever it was that I was supposed to be in the first place.

And what happens when ice and fire meet?

You get the Flood.

I guess I know why that song has always spoken to me on a very deep level now. It’s the very thing I have been working towards without knowing it for many, many years.

At the same time, it’s also the very thing I have been studiously avoiding by staying buried in my distractions and not giving myself the chance to think about things all that much – not the things that actually matter.

And because of that song. I know better than to try to cling to my little island universe in face of the raging waters of the Flood. That will only lead to my drowning before the Flood can cease and the waters can recede.

I’m ready to give it all up – to become the goo in the coccoon that was a caterpillar and will be a butterfly but currently is neither – in order to be transformed and liberated.

I am a dreamer – I am willing to admit to and own that now – and I have been running dry for a very long time. And I desperately need to drink deeply of the waters of life and replenish my supply of vital energy and let all of me come alive at the same time instead of living such a brutally compartmentalized existence.

Now is the time for all to come together
Now is the time for all separations to end
Now is the time for the waters to merge and become as one
Now is the time to surrender all we are in order to become who we were meant to be
Some will call that Death
Some will call it Liberation
Me, I call it Coming Home
And it’s about damned time.

michael bertrand, dec 31, 2018

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.