Nothing by Arnold East - HTML preview

Chapter Fourteen

What had I been thinking last night? In a moment of weakness, I had lost my mind and forgotten everything. Or had I? I remembered having an epiphany. Seeing the bare world, without my motivations or impositions. I pushed into my memory, trying to recapture the feelings, the thinking that had occurred. Nothing. it was emptiness. It was a different state of mind. I tried to recreate the experience again, but I couldn’t do that either, and it now felt alien. Maybe I had just been tired and weakened. Maybe it was nonsense brought on by sleep and energy deprivation. I had been crazy. That was all it was. But even now, I could intellectualise the experience that had overcome me. I could consider the emptiness even though I couldn’t feel it. I was trapped in two minds about my mission. One where it made sense, where I should continue, the other where it was unintelligible, equivalent to doing anything else or nothing. It was depressing. I was stuck in this contradiction while precious time was passing by.

Precious time.

Why did I call it precious?

There was no process. I had just made an intuitive choice there; it was precious because I thought it was precious. Yes, that was it. I could choose what I think. That was the solution. It was a matter of choice, everything was a matter of choice and I could choose to continue my mission. To want to continue my mission. But again, why would I choose to do it? It was at that moment I remembered my promise to myself and the passion that had erupted in me after reading that evil pamphlet. The person who wrote it was so sure of itself, why couldn’t I be the same? My mission was worth it. My mission was worth it. My mission was worth it. And in my mind, it became so.