Selfhood? Questioning the ego has become a ludicrous endeavor.

As time wears on, the egos around me become more certain in their words, less so in their souls. Some part of me yearns for the days when all was uncertain, fragile, vulnerable. My attempts to reach out with compassion leave me cold and lonely. “You don’t understand me.” Have I lost my empathy?

An undeniable anger simmers beneath the surface. Left alone too long I wrack up my grievances, mourn lost friends, escape in the excitement of learning, shaking as my fingers turn over pages and pages, craft manifestos, connect ideas, concoct escape routes. I am full-throttle journeying through the mind planting dreams and wishes along the way, until the moment in which I have no choice but to push off mad and scheming from this doomed continent.

There is nothing that is like to be. It gets the best of you and me. I will take you there, you’ll see: the heady musk, the jungle air, the furious beat that creeps inside, tears out your soul and tosses it on the ground to be stomped upon with howls and tears and all the love pulsating in the open air. All these notions of what you should be. Everything you thought was true. We’ll rip it out by the roots and rebuild, crumple dichotomies, crumble the skyscrapers and the supermarkets, crush these flimsy notions of identity we currently hold at bay.

Outstretched by the elements of the earth that rage within I collapse, panting and exhausted and exhilerated with eyes bright and wide open, the universe undone and teeming with possibility.