The Day when being was no longer self and meaning fled the s

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March, 15? The Day when being was no longer self and meaning fled the soul

The camp was dark. The air was wretched and blood soaked the naked earth. The horror at the camp tortured my innocent eyes. I saw the lifeless bodies listlessly walking and those who were alive scurried away from their presence. The authority was corrupt and watched the transformation of its subjects into monsters. The camp can be summed up as social entropy. I always associated the camp with a painting by Bosch, The Temptation of Saint Anthony.
Saints, God, and Eternity are things no one in the camp knows about or they forgot them. The ecstasy they gave an individual has been replaced with tangible capsules that produce instant harmony; however, they only last a few hours until the next one. People seek psychologists for the answers, but they seem to never give the individual or I should say the masses the desired response; I think the problem goes beyond their comprehension.

I was born into this camp, but that doesn’t mean I belong here. Honestly, I want to be a part of this place, but it doesn’t suit me and a few others. Each day the sun never shows; it is constantly pervaded with the black abyss of meaninglessness. The days go by like a picture film, slide by slide by slide; there’s no thread or chain that connects the days; its one long film of the same degenerating scene. The subjects of the camp come from many different ethnicities and each group has their own culture, but the problem seems to affect all people. What is the problem? I think it lies deep in each person.

All the subjects are dressed in the same attire and when something happens tragically, they all respond with the same indifferent remark; it seems like they all are the same person. The lack of individualism amazes me; nobody strives to be themselves. There are no schools here, or Churches, or homes or parks or trees or streams; melted away into a tundra of isolation they did. I act like everyone else to be unnoticed. What scares me the most is the look in their eyes; it is a stare of emptiness; it is a meaningless emptiness. Seldom will you find subjects conversing about what the true meaning of life is.

Depraved is what they are and distorted is their perception. Tears from above rain incessantly, but the drought continues. The luminous rays shine but there are no flowers. The evanescent clouds swiftly move along but it’s always cloudy. Repetition is the way of life. I think despair grasped each individual and is bound tightly. What people need is to realign themselves to what is the true meaning. The people need to put place their self into the power that established them. Too much freedom results in the absence of meaning and too much freedom without responsibility results in despair. One day the atomic bomb of divine revelation will erase this abject livelihood.

Sincerely,
The building with the hole in the wall.




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I like this a lot. The texture of it reminds me of the movie Children of Men, if you've ever seen it. Very bleak and desperate, but it shows how sometimes even in the midst of hopelessness, there are still those who fight for a better life.
May I ask what your inspiration was for this piece?
My only critique would be that it is a bit vague and seems to change direction a few times. Like I said, I like it, but it leaves me wanting more. I think you could definitely expand on this, adding more details of the situation.
Also, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand the significance of the signature "the building with the hole in the wall."
Keep it up!
-DR
"A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way"
-Flannery O'Connor




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Thank you. My influences are the Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard and Existentialism, also, my own observations of how society is spiritually and morally degrading. Essentially, it is a synthesis of some Existentialist beliefs and the society we live in.

I wanted the camp to be an allegory of the world and the hole in the wall is a symbol of how there is something missing in everybody, even the person watching the degeneration. If you think of a building that is square, it is symmetrically even and all sides are equal, but there’s a hole in the wall, so it is incomplete and therefore it needs to be fixed, just like society needs to be fixed.

Thanks for commenting.



Chickens are honestly little dinosaurs. And they know it.
— ChieRynn