Hurt

God is dead proclaims a coked up Nietzsche on stage. And no one cares responds the congregation, writhing in unison, thrashing the air, spilling testosterone into the arena which sloshes between the stage and the bullpit, infecting those gathered into a state of existential bliss.

Raucous applause follows Nietzsche shuffling off and an old man shuffling on.

The old man ignores the crowd before him; they have yet their lives ahead, lessons to learn and mistakes to make, symbols to desecrate, authority to ruffle and then obtain, hope and despair to lose and gain; but he has seen the birth of his children and their children and their children; and he himself was born into a world in which he played and made pacts with other boys to another day of chasing through the cotton fields, to keep secrets kept, to summers unchanging, to camaraderie forever; but another day passed and went and now those cotton fields are no longer, the secrets long cast aside, the seasons shifted, the boys turned men drifted apart and taken away: camaraderie forever – cut short. And that world is gone, and in its place, worlds appeared, passed by, crumbled and faded. Yet he is here.

He stands, palms open, and looks death in the eye. What have I become? he asks. It is for us to respond.