A Man Apart: Part 2

          Outside on the street I am still alone. As I begin to walk, without noticing where my legs are taking me, I wonder what it means to not be alone in the first place. I look up and see people gathered, smoking or talking. They are not alone. If I slyly sidled up beside them, without their noticing me as someone different and unknown, perhaps even joined in their discussion, laughed at the appropriate moment, would I then cease to be alone as well? Occasionally I stand near a friend or aquaintance, not talking, for extended periods of time, each of us having diverged on opposite trains of thought, traveled past many stops, serving as both conductor and passenger on this one-way train, though at times our tracks cross and we exchange a word or nod or glance. But when I ride the bus, I am surrounded by complete and total strangers, where close quarters does not do the proximity justice, but close eighths is much more precise. I am then so close that a myriad of sights and sounds and smells overwhelm my outraged senses. Certainly I can’t be said to be alone then. Though, I sometimes get the impression that one must sleep in bed with a woman; only after that do you cease to be alone. No, I am alone because my mind is trapped in this skull of mine, over which is placed this face, which often seems to have no relation to me, other than allowing others to identify me as myself. If only my skull were wide enough for two minds, mine and someone else’s in the same body—perhaps then we could communicate effectively. But alas, nature did not want us that way. She wanted us isolated, without the ability to communicate our brain signals themselves, only their effects. Instead we must hide the ineffability of human identity underneath an ephemeral physical veneer, fated never to be satisfactorally elucidated.
          My body is still carrying my mind through town. It cares not about my state of mind, it simply goes on pumping blood and breathing, involuntarily, regardless of my consent. It is now carrying me past the groups of strangers and on down the street. I come to a point where the roads intersect. To my left is the busy part of town, where only the bars are still open at this point. There are many people I could meet in that direction, but little actual companionship. These people seem inanimate, like they are devoid of any human spirit. They lack the necessary passion, as if they were misplaced on this earth, and are merely biding their time, shattering their consciousness through any means possible until their hourglass is drained of its last pebble. If that way leads away from consciousness, I decide I’d rather head right, and hopefully toward it. In this direction is wilderness and open space. Yes, it is more barren, but in my mind less desolate than what I’m leaving behind.
          My eyes are cast down at my feet as the ground underneath changes from concrete and gravel to dirt and grass. I had long ago decided that mine would be a personal journey, and probably a lifelong one. Those that know me often reproach me for my mental solitude, but I know that no one else can satisfy my mind for me, I must atleast do that on my own. It would be made easier if I knew what I am looking for, but the mystery and infinity of this life is what enchants me. It is not just life that is infinite, but the human mind as well, and that is what I want to explore far beyond the territories that have been charted so far. Those others, the strangers I left behind, they too once sensed, albeit very subconsciously, the infinity and intangibility of the mind, but they recoiled in fright, turning their backs on the magic of the discovery, embracing instead a path of comfort and complacency. The mind’s potential depth is frightening indeed, because one knows that there is no ending point, no conclusion. But they are attempting to avoid the inevitable, for life itself has no ending point or conclusion. Death is no conclusion to life, because life has no limit to the meaning it contains. Death is merely an end to our consciousness, as abrupt and involuntary as the birth with which it began.