One

"like"

Philautia is to love all aspects of oneself, wholesomely. Boundlessly. As though the gift of luxury exists in ones heart.

Floods- Lucky Daye

Ariem

At the end of the day, Landry would never have the ability to look into another person's mind. Like he said before, human beings are meant to suffer and observe. Though the light will never be an anchor, it  is the only thing that gives us the visual clarity we yearn for as human beings.

That 'okay, its still dark but you can hold my hand, I know the area by heart'. Heart to heart. Palm to palm. There's nothing more fulfilling than allowing yourself to be engulfed in the flames of what it is to be human. To be like light, non-existent yet essential for all else to exist and be seen.

Your hurt is mine. Your love is my pain. Call me a masochist because even it hurts, I'll love you harder.  I loved you even harder even when the outside world said to me, 'no, you can't love your own reflection'. You narcissist. You masochistic son of a gun. To love pain is abnormal. Though loving love is healing, calming, like the heaviness of each puff of nicotine that follows each inhale. The sting in your lungs. That beautiful burn. The burn of loving yourself and every version of yourself that's yet to exist. Like a mirror scene in a novel about fucking babes. Fucking anyone really. A fogless mirror scene with the gift and feature of clarity.

He wrote about uncumbered loves. Loves that he mourned because they were never outside the erotic. Never substantial. Never beyond the after-sex morning breakfast of waffles, scrambled eggs and coffee. Half a cup, followed by a hit of pot. Every time he smoked, the sky taunted him with its grey, its rain Its daily release.

He stood there, admiring it despite the fact that it tantrumed about how it could effortlessly be all the things he couldn't be. All the things he wasn't. It was almost as if the sky had won to be the epitome of humanity. The fucking valedictorian of philanthropy. The fuck you to all those outsiders. The nomadic lovers, which was exactly what Ariem was. A person that edited his heart to hearts, just to jump from one heart to another. 

He was nineteen years old, though unlike Landry, sometimes he had to be fourty two, sometimes twenty nine. Sometimes seven. The age Emmie was when she died by suicide in an airplane grave yard. Or atleast, thats what It looked like. Its what it felt like. Though Ariems world shattered to shards when he was notified. It felt as though he was undergoing a vasectomy of sorts without any pain meds. Gosh, even his masochism was sexual.

Ariem loved Emmie as though she was his own child. He cherished her the way each citizen of Nervia cherished the light. As though it was newly discovered gold, in an economy diminished by overpopulation. A quality of life perturbed by procreation and over recreation. 

Over indulgence in the experience of Tranquilidad de espiritu. The celestial experience of what it is to be dead while exploring the  odds and outs of life. The calmness of the pleasure and gratitude that comes with living a comfortable life. Like watching the others in the rat race kill themselves by continually numbing their pain. Instead of humaning up and experiencing it as though it was preliminary in this game we call life. 

There are those that learn through observation and those that learn through experience. I happen to be the one you watch because every lesson I learn is learned through action. And experience. So watch me all you want because I'll never be one to accept an existence with nothing but observation and suffering.