Author: andyveilleux

Of all evil and of all love

/ andyveilleux / 2 Comments

Nietzsche had a way with words that was not usual for a philosopher. Sure, he could often be difficult to read due to how abstract some of his writing was, but occasionally he delivered a gem. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he wrote:

"Of all evil I deem you capable: for that reason I want from you the good. 

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who think themselves good merely because they have lame paws!"

I love this passage, and have since first hearing it. It represents something about all of us that many of us will never say. We are capable of any evil – we could steal, we could cheat on our lovers, we could destroy someone's reputation, we could kill, we can do any number of awful, evil things – and this is why Nietzsche is asking for the good.

This line has incredible importance in relationships, and in love in general. We are all capable of doing horrendous things, which are out-of-character (although that is an interesting debate – what is "out" of character? Are we not several characters at different times?), but we are also capable of treating someone well and with proper love. However, people are not good to each other, which makes this line all the more significant.

Should we except people to be good to us? Judging by the masses, no we should not, but we do expect our lovers to be good to us. The statistics are not in favour of us behaving well to our lovers.

 

In a 2007 MSNBC article, which surveyed over 70,000 North Americans, only 25% of respondents had never sexually fantasized about others, sent sexual emails to others, webcammed, given oral sex, had sex with others or romantically kissed someone else.

Half of respondents said they had been the 'other' man or woman in an affair, and almost half of the respondents had cheated at some point, with 22 per cent having cheated on their current partner. Nearly forty per cent of cheaters cheated with their children in the same home. So, don't talk to me about how good people are to their lovers, because if half of the people surveyed – and this survey is by no means an anomaly with its statistics – and yout ake into account that many people will not feel comfortable admitting to cheating, even digitally, then people are probably not as good to their partners as you are leading yourself to believe.

So where do we go from here? Well, the current dating landscape is often referred to as a post-dating world, and certainly my good friends over at The Gaggle have their fingers on the pulse of modern "dating" (if we can even call it that these days). I don't think the idea of monogamy is dead, or maybe to go back to Nietzsche, it is dead, "but considering the state the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which [its] shadow will be shown."

To be more optimistic towards love than Nietzsche's statements about God – and perhaps show off my romantic side with love – I believe a committed monogamous union of two people is possible. Both people must realize that they are capable of great evil, but trust one another to behave in a good moral fashion. We don't have to be draconian in relationships, but there needs to be a level of trust where both people are comfortable and do not worry about their partner committing evil towards them. Is that too much to ask?

 

 
In a recent MSNBC article, which surveyed over 70,000 North Americans, only 25% of respondents had never sexually fantasized about others, sent sexual emails to others, webcammed, given oral sex, had sex with others or romantically kissed someone else.
 
In a recent MSNBC article, which surveyed over 70,000 North Americans, only 25% of respondents had never sexually fantasized about others, sent sexual emails to others, webcammed, given oral sex, had sex with others or romantically kissed someone else.
 
In a recent MSNBC article, which surveyed over 70,000 North Americans, only 25% of respondents had never sexually fantasized about others, sent sexual emails to others, webcammed, given oral sex, had sex with others or romantically kissed someone else.
 
In a recent MSNBC article, which surveyed over 70,000 North Americans, only 25% of respondents had never sexually fantasized about others, sent sexual emails to others, webcammed, given oral sex, had sex with others or romantically kissed someone else.
 
In a recent MSNBC article, which surveyed over 70,000 North Americans, only 25% of respondents had never sexually fantasized about others, sent sexual emails to others, webcammed, given oral sex, had sex with others or romantically kissed someone else.
Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who think themselves good merely because they have lame paws!" -Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p.103.

Nobody

/ andyveilleux / 4 Comments

And today

I am nobody.

 

Nothing stirs by my hand

no one moves at my voice,

my freedom is absolute.

 

One lonely soul sitting

at a too-bright computer screen

poking at keys on a shadowy keyboard

is of little real or imagined consequence,

especially now.

 

I sit in a dark corner of a

room filled with a lot of 

empty

space

and some junk

a laptop

and no personality or soul

reaches back out to me.

 

Nothing else draws breath or

thinks about the bitterness of these defeats

and the biggest failure one could have prescribed.

 

Nothing else.

 

I am nobody.

Anger and experience: Thoughts on love and loss

/ andyveilleux / Leave a comment

Experience is the best teacher, and there's no debate about that. In love, one has to skulk through the gallows and be beheaded to understand loss, and how to be a proper lover. Some of us learn lessons quicker than others, and many people do not learn much. 

At 26, I've loved and lost many people in my life. I'm fortunate that way, because I've had the chance to be close to a lot of amazing people, and to learn a lot of harsh lessons. I've been cheated on, I've cheated, I've felt the desperation of another and I've been the desperate. I've spent nights holding someone I no longer loved while they cried in my arms, and I've been in their sad shoes too.

I've laughed and cried with lovers and ex-lovers, I've left people at the proverbial altar, and been left at the proverbial altar as well. I've been the one that couldn't let go, and let go of people too easily. Love and loss never get easier, if anything, they seem to be getting harder.

The loneliness grows, it does not rest. I could keep crawling in and out of beds like I used to, but that man is gone. That doesn't fill me up like it used, or like I thought it used to. Neil Gaiman is right about kisses and sex giving a piece of your heart to your partner, and one only has so much heart to give. For someone that loves intensely and with passion, this has always been a fact of warning for me.

At some point the jaded  feeling grows to dangerous levels, and loneliness is cancerous in your mind. What is the great seperator of lovers? How much did they all mean, and how do they compare? They do not compare, because every love is different. Some love dies early after the break-up – if these things can ever be said to die fully – and some smoulder in your heart for years – and maybe for life, although I'm far too young to say.

The pain lessens with time, but that is probably from one's pain tolerance growing as opposed to the pain itself lessening. Or maybe we do stop caring as much, but there is no way to gauge it. Either way the point remains the same: the pain lessens with time. Loneliness has a way of fanning the flames of past lovers in your sad heart, but that's the game of life. Humans are conflict-machines, and even our own heart tries to promote conflicts within us it seems.

The key is lessening conflict. Zen. Trying to live a more peaceful existence is not easy, nor always tolerable. Anger is a very righteous feeling, the primitive push for violence and war can be as strong as sexual desire. Anger does not solve problems. Anger eats love, and does nothing to combat loneliness, sadness or the pain of lovers lost. 

At the end of the day, you can be angry you lost someone, or that they don't appreciate you anymore, but that won't help you sleep away those lonely nights or get your mind right. If anything, anger will corrupt you, and make you toxic. Anger is a cycle that does not end, unless you force it to. The only thing anger understands is a violent, screeching halt, and that is exactly how it must be finished.

the future I will not see

/ andyveilleux / 4 Comments

I can see you with

a painted-on smile

and man on your arm

who doesn't know the

first important thing about you.

 

I will not see it happen,

or else,

I will shield my eyes,

for fear of losing respect 

and admiration for the near

and the dear.

 

 

Nothing near stays so

for long after the fact

and that's life:

a constant shuffle of people

getting closer and further

and sometimes itr lasts longer

than others, 

but we're all orbitting somewhere,

satellites with our own gravity

alkways pulling and being pulled.

 

Some gravity is stronger than others

and some are gentle as the spring breeze

while others will collapse your lungs and skull.

 

Some orbits are bad business,

and that is what I never want to see

for you

but a prophet is not required.

 

Gravity rides everything,

and sometimes

we all do too.

faces like back of thumb tacks

/ andyveilleux / 1 Comment

The generic and bland

flood

the streets of even the

biggest

most exciting

cities

culminating in one massive yawn from

everybody that is paying attention.

 

I long for the rare beauty 

of appearance

and character

that seems almost generational,

or at least

once a year

and they do exist.

 

Often single

or being under-appreciated by 

some meathead or other failure as a human being

or instilling true fear in the hearts of boys

with the bodies and age of men

for boys fear

the power of rare beauty

and should stick to the 

thumb tack girls.

an unfamiliar absence

/ andyveilleux / 1 Comment

I reached my hand out,

an outline of flesh against off-white walls,

in a familar way in a familiar place.

 

An unfamiliar absence became,

and sat beside me,

strummed the chords of my

lonely, lonely

heart.

 

It wept for me,

as I could not weep for myself

in an empty place with ony my demons

for company.

 

It cried tears onto my shoulders

and I raised my head towards the ceiling,

an expression of understanding

and lament for all the lost days.

There is always the void

/ andyveilleux / 2 Comments

Some voids aren't meant to be filled

and maybe that's the secret in all of this;

the alpha and the omega,

there is always void.

 

Never more so than in this moment,

now,

which only lives in a void that can never be

connected to the past of the future,

it can only bump shoudlers with them.

 

Every moment lives in a cage,

like a soul is caged in a body,

and nobdy ever makes it out of here to

touch

anyone else elses' soul.

the fleeing of soul from body experienced through water drops

/ andyveilleux / Leave a comment

The water falls out in drops

that slap me gently,

making me blink,

and bead down my exposed face

and uncovered body.

 

Something runs away with the water

and it will never return,

each drop of water claws into some

memory

and tugs it down the drain

until I am left fighting to hold onto

anything that mattered

once upon a time.

 

The familiar numbness is revealed,

licking its lips and 

waiting just behind me with extended fangs and nails

it waits for the final day when

the ultimate nothingness

replaces the human nothingness

and I join the infinite space of existence.

 

Nothing matters as the water

drains soul from my body

as acid eats glass

slow

steady

unforgiving.

the river waits for no one

/ andyveilleux / 2 Comments

Water pushes and pulls

unforgiving and unyeilding

and its effects never end.

 

It treks onward

one slow, methodical, step at a time

or charges head-long into the abyss,

but never stops.

 

Water, like time itself,

smoothens the inanimate

while eating and crimping the organic

until it bends or moulds all to its will.

 

love,

love and its loss,

also eats the organic in a slow decay

unmerciful and not quite complete,

the slow appetite becomes tolerable

in time.