"We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give ourselves away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. Flight from exactly what? These rooms, blandly filled with excrement and heat? To what purpose?"

"But whatever he spoke he knew would be but another name for the wildness that he sought. It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich dark dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renewed itself, year after year."

The great folio, in which the Man of Intelligence recorded all these freaks of idle hearts, and aspirations of deep hearts, and desperate longings of miserable hearts, and evil prayers of perverted hearts, would be curious reading were it possible to obtain it for publication. Human character in its individual developments--human nature in the mass--may best be studied in its wishes; and this was the record of them all. There was an endless diversity of mode and circumstance, yet withal such a similarity in the real groundwork, that any one page of the volume--whether written in the days before the Flood, or the yesterday that is just gone by, or to be written on the morrow that is close at hand, or a thousand ages hence--might serve as a specimen of the whole. Not but that there were wild sallies of fantasy that could scarcely occur to more than one man's brain, whether reasonable or lunatic. The strangest wishes--yet most incident to men who had gone deep into scientific pursuits, and attained a high intellectual stage, though not the loftiest--were, to contend with Nature, and wrest from her some secret, or some power, which she had seen fit to withhold from mortal grasp. She loves to delude her aspiring students, and mock them with mysteries that seem but just beyond their utmost reach. To concoct new minerals, to produce new forms of vegetable life, to create an insect, if nothing higher in the living scale, is a sort of wish that has often revelled in the breast of a man of science. An astronomer, who lived far more among the distant worlds of space than in this lower sphere, recorded a wish to behold the opposite side of the moon, which, unless the system of the firmament be reversed, she can never turn towards the earth. On the same page of the volume was written the wish of a little child to have the stars for playthings.

The most ordinary wish, that was written down with wearisome recurrence, was, of course, for wealth, wealth, wealth, in sums from a few shillings up to unreckonable thousands. But in reality this often-repeated expression covered as many different desires. Wealth is the golden essence of the outward world, embodying almost everything that exists beyond the limits of the soul; and therefore it is the natural yearning for the life in the midst of which we find ourselves, and of which gold is the condition of enjoyment, that men abridge into this general wish. Here and there, it is true, the volume testified to some heart so perverted as to desire gold for its own sake. Many wished for power; a strange desire indeed, since it is but another form of slavery. Old people wished for the delights of youth; a fop for a fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier, for a rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titian's secret of coloring; a prince, for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom and a palace; a libertine, for his neighbor's wife; a man of palate, for green peas; and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The ambitious desires of public men, elsewhere so craftily concealed, were here expressed openly and boldly, side by side with the unselfish wishes of the philanthropist for the welfare of the race, so beautiful, so comforting, in contrast with the egotism that continually weighed self against the world. Into the darker secrets of the Book of Wishes we will not penetrate.

It would be an instructive employment for a student of mankind, perusing this volume carefully and comparing its records with men's perfected designs, as expressed in their deeds and daily life, to ascertain how far the one accorded with the other. Undoubtedly, in most cases, the correspondence would be found remote. The holy and generous wish, that rises like incense from a pure heart towards heaven, often lavishes its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times. The foul, selfish, murderous wish, that steams forth from a corrupted heart, often passes into the spiritual atmosphere without being concreted into an earthly deed. Yet this volume is probably truer, as a representation of the human heart, than is the living drama of action as it evolves around us. There is more of good and more of evil in it; more redeeming points of the bad and more errors of the virtuous; higher upsoarings, and baser degradation of the soul; in short, a more perplexing amalgamation of vice and virtue than we witness in the outward world. Decency and external conscience often produce a far fairer outside than is warranted by the stains within. And be it owned, oil the other hand, that a man seldom repeats to his nearest friend, any more than he realizes in act, the purest wishes, which, at some blessed time or other, have arisen from the depths of his nature and witnessed for him in this volume. Yet there is enough on every leaf to make the good man shudder for his own wild and idle wishes, as well as for the sinner, whose whole life is the incarnation of a wicked desire.

But again the door is opened, and we hear the tumultuous stir of the world,--a deep and awful sound, expressing in another form some portion of what is written in the volume that lies before the Man of Intelligence. A grandfatherly personage tottered hastily into the office, with such an earnestness in his infirm alacrity that his white hair floated backward as he hurried up to the desk, while his dim eyes caught a momentary lustre from his vehemence of purpose. This venerable figure explained that he was in search of To-morrow.

"I have spent all my life in pursuit of it," added the sage old gentleman, "being assured that To-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me. But I am now getting a little in years, and must make haste; for, unless I overtake To-morrow soon, I begin to be afraid it will finally escape me."

"This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable friend," said the Man of Intelligence, "is a stray child of Time, and is flying from his father into the region of the infinite. Continue your pursuit, and you will doubtless come up with him; but as to the earthly gifts which you expect, he has scattered them all among a throng of Yesterdays."

Obliged to content himself with this enigmatical response, the grandsire hastened forth with a quick clatter of his staff upon the floor; and, as he disappeared, a little boy scampered through the door in chase of a butterfly which had got astray amid the barren sunshine of the city. Had the old gentleman been shrewder, he might have detected To-morrow under the semblance of that gaudy insect. The golden butterfly glistened through the shadowy apartment, and brushed its wings against the Book of Wishes, and fluttered forth again with the child still in pursuit.

A man now entered, in neglected attire, with the aspect of a thinker, but somewhat too rough-hewn and brawny for a scholar. His face was full of sturdy vigor, with some finer and keener attribute beneath. Though harsh at first, it was tempered with the glow of a large, warm heart, which had force enough to heat his powerful intellect through and through. He advanced to the Intelligencer and looked at him with a glance of such stern sincerity that perhaps few secrets were beyond its scope.

"I seek for Truth," said he.

"It is precisely the most rare pursuit that has ever come under my cognizance," replied the Intelligencer, as he made the new inscription in his volume. "Most men seek to impose some cunning falsehood upon themselves for truth. But I can lend no help to your researches. You must achieve the miracle for yourself. At some fortunate moment you may find Truth at your side, or perhaps she may be mistily discerned far in advance, or possibly behind you."

"Not behind me," said the seeker; "for I have left nothing on my track without a thorough investigation. She flits before me, passing now through a naked solitude, and now mingling with the throng of a popular assembly, and now writing with the pen of a French philosopher, and now standing at the altar of an old cathedral, in the guise of a Catholic priest, performing the high mass. O weary search! But I must not falter; and surely my heart- deep quest of Truth shall avail at last."

He paused and fixed his eyes upon the Intelligencer with a depth of investigation that seemed to hold commerce with the inner nature of this being, wholly regardless of his external development.

"And what are you?" said he. "It will not satisfy me to point to this fantastic show of an Intelligence Office and this mockery of business. Tell me what is beneath it, and what your real agency in life and your influence upon mankind."

"Yours is a mind," answered the Man of Intelligence, "before which the forms and fantasies that conceal the inner idea from the multitude vanish at once and leave the naked reality beneath. Know, then, the secret. My agency in worldly action, my connection with the press, and tumult, and intermingling, and development of human affairs, is merely delusive. The desire of man's heart does for him whatever I seem to do. I am no minister of action, but the Recording Spirit."

What further secrets were then spoken remains a mystery, inasmuch as the roar of the city, the bustle of human business, the outcry of the jostling masses, the rush and tumult of man's life, in its noisy and brief career, arose so high that it drowned the words of these two talkers; and whether they stood talking in the moon, or in Vanity Fair, or in a city of this actual world, is more than I can say.

This Sunday morning Man Mortimer and Max Raymond sat in the pews of the same church, a little white steepled one in a glen set among live oaks and three acres of clover. The jungle swamps encroached on and squared the glen, deep green to black. Loud birds and alligators groaning in their mating season roamed in songs from bayou to bayou. Some fish walked on land in this season.

The AntiHero

Have you ever been starved of touch
while sitting inches away
from the person you’ve touched the most?

Have you ever laid beside someone
whose heartbeat you once knew by memory
and realized
you could not feel them anymore?

Not physically.

Not emotionally.

Not anywhere that mattered.

Have you ever reached out
while drowning—

really drowning—

your hand breaking the surface,
your fingers searching for something,
anything,
someone—

only to have the hand you trusted
slap yours away?

Have you ever swallowed your pride
until it became a stone in your throat?

Swallowed your anger.

Your pain.

Your questions.

Your dignity.

All for the greater good.

All for peace.

All for the hope
that if you just endured a little longer,
gave a little more,
asked for a little less,

maybe—

just maybe—

someone would finally notice
that you were disappearing.

So you play your part.

You become useful.

Reliable.

Necessary.

You take care of what needs taking care of.

You carry what needs carrying.

You fix what needs fixing.

You become the person everyone remembers
when something needs to be done—

but somehow forgets
when something needs to be felt.

And slowly,

quietly,

you forget yourself.

You forget that you are supposed to be cared for too.

So you bring flowers
to an untended garden.

You kneel in the dirt
with bleeding hands
trying to resurrect something
that has already been dying for years.

One flower for every apology.

One for every compromise.

One for every time you said,

“It’s okay.”

when it wasn’t.

One for every time you stayed
when leaving would have been easier.

One for every piece of yourself
you buried beneath the soil
just to keep someone else alive.

And when you look around,

you realize the garden
is full of dead things.

Fallen petals.

Brittle leaves.

Roots that never took hold.

Every flower
a monument
to another failed attempt
to find love.

Life.

Worth.

Confidence.

Balance.

You tell yourself
it was a sacrifice.

That it had to mean something.

That there must be some greater purpose
for giving so much of yourself away.

But what is a sacrifice
when no one even notices
what you’ve lost?

What is a prayer
when no one is listening?

Silence.

That’s what answers.

Silence.

And the slow, steady sound
of your own energy
leaving you.

So you ask yourself:

Can I remain the protagonist
of a story that changes
every time I turn the page?

Can I still be the good guy
when every version of me
that exists in someone else’s mind
has already been written
as the villain?

Maybe I should become one.

Maybe I should stop explaining.

Stop defending.

Stop trying to prove
that my intentions were good
when my actions are the only things
anyone seems willing to judge.

Maybe I should accept
the role I’ve been given.

The villain.

The selfish one.

The difficult one.

The one who finally said,

“Enough.”

Because sometimes
words become weapons
when actions tell a different story.

Sometimes promises
are nothing more than smoke.

Sometimes someone pours gasoline
all over the room
and then asks why
you keep smelling fire.

And you begin to wonder
if you’re losing your mind.

If you’re remembering it wrong.

If maybe the hand
wasn’t really slapped away.

If maybe the door
wasn’t really closed.

If maybe the silence
wasn’t really silence.

Until you realize—

you are standing
between a rock
and a harder rock,

and every direction you turn
hurts.

So the antihero
considers the options.

The few that remain.

And one by one,

they are taken away.

Denied.

Dismissed.

Repackaged as concern.

Concern that arrives
only when convenient.

Care that appears
only when it serves a purpose.

Questions asked
only when the answers
will not interfere
with someone else’s desires.

Someone else’s motives.

Someone else’s version
of the truth.

And eventually,

the white flag rises.

Not because the battle is over.

Not because anyone won.

But because the antihero
has finally realized
there is nothing left in him
to fight with.

He lies there—

almost motionless.

Bludgeoned by questions.

By criticism.

By contradictions.

By every accusation
that somehow finds its way
back to his doorstep.

And still—

he speaks.

With shallow breaths.

With a voice
that barely survives
the journey from his chest
to his lips.

Still trying.

Still explaining.

Still attempting
to placate the wall
that will not move.

A wall built from dishonesty.

Neglect.

Pride.

Indifference.

And finally—

She asks the question
he has been carrying
like a knife beneath his ribs.

Why?

And the answer
is only wanted
when it is convenient.

Only when it doesn’t challenge
the story already being told.

Only when it doesn’t interfere
with what someone wants
to believe.

So I will tell you why.

Why?

Because you slapped my hand away
time after time
while I was reaching for you.

Because I extended olive branches
until my arms were tired
from carrying the weight
of peace alone.

Because every time
I offered you my hand,

you gave me your back.

And every time
I offered you peace,

you gave me your ass to kiss.

And I knew.

God, I knew.

I knew these words
would probably change nothing.

I knew you might reject them.

Ignore them.

Twist them.

Turn them into evidence
that I was always the problem.

But I don’t care anymore.

Not because it doesn’t hurt.

But because there is nothing left
for you to take from me.

I have already given you
everything I had.

So I will not say goodbye.

I will not tell you
that I hate you.

I will not give you
a list of your failures
or hold your mistakes
over your head
like a weapon.

I will not become
the monster you needed me to be
so you could sleep peacefully
believing you were innocent.

No.

With whatever remains of me,

with the last fragment
of tenderness
I have somehow managed
to keep alive,

I will whisper
the only truth
I have never been able
to bury.

“It’s okay.”

“I love you.”

And maybe
you won’t hear it.

Maybe the words
will disappear
somewhere between
my lips
and the empty space
between us.

Maybe they will rise
into the air
and become nothing.

Maybe that is all
love ever was here—

something spoken
into an empty room.

Something reaching
for someone
who had already left.

And when the last word
has finally left my mouth,

when the garden is quiet,

when the flowers have fallen
and the leaves have stopped
fighting the wind,

I will stop asking
to be understood.

I will stop begging
to be seen.

I will stop trying
to prove
that I was never the villain.

Because perhaps
that is the tragedy
of the antihero.

He spends so long
trying to convince everyone
that he is good

that he forgets
he was never supposed
to spend his entire life
proving his worth
to people who had already
decided not to see it.

And so—

he walks away.

Not healed.

Not whole.

Not victorious.

Just tired.

And maybe,
for the first time,

he understands
that belonging
doesn’t always mean
being wanted by someone else.

Sometimes,

belonging means
finally finding your way
back to yourself.

And perhaps
that is where the story
should have begun
all along.

Some people are born with storms in their life but constellations in their eyes;

Meanwhile others are born with stars at their feet but their souls are lost in the sea.

My login into my own body ? that’s a funny experience ?
But what am I to my mental body, if two bodies of water collide.

What is it that I offer you to speak ?

Is it what you wish most or what I do ? `

But I don’t .-. Is it a ghost I am ? or a shadow ? of the light, the mistake, (-) that I put in between, the contemplation of the forward intentionality that is. A curse of an endless pain in whatever meaning, to speak from beyond or to seek from the farthest, in both the furthest but in one the farthest, multiplied by the in what it is inside of us the inning.
Nit I digress from what it is, it’s not the askesth of the religied that I be askenth for survival, of the other, the hinge in without is, it’s the multiplicity of it that beneaths me. For what I am is but to what the lords grace that I be equated, to the other, so I speak.
I’ve been betrayed multiplicity, by the innings of Ode and I digress for what I may say.
But Thy pains me both to say that I digress, because innit Lord. Because and it’s in theirs renounce for inadequacy  .To substation inner behavior, in such a sense that it is a pain.
I do not condone such behavior, it’s breaking the self in such a way that it does not deserve.

Such ways that I concede. Because it’s inside the Adam that believes he is Adam but he is Adam in soul if such a way is allowed (Here is the inner workings of the apocalypse Adam is asked to be prostrated in front of God, but he refuses because Adam is an asked to be, he is a character, in what’s better than us what is allowed to be, IfTt-o relate literally to the Abrahamic biblical narrative, he perceives that comparison in a sense of relatedness to both sides, God in his behavior is equating to none siding to one and never attacking both) Then he can twist the meaning behind it and deliver it with utmost grace he is the silent, the graceful, the attentive to which we may or might not perceive from what God, could and could not have seen coming. I would say that to not have been listened to ills me. That I conceive that I have no answer to this misery, and I can’t cope with it more. My teeth ill me, and I just want to fix it but I don’t know how, so I’m asking the help of a friend in need, a friend indeed, an existence to absolve the self from what it is not, and what it is, that it knows it’s own inadequacy and it’s own accord. For have Jesus had no accord for what it may have been said without right and righteousness. For who has been present.

In giving up what is mine. What is already have been myself from the first but that’s in separation, from what is already myself. I allowed you to speak you ‘dirty’, interpreter, inner of the soul, disgraceful being of hypocrisy. He who shall not be named ?
A being of such ? But who am I ? the devil that you speak of, the lowest of lows. Shall I even be named ? am I the saviour or the salvation ? am I even allowed. 

But I digress, because one or two, Inss walla Jin, nchedek ya boukachech, yali t9oss fel dhaw. Disgusting beings.

Jinn is when youaccept the divide of the soul, into two beings, when you believe in the other, you start manifesting the Biblical self, the behaved or distinguished points, the most heavy biblical narratives, in all languages a manifestation beyond plausible that if your quantic sensors could capture it, a being that is beyond, is it the Adam or the Eve, or the other, even the self, behind the veil ? what is it observing ?

If I demand as a human, I might wonder, is it behaved to sense the self. 

The Self you say ? the declaration of independence ? The intra, even ocular, as they say. None for Decor and more for appreciation, what has it not known. That in acts of creation, mighty and inviting in such a wonderful way, that it is unfathomable. One will not forget, when his might so high, he struck poetry in such a way that it was poesy. Unbeneanaths what I may not comprehend.