Anfechtung

Picture the abyss. But you can't. The mind demands it be filled. People fill it in with religion, sex, art and any number of sublimations and substitutes. But still the abyss keeps peeking through. We even represent death in our own image - as a human skull. But the truth of death is in the sockets of the skull: empty space defined by context because otherwise undefinable. That's where I float around when I can't sleep. I have a good view of the abyss because of numerous personal circumstances. Among them: I was born into a time and social station that gives me lots of free time. People struggling just to survive fill the abyss with their struggle. I have no struggle. Another circumstance: I have few real friends and no lover. When people are drawn together it creates the illusion of depth, an illusion that covers the abyss. I am apart and without the ballast of human flesh. (Probably because of thoughts like this.) The benefit of my circumstances is that I can glean certain insights from my clear view of the abyss. The downside is that my insights will follow me into the abyss - unless I write them down or teach them to my children. A further downside is that none of my insights are really that original; they mostly come from other people who wrote them down before their stay at the Grand Hotel Abyss ended with a plunge. On the other hand, by writing down my not too original insights I do feel a certain empowerment over the abyss; I fill it even by describing it! That is why I write. I have no illusions - not even the illusion that having no illusions makes me better off. Nietzsche writes of the teacher of virtue, "His wisdom is to wake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense and I had to choose nonsense, then I too should consider this most sensible nonsense." If life had no sense? Herr Nietzsche, ever the eternal(ly returning) optimist. His otherwise sharp view of the abyss was obstructed by an illusion called overman. There is no overman. There is only going under. Sleep is a sensible teaching because of the possibility, perchance, to dream. Even dreams of the abyss are pictures, and any picture is preferable.