STEVEN CRAIG HICKMAN
The Truth of Dust
My life really (really really) has been a journey of disillusionment, one after another. And that’s not just my persona talking.
Thomas Ligotti
When I think of the hundreds of writers I’ve counted as those who have sustained me over the years, those that have fed into my darkness, cynicism, and pessimistic proclivities toward disillusionment with self and world I begin to smile. I don’t read too much anymore. There’s no real need too. Being nothing and no one is not just a state of mind but the goal toward which I’ve tended for a long while. Most of the world-weary religions and philosophies end in a form of disgust.
Organic life within these traditions is a nightmare of death-in-life, an endless striving for more and more, a circular realm of birth, growth, maturity, old age, and death never-ending.
As I go into that cold night, I begin more and more to become detached from the struggle because of suffering and pain which day by day add new challenges to this frail flesh. I reread a few writers who have gone the same path. No need to belly-ache about it. Life is what it is. No need to dwell on its outcome. Death comes to us all. That’s assured. The Greeks were obsessed with the notion of the “good death”, but there are no good deaths. Death just is. The matter-of-fact end of all organisms. There is neither a metaphysical substrate nor an idealistic narrative that can assuage one against the truth of dust. It is. We are.
