Everybody is doing something and I am just standing here in the middle of a speed stream like in films where people pass you by in fast motion, so they are not shapes but solely some blurred lines, enclosing you in the centre of a vortex and I am just there paralysed, claustrophobically pressed from either side in this forever motion of theirs, sometimes unable to breathe because of the existential spasm somewhere inside my ribcage, which feels like my heart is going to explode. The flow is nauseatingly harmonious and never ends, time moves slow here. I feel like I am in a capsule. Nothing is happening in there apart from my head pulsating and expanding from within bursting with anxiety and total self disbelief. I feel like I am the only person on the planet who doesn’t know how to move because I missed that class where they teach you that. And no one ever misses THE CLASS, but I somehow managed to and now nobody can help me. Because they are in the flow and I am not. They don’t even know I exist here in the void of the latecomers. They are not aware of THE VOID. You can not jump out of the flow, it seems, only I can jump in. But I don’t know how. Because I’ve missed the class. Where the fuck was I? I feel like I have always been missing something ever since. Is there some pre-birth soul qualification programme that my soul has overlooked, so now am I fucked up forever? Like I am in some Mission Impossible franchise where the mission is actually impossible. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Well, that’s why I am doing nothing. I am nothing. I think I am stuck here forever.


There are two options for me, first, to somehow miraculously learn how to jump in the flow, but what are the chances? The other option is to make this void my home. It already feels like one sadly and it’s scarily comfortable. But is making the void my home potentially be the same as jumping in the flow? Am I onto something?
By the way, I am writing this in another language because I don’t want to be myself so badly, my native language hurts me and the words seem fake and vulgar and impotent. Tadaa, I can’t even speak my own language properly. Because nothing makes sense and I am instantly stuck, unfortunately I am not very good at this language either, so BEAR with me. I am not here nor there. I am in the lukewarm void, SOMEWHERE in between. Maybe it’s just that the tiger and my normal self DON’T speak the same language.


Oh, I forgot to tell you there is THE TIGER. It’s not actually a real tiger, it’s a metaphor, but you get it. So we will call her the tiger, “tigress” sounds like digress to me and “tiger” sounds like anger so I prefer the latter. It’s not my native language, remember? I will elaborate on the anger topic, so stay with me.
From the outside I lead my normal life, you can totally do this, by the way. The human shell works just fine. Well, it’s called normal because you do the normal things other humans do, THE SHELLS. You can even be happily married, a mum, a friend, you name it. It is fascinating! You can go out, go in, go anywhere, you can smell and taste, you can hear, you can see, you can touch, you can experience a lot with THE SHELL. It’s fun and distracting. It’s easy, it’s there, you don’t need anything for that as long as you have the shell properly functioning by default. Some people don’t but it’s another story.


There are sex and substances of all kinds and music and books and films and... You can lose yourself in those as it’s fun and distracting.
So it’s fine. But there is more to it, to life. Life can be more than fine. How do I know that? I don’t know how, I just know, the tiger knows it too. She is in the cage by the way, so such as a poor thing she is.


Maybe happy life? Sounds delusionally pathetic even in this language. HAPPY LIFE! Welcome on board to our CUCKOO AIRLINES we will fly over the nest, so don’t fasten your seatbelts just enjoy the ride. It’s your last one, by the way, our destination is Lobotomville.


Jokes aside, I don’t know what makes me happy in a sustainable way. I mean all that makes the tiger and the normal self reconcile is toxic for both of them. So it’s a sickening rollercoaster not a happy life indeed.
Well, the Tiger it is. How old is she? I don’t know, maybe 15? But if you google cat years comparison to human years it’s 1-15 years ratio, so I am a fuckin’ sphinx by now. Where is all the wisdom then?


And it goes like this the tiger wakes up every morning together with your normal self. It needs time in the morning, as we all do, though she never wanted to wake up in the first place, the cage, remember? She stretches and walks around the tiny space, just a habit, same ol' same, then coffee, yeah, she is this strange kind of Tiger from the coffee-before-breakfast planet, and so the day lazily begins. While your normal self keeps up with her sickeningly boring mundane life, the tiger starts to get angry, it’s the morning angry-tation.


-"Why don’t you let me go?,” the tiger asks.
-“I can’t,” the normal self answers.
That’s it, no further explanation, it’s their everyday ritual.


And so the battle begins. Though it’s not a battle per se, not anymore. It’s a mild confrontation so to say. Usually it’s a playful growl from the tiger, like a gentle reminder, that she is here and awake and ready and still discontented followed by a patronising petting acknowledgement from the normal self aka the lady, though sometimes the lady feels so disconnectedly entitled that she simply ignores the roar. Like a white noise. Of course, there are days when the tiger attacks the cage so fiercely that she will need DAYS afterwards to heal the wounds, laying there howling from the pain, and the normal self would experience prolonged subconscious anxiety like aftershocks after a catastrophic earthquake somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, still can’t get over the irony of the name, lol. It happens, and we are used to this, sadly. But fair to mention there are days when they misbehave in unison but this desperate solidarity usually ends bad for both of them including collateral pleasure of the extras involved and is followed by the shameful numbness from one participant and silent bitter reproach from the other. I don’t need to explain to you that this doesn’t contribute to the improvement of their already dramatic relationships.


And there are days, well, a lot of days, when the tiger lays deathly tranquillised with apathy and hopelessness. When the normal self wakes up as usual the tiger only has the power to lift one eyelid to note that yet another day in the cage has begun but there is no point in that knowledge whatsoever. On such days the time aimlessly passes by and stands still at the same time like thick heavy haze in the basement where teenagers after school are daydreaming about creating a band. Anonymous rockstars, reckless cubs.


I mean I don’t know about Others’ tigers, I assume everyone has them, I hope we are not the only one out there, I mean me, my normal self and the tiger, it would be really crazy then. It’s very hard for all of us to coexist, we desperately need some guidance. Hello? Is there anybody in here? Just knock if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?


Hope you get the reference.


Sometimes, let’s be honest, many times, the tiger can triumphantly defeat the normal self and unleash, I mean UNCAGE. But the invisible force always puts our tiger back in. Always. A couple of times the tiger somehow has resisted the force but lasted a week max. It was a hard week, intolerable really, but at the same time excitingly new, hence scary, but it was sadly a no-win from the very start, the tiger knew it, so after a while, a while of convulsive cocky efforts she obediently surrendered, once again.
Well, is suffering actually the only way to achieve anything? I mean if we go back to the beginning, do these people in the flow still suffer? But if so, it means that they somehow managed to transform it into something that keep them in the flow and I am still here in the void, an ambitious clot just sitting here marinating in the misery of non-doing with the only one real potential, which is to shut down the whole fucking system. So, how do they do that? The other people? The shells? I wonder once again, and then again and again.


The problem for me is, it seems, that there are endless possibilities in just one life. How could one decide? You obviously need a dream, a concentrated effort in time. But what if you don’t have a dream? Am I the only one without a dream? Have I also missed that class? What do I do then? What do I want? I don’t know. So I am paralysed once again. Though the problem is not the singularity of life, or options or anything, the problem is THE EGO, I guess. We have a third player here, hellooo. I am not in any way, shape or form trying to reinvent Dr. Freud’s notorious triad, it’s just how it constructs into words and ideas as I go. So maybe he really had a point, our lovely Zigmund.
And the the pressure of time running away second after second is unbearable, petrifying. Well, an abattoir of one’s painfully ambitious ego as I might say. Crazy times.


And at the very same time we live in a world that is gradually and seamlessly transformed into a fucking massage parlour for our egos, but it doesn’t help, it’s the opposite. The motto is “Pleasure for everyone” even the wildest, sickest needs are ready to be satisfied 24/7, everything is uniquely catered to fill the voids of our most perversive customers. So, congratulations, we reached the existential milestone.
Of course the award for the main global instant- almost Pavlovianesque-gratification-absolute goes toooooo Social Media, that everyone can afford, so it is universally evil. There are of course levels of pressure but everybody feels equally shit afterwards anyway, so it’s a disturbingly twisted algorithm that we invented ourselves or maybe our ego invented to satisfy itself. So basically it’s a spiritual dildo that keeps us satisfied just enough not to kill ourselves. You may feel great at first, but in the long run it massages you to death, the death of the tiger and the normal self. And the one that remains is your greasy obese gargantuan ego that wants to be satisfied for the sake of satisfaction. It seems like an endless, pointless annihilating cycle, ouroboros they called it, or deadly masturbation.


So back to the tiger, she thought that maybe she could write about it all, like what else does she do in the cage to feel real and to kill time? They always have provided paper and pens there but now in this modern type of cages there are wi-fi connection and laptops. So she can type away the pain, type about herself for the world to know that she is there, whilst the normal self can lead her meaningless normal life running errands and killing time, occasionally partying and falling in love with strangers out of boredom. The tiger is here. She has all the time in the world and nothing to do so she ruminates constantly, maybe it’s the overthinking that drives her mad, so writing can be sort of therapeutic. There are no available feline therapists as far as she knows so it’s the only option, I guess.


So what does the tiger hope for? Maybe there are other lonely tigers hidden in cages somewhere and she can find a tigermate. She desperately needs someone to be out there to feel alive, to feel real. You can not feel real only by yourself, you need someone to say “Hey, I see You", so you know you exist in a world, and there is no world if you are alone. Only an endless imaginary landscape and the infinity of time I suppose that’s called eternity and yeah, it is unbearably beautiful but when there is no one to enjoy it with, it gets unbearably unbearable.


And the tiger writes, she doesn’t know where to start as there is an abundance of possibilities and the tiger hates it, because the cage is made of these exact possibilities, actually the cage is a piece of art of an unknown insane artist who wired it out of equally good different options, so it is impossible to unwire it using the common sense. As a consequence the tiger needs somebody from the outside to tell her where to start because the pattern of the cage is so immaculate that even her animal intuition hesitates over the unknown in fear. Soooo..


Don’t judge the tiger, just help her if you can, maybe write back?