Tigers

My life reminds me very much of a parable, or koyan, i heard once. It starts with a man walking along a path when a tiger sees him and attacks. The man runs away and ends up at a cliff, which he quickly starts climbing down because the tiger is right behind him. As he gets about half way down the cliff, he notices that a tiger is also waiting beneath him. So the man is stuck, clinging desperately, with a tiger above and a tiger below, he sees that the only thing that is supporting him is a very small strawberry bush, which he is holding onto for dear life. It is then that he notices that a single strawberry is ripe and right in front of his face. He figures he might as well eat it, stuck as he is, only to discover it to be the most delicious thing he has ever tasted. That is how I feel living my life everyday. Every second is sacred, to be cherished as if it were the last. Even though we may often forget it in our sterile consumer society, but we are ever walking the razors edge. History stretches out like an endless warning, telling us how close we always are to oblivion. Nietzsche once said that man was the rope between animal and ubermensch (over being). He had no certainty that we would ever cross this precarious bridge, and falling into the abyss is always just one fuck up away. It is important to remember that loosing our way may not consist of being reduced hitting each other with sticks and eating rats to survive. It seems to me that fate would be preferable to the shallow, hallow and undeniably pointless existence that has come into vogue in the USA. Every day I get to live as a free, happy and loving human being in a land full of sleep walking workers and arrogant ego maniacs I feel as if I'm digging my heels in against the relentless push of nihilistic capitalism. The tigers may gnash their teeth and roar mightily, but I still enjoy the little strawberries that can be picked amid all the endless noise and stupendous sights of our new era.