Antkind

by Charlie Kaufman

So it goes.

so it goes,

The mountain analogy goes only so far. It is a climb but not vertical. Rather, it is a tunnel with a bright light at the end, the light an oncoming locomotive. It is a jungle laden with unruly vines and screaming monkeys. It is a room with no doors from which one is both trying to get in and out. It is the party to which one has not been invited. It is a forever skipping record. It is trying to understand my life. It is the wind and I am a leaf smashing futilely against the interior of its wind tunnel prison. It is a woman who won’t love me, no matter how much I change.

It is the hopelessness of a bad diagnosis. It is fire. It is flood. It never gets closer. It is my broken heart, my shame, it is how I measure up.

But it is progress, and in this progress exists a whiff of narrative. Of reason. Of hope. So I continue. For more eons.

One cannot either look forward as did the fortune-tellers or backward as did Yvonne, it seems, without being punished for it. I guess, then, one might as well look wherever one wants. So I look back. And walk forward.