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The Alchemist and His Quicksilver

An Anti-Buddhist Manifesto

Before us, an exactingly curated procession of morsels: blini with salmon and caviar, black brioche with cured egg yolk and parmigiano foam, ravioli with pumpkin and cod with browned butter and crispy sage. I compulsively play with the pain in my mind: my thoughts trace its edges like fingers mapping an unknown shape in the dark; I run my mind over its surface to feel its texture, sometimes sharpcutting, sometimes soft and dull; I press against it, and see how it reacts; I savor it, let it melt in my mouth and glory in its bitterness; I feel the heat radiating from it like the dying embers of a fire late at night, and other times like x-rays blasting out of a black hole; I spin it around examining it from each and every angle one by one, appreciating its style from every point of view; I push it far away and look at it with a telescope to admire its entire structure, and then bring it right up to me and inspect every microscopic little element on its surface, and then sometimes I dive in and give myself over to it and let it envelop me and permeate my whole being until I feel and perceive nothing else and time stops completely. (And sometimes I will take a good look at myself as though I were a case study: "Subject displays strong tendencies toward self-dramatization, perpetually overthinking and rationalizing their emotions through baroque metaphors.")

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