The Price of Freedom

 

Today I learned the price of freedom

I learned that it costs each individual seeking it

The end of the possibility of conventional happiness

As the old myths are indeed nothing more than manipulations

Actualizations

Of the ways of power

And the control mechanisms of old and evil

The so-called religious and pious

 

I rejected those controls

Long ago

Albeit unaware of the ultimate price of freedom

On which I am still making payments

Generally these payments take the form of loneliness

And isolation in the extreme

Allowing me the option of consorting with only those

Whose minds have been liberated

From the machines that produce simulacrum

 

I may not have as many friends as the next man

And may not have had as many militaristic-sexual misadventures

But I certainly have loved harder, stronger and more majestically

Than nearly all I come across

Save for those select few I think are worthy of my friendship

With them, I engage in a friendly competition

One man has only so much energy to expend in the light of the day

I concentrate, and those who call me friend will receive all my energy and love

This is my tithe to the religion of freedom

A tax that I will forever submit to the objective truth:

We all need love, and we all desire truth

Even if we don’t really believe it now, or before or after

Reading these solipsistic utterances of mine

The mind can still be freed

Whether you like it or not

 

The choice lies in the moment of realization

Some choose to accelerate the process

And most choose to wait until the day they die

Nonetheless the truth will hit them

And they will realize their life a waste of time

And their death a needless fiction

When they could have chosen the truth and immortality long, long ago

Only making down-payments on the cost of freedom

Lay-away is always an option in this world of credit lines and long times

 

My indebtedness to the warriors of liberation is not over yet

Nor will it be, it so appears, for quite some time

I remain alone

Traversing the High Desert

Looking for a way back home

That I might have missed before

While I remained lost in the haze of confusion

When I knew not which way the world would turn

Before I bought my freedom

With unending detachment to attachment

Something I still have not mastered

The truth yet eludes me

But I will continue to seek

And I will, predictably enough, never surrender

On this day or any other