The Darker Sort

There is a common understanding that our lives are ours, determined over the course of events by our autonomous choices. We are the masters of our fate, as it were, a concept which is inspired by a collective determinism we have set for ourselves over the last several centuries.

You are responsible for you, I am responsible for me, and so forth. The decisions we make are what guide our course, each footstep rippling forward and backward upon the fall so that we are permanently on our own two feet.

This is a lie, of course. Regardless of our station, be it peasant or king, decisions made by others can alter our course in even the slightest manner. We can push with our will as much as we would like, but the choices we make affect others at least as much as they affect ourselves.

We are a collective, it occurs to me, group-thinking ourselves into believing we are each actually in our own boats across the waters of existence. But who guides the ocean?

And this logic fails further when we start to ponder the nature of existence itself. It is naive to believe that what you see is what you get. If I choose to go and get drunk until the early dawn, that is my choice. Should I choose to get so drunk that I black out, again my choice and my responsibility.

Further, if the blackout is so strong that I fall to the ground and split my skull open, I choose to put myself in that position. Where it gets murky for me, beyond the alcohol, is what may have occurred when I fell. 

Not being able to remember everything for obvious reasons, I imagine I looked quite sad laying there bleeding from my head upon the ground. I imagine also that if I did get up off of the ground, I made a great show of things. I chose that drunken stupor.

But what if something occurred in that moment which I would not choose. What if, even for a split second, I was lost? What if I found an end to my life, my choices, upon that concrete? If I died, did I return? Did I return alone? What happens when we die but come back? What do we lose? What do we gain?

Over my life I have been consistently reminded of the chip on my shoulder; the self necessity to prove my worth. And if, in that moment, I myself was lost, I believe I returned with a heavier burden.

My life and choices being what they are, if I carry forth from that moment upon the concrete driveway I do not believe I have done so alone. I stepped foot into the reality beyond our existence and returned, but not unscathed. Perhaps not alone. 

Every religion has conceptualized spirits which escape the rigid observations of man. We look for answers to the face value of life in the unanswerable realities which we are presented.

While I cannot now recall falling or getting up through the drunken haze, I have a very clear understanding of what I experienced in the seconds or moments upon the ground. There was no out of body experience, no relatives welcoming me into another realm, and my life did not flash before my eyes.

Were I to describe what I experienced, you would not believe it. It is an experience which I have shared and confirmed with others who may have slipped off of the face of our reality, even if only briefly, so allow me to explain what we understand.

Perhaps it was heaven, perhaps it was hell, perhaps it was purgatory. But it was not life as we know it. Even today, over a decade later, the moment chills me with the understanding I was afforded.

The horrors of the real world are debilitating enough without all of the evils of man manifest in some existential eternity which we label Hell. The dimension we do inhabit, for better or worse, manifests enough evil in and of itself.

It seems to thrive on the very evil we fear in an unknown afterlife. Were I to describe hell, my experience falling down would not be accurate.

Same may be said for the pleasant maginations of some unknown heaven. In this life, we have the potential to make choices which afford peace and happiness, not simply to ourselves but to anyone whom we care to include.

I speak not of material possession of course, or material experience even, but of a sense of fulfillment which we each ourselves must find. This, again, is not what I experienced when I fell. 

Feel yourself, as much as you ever do, floating weightless in the darkest black ever, but a whirling of energy washes through you as a breeze from all perceivable angles. This energy envelopes you, surely, but you feel at one with it as well. You feel no fear, only a sense of comfort and peace.

Perhaps this is simply your conscious Self retreating into your physical brain, protecting your Self from the physical pain of death. Or, perhaps, you have stepped beyond what little we know of reality into a place you are not meant for, at least not if you return from there.

And then what of the return? Did I return at all? If you step out of our known reality, do you return to it? If the concepts of a multiverse are reality, could you perhaps simply trip and fall into another reality?

Did I choose that? Was the gravity of my drunken potential fully understood but only too late? Did I skip from my course into another dimension not of the notions of humanity only to return to a reality from which I did not leave?

Am I now set upon a path which I only accidentally chose for myself? Did I see too much to ever fully return?

Finally, if I did return to the path I stepped from, did I fully return? Did I leave something behind? Or worse, did I bring something back with me?

Perhaps I always had a cloud about me, a darkness, a rotten aura. Or perhaps I garnered this sort of darkness through choices with ramifications which I could not possibly comprehend.

At what point do our choices show themselves as insignificant in the face of matters of reality which are perpetually beyond any concept of choice?

Free will tells me the truth: fuck it. I fell, I experienced, I returned. What I am is not defined by a single moment, day, year, or even life. The soul costs nothing but is worth infinity.

Mine has a scar, but whose does not? Am I defined by any scar? Fuckin-A-No. and neither are you. You choose your perception, I’ll choose mine.

Believe what you want about life, I’ve had enough of a taste of death to know we are better off experiencing the highs, lows, ins, outs, etc. of life while we stand on the only rock with life in our known universe.

Create your own hell, your own heaven, your own will. Dance like you can summon infinity. It’s free.

Concrete Criminal, JHB, 2025