The Pleasure of Guilt

Everyone was laughing except you and that's why I noticed you. You were new and you wanted to laugh too and you would. 

 The night was so dark and the space was so wide, the sky curves to meet the horizon line, the edges in the field in which we walked. A barely discernible line at the front of our vision marked the elusive boundary where space meets solidity. Darkness holds more silence than light and in the distance the laughter seemed louder than it should. We circled a fire orange sparks sprinkled the air around us. Hug your coat closer, quickening your step now as the previously star lit sky is blighted by clouds moving in from somewhere behind.  Let your eyes rest on the edges of the surroundings before letting them travel up on the curve of the sky.  It can be discomforting  can't it like a dome or a boundary? The way the space stretched so far and the sky reached to meet it. Only if you think about it, but then so is everything if you think about it. Think is the operative word here if you haven't noticed.

 The clouds seemed to roll and gather, a deep roll of thunder reverberated around the rain fell hitting our faces, sliding and trickling down our coats. Frozen now, trapped in your thoughts, watching us from far away. 

And you were trapped, that much was obvious. You were imprisoned by your own awareness but we were trapped too but in a different way, we just didn't know. Ignorance had set us free, we were free by consequence of just thinking we were free, regardless of whether it was true or not, what you knew had enslaved you yet all you knew was that you were trapped. Knowledge will not set you free when the nature of that knowledge confirms the opposite. 

You approached. We met.  You felt the need to give reason to us even though we didn't want it. 

Oh we all have reasons. Justification is alike but reason is justified in its own different ways. It didn't matter that you had different reasons because you wanted the same thing. Outcome and result trump intention and motivation. Outcome survives, your reason will  live and die, die with you. Pleasure, its always right, its always justified. The very nature of its definition makes it self-justifying. I don't need to explain myself. It defeats reason, it destroys reason so why should I give a reason I pursued it in the first place. You arrived and you wanted to explain why, the reason you wanted to be one of us, your reasoning to become one of us was to eradicate that incessant urge to reason and justify everything, your reason to act was to destroy any future or potential reasoning for any other action your reason to act in the first place was so that you could eventually act without reason. 

All drugs are legal, everyone can take them, when and how they want. In that way pleasure is not only justified because of its very nature but is also expressly accommodated for, it is deemed right and because it was deemed right no one could feel wrong about taking them, no one could feel guilt. 

They're not drugs, we needed a new name for them and we hadn't come up with one yet. The nature of drugs is that they have a physiological effect that effects the processes of mind or body and this was more. I wish I could explain how it was more, this was beyond mind, this was beyond body. Yes they were drugs in the sense that they were a chemical substance that we ingested and they gave us something that related to mind and body but they were different because they somehow managed to go beyond it. They gave us pleasure, drugs give pleasure but this was pure pleasure, true pleasure, this was pleasure with guilt, somehow we had discovered a chemical that gave us pleasure but at the same time made us feel like the pleasure was wrong, which subsequently further enhanced the pleasure. We lived for this. We abandoned everything, everything but to remain alive and feel like this. We had to keep it a secret, the chemical we had found, its discovery would be manipulated, used for control, if someone had control of it, then inevitably they would deprive others of it to control them, it was so addictive that anyone would do anything just to remain taking it, so we had to keep it a secret, we had to deprive it from those in power, those who would deprive it from us if they knew. 

Everyone was laughing except you and that's why I noticed you. You were new and you wanted to laugh too, we gave you what you wanted, you took it and you did. You laughed with us, you laughed without reason. You had so much pleasure, your reason was defeated because you were immersed. You weren't able to reason and without reason, things can't be justified, you couldn't justify it so you felt guilty because it wasn't deserved. Your guilt enhanced your pleasure.