I don’t remember the exact moment my mind cracked. It didn’t make a noise. It wasn’t dramatic—no lightning strike, no hard blows, no sudden revelation, no monks chanting in the background. Just a slow, creeping infection. Like a disease which grows in your intellectuals’ guts. A philosophical parasite burrowing into my skull, feeding on every illusion I had ever loved.

One day, I was normal.

The next, I was standing in front of a mirror at 3 AM, whispering to my own reflection:

"Are you real, or are you just another concept?"

It always starts small. A book here, a quote there. A late-night existential crisis that feels profound instead of terrifying. It doesn’t glare. Looks sad. Forbidden. I had to look otherwise it would feel heartbroken; someday it had uttered, from its depth, from its ovel shadow, it says—forget me! I was terrified hearing those unheard requests. Was that a request from my own decline? Or was it unfolded burden? I was too unsure, but I wiped out the fog out of the mirror. My shadows were gone. I cried for too many days. Too many nights.

While I awake in such midnight, I always wash my face, blow my nostrils, and pray for something unusual. I prayed for the mirror which had been broken since I was born, de-born as I never remembered my first cry. But my mother, she seemed cold as a winter, said, reminded me every other year, saying that I was shaking too much while I was tethering out from her vagina. Horrible acts of nature were that, even my father told me, reminded me every other year, whispered like some Vedic hymns.

Can you pass me an earmuff? I had asked my ovel-shadows, but he too was indifferent and uttered nothing but a sigh. How could the universe be so opposite of me? I see, I see on the other side of the wall. It is silent but more eerie on the sight. Bluffed by the vision, but I can see everything. You cannot even close my ear—I am not a God, but I am everything.

I can hear you, Mother! I can sense your vengeful bile, Father.

At first, I thought philosophy would make me smarter, stronger, and sane. That it would sharpen my mind into an unstoppable force. Instead, it just made reality feel like a poorly written dream.

Nietzsche told me that God was dead.

Schopenhauer told me that life was suffering.

Cioran whispered that the only true philosophical act is suicide.

My mother told me I did not laugh while I was evaporating my first breath.

Fantastic. Just what I needed. I do not have/had to breathe. My breath feels like horribly dissected entrails, it laughs though. Sometimes I need to press my stomach so hard to squeeze this laughter—it had emanated from the very beneath from God’s bile.

I tell you the incident from the previous day. While I was walking in the neighborhood, I felt a strange pang over my head. It started from the back of the neck, just behind the tip of the bristle. It was windy, I think. And I felt like a dog myself, feared of some unseeable bark. Was that the sound of the relic of my toenail? Because from the last few days, I see it curling itself like a vagabond’s unfortunate nails, curling downward to the mother earth. Yes, my body, my essence, and my whole elements of desire digging something lately—even my friends thought so.

Believing in something so unreal is hard. That’s why my hair on the back stays up like a mad dog’s bristle. Ah! Metaphysical tips of my existence.

But I kept going. Because philosophy isn’t something you study, it’s something you fall into like a black hole. I didn’t know what black hole was until I was a man—mature man. When I learned something that would eat the existence of the universe, I felt surreal like how Ms. X got while seeing the man-made chicken caved. I shivered. I ejaculated my entire faith upon this black hole.

How fascinating this big devil is, I thought. I possessed nothing beside this knowledge of the universe. I can feel it inside every piece of bone. Most of the time it howls like a lone wolf in the treeless forest. How sad it is to imagine a fox howling for nothing, for no nature, for no existence at all.

This existence of mine had nothing to do with the existent of my existence—but it grows like the tree that grows downward, into the mud, into the filth. Its foliage goes deeper, but not green anymore.

And the deeper you go, the deeper its foliage goes, the harder it is to climb out. It started with a book. It always does. It started with Psychovarium. It was a life-egg, full of promises of boldness. I was supposed to write Bloomness. I know recently I lost the meaning of words. Is there any word for losing meaninglessness of such kind?

I was young. Stupid. Hopeful. I thought philosophy would make me wise. If I try the mind-altering med, it would do better to my head, I thought. But my thoughts were not even mine. Sad even to write such a fuss.

I thought it would turn me into one of those dignified intellectuals who sip wine and say things like “Ah, but have you considered the dialectical nature of existence?”

Instead, it turned me into a raving lunatic.

Nietzsche told me that God was dead.

Schopenhauer told me life was a mistake.

Cioran told me existence was a cosmic joke—and I was the punchline.

I should’ve stopped.

I should’ve read something light, something normal. Maybe a cookbook. Or a pamphlet on tax law. Or even a third-grade restaurant’s menu.

But no. I kept going. Because I wanted the truth.

Big mistake.

Most people live like NPCs in a video game. Once I had learned from a learned man, he said: reality is nothing more than the visual slut. It always wrecks your member and makes you blind from the genital. It took some time to visualize my genitals, how it looks like. I chased my intelligent mind for many years like once Buddha chased his mind.

How did he learn such misery of life? How could he not deliver some precepts for my lost genitals? God, I wish this moment I was not that fool to read such a mind-bending philosophy. I wish. I wish my genitals were still intact.

Philosophy lets you see the code. The hole. The circle.

But once you see it, you can never unsee it.

So—are you sure you want to keep reading?

It started with words. It could have been different from the START. Start feels like satyr to the lost brain. It always says one thing and does another. Fool. Fool satyr. Fool me.

Not whispered from the mouth of a god, but printed in neat little lines, stacked inside books, waiting like landmines for unsuspecting minds.

How I learned to fathom those in-between spaces of every word is another story. I have learnt everything. Learned to walk. My father once taught me to peddle the heaviest thing—it was like a windmill, hardest to press. Was that Ego? It is always hard to push ego.

But no, I remember this time, honestly. That was the bicycle I tried to push. Peddling to death. He shouted from behind—“You’re almost there, son.” But at that time, I was too small to ask such a remark, otherwise I would have asked him—“How destiny looks like, dear Father!”

Now this was the ego earlier I was telling you. I had that ego since the beginning, from my birth perhaps. I never asked. I never told you. I never saw. And I never regret the knowledge I have gained by unseeing anything. Ego had burned in such fashion.

I thought I was just reading. Not burning.

I didn’t realize I was being infected.

Nietzsche slithered into my veins.

Schopenhauer took a bite out of my happiness.

Cioran whispered: “You don’t exist. You’re just a thought thinking itself.”

I blinked. And the world blinked back. And afterward it got custom to blink back and forth. I enjoyed it, our blinking rituals. I blinked until I became deaf!

Fall began the way all great collapses do—with arrogance.

I thought I could understand the universe.

I thought I could hold truth in my hands like a smooth stone.

Many times, I even tried pushing those boulders upward. I tried, I tell you. But the heaviness on my arms left me nothing but bruises. Hot, cold. Warm and ritualistic bruises from the process of learning. I don’t lie—once I stumbled upon the way up, I almost fell. But you know what dragged me back to my feet?

It was the fear, that held me like mother used to hold me, carefully a bit far from her breast. I hate her breast. I hate her arms which held my farness. Days are gone. I grew, I think.

I took everything coldly since I feared the heat which had been trapped within this cold hearth. The fume was so neolithic, so ancient, so burdensome. It never howled like that old lone wolf, but it screamed like a mad cow on the lone pastures, flogged by some devil-like human.

I thought I could read Kant now.

Fool.

Kant told me reality isn’t real—that my mind doesn’t perceive the world as it is, only as it appears. The thing-in-itself was forever beyond my reach. I nodded, pretending to understand. I nodded even for the mad cow’s plight. I ignored the lone wolf’s howl.

But then—

Then Hume came in like a drunk uncle at a wedding and shouted:

"Kant is cute, but guess what? Even your perception is nonsense. Causality? FAKE. You assume the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, but that’s just a habit. Maybe tomorrow, reality will shatter, and we’ll all wake up as sentient toasters."

And you know what?

He had a point.

It all started with a smirk. A simple laugh at first. Later its laughter grew like snowballs, falling, collecting, rounding up everything it could. I grew blisters on my faith. I know it could hold a delightful pus—drinking pus. I drank with delight; you can still see a few drops, drooling from my lips.

I thought I was safe. I thought philosophy was just a fun mental exercise, like doing push-ups for the brain.

But no.

No.

Philosophy is a sickness, and Kant is its most dangerous symptom.

I picked up Critique of Pure Reason like an idiot.

Thought I’d “expand my understanding.”

Ha.

Kant punched me in the soul. Can you not see how badly I hit? I remember one thing, which could be true, could be false but—my nose used to bleed. Wasn’t that a punch of metaphysics?

"Space and time aren’t real," he whispered seductively.

"They’re just structures of your mind."

"You don’t perceive reality itself—only your mind’s interpretation of it."

I blinked. Looked around. And my nose blinked. Bled.

Everything suddenly felt wrong.

The walls were no longer “walls.” They were perceived impressions of walls, floating in the black abyss of my skull.

I tried to touch it. I tried to cut it. I remember—yes, this one is true. How does Durden slit his throat? Was it throat? I can’t remember anything. But I tried to hold every blood dripping. Ha. Those moments of cupped hands towards my own vanity. Seeing those merciless vendors of the spirit—I puked.

I dropped the book.

Ran outside.

The sun was shining.

Or was it?

Did I see the sun, or did I merely experience an interpretation of an external stimulus categorized as “sun-like” by my feeble, desperate brain?

I collapsed on the pavement.

The pavement did not exist.

I woke up.

Or maybe I didn’t.

Kant and Hume were gone.

The kitchen was normal.

My hands were hands again.

I checked the mirror.

My reflection was back.

But—

For just a split meta-second—

It winked at me.

Now let me introduce the café, that morbid café of existence which dragged me into it.

Café

I was living in a small apartment downtown. Next to my door was living Mr. Crackpot; I never wanted to know his surname, so I never asked him. His wife used to go by the name Mrs. Crackpot. I never bothered to ask her surname either.

By the morning, the man used to come to his second-floor apartment, flash his light, go straight to the sofa, kiss his dog, Dolma, and sleep for the whole afternoon. He used to work at the bread factory and always smelled like fresh bread. I never liked bread and bread’s smell—it made me sick.

I remembered, morning I had a coffee at a nearby café. I usually went there not to drink coffee but to see the necklace. Necklace? Yes, that damn necklace reminded me of something. My thought caves me somehow. It always happens. Saddest the moment I feel free.

Next, I will write further about this necklace.

Wait until then, would you not!

Dear faithful readers!