Start by envisioning a world

Become an artist (All profound works of literature have two themes: love and death) ample doses of recreation

In becoming intellectual, we often wonder where to begin.  The beginning does not matter, it only matters that you do in fact begin somewhere.  You set down all your childish books and you pick up works that will force you to think.  Your voyage will be akin to swimming, but you will not drown, unless you decide to go completely under without the proper equipment.  Start with the Classics my friends.  Use them to bulldoze the entire edifice of modern rubbish and Hollywood zombosis that has clamped down on your psyche.  Fashion logical explosions and drip it drop by acidic drop on the faces of the famous nobodies.

We will tell you that there is a world to be seen and felt and experienced far beyond the confines of your couch and your four cornered plasma screen jail cell.  Come to life with us.  It is easy.  Cancel your cable contract.  Rip your television from the wall, and give it to charity.  Take your video games, that electronic crack that you have been feeding your time on this glorious planet to - and give them to someone with more time on their hands.  Let them waste their one and only life in a quest for entertainment.  It seems like you are accomplishing something, but I will tell you….it is all scripted.

Just like literary movements start with stumbles, you will fall flat on your face.  You will start to wonder about your world.  And you will start to create it.  Ezra Pound said, “The essential thing in a poet is that he builds us his world.”  You must have thought about your world to build one.  Otherwise you are lost in a city of piled shit upon shit, so enamored with the smell that sublime rose oil would be the ultimate putrescence.

We imagine a world without copyrights, where we can read unimpeded, an online menagerie of facts and figures and lines and verses, which in fact the entire canon of mankind’s literary output will be encoded and scanned and hyperlinked.  Wikipedia falls flat.  Short of this goal.  When an author mentions another work, you can hyperlink to it.  I do not ever envision that I will make a dime off of my work.  My next novel will be made available for sale.  Whatever money I make off of it will be put into writing my third novel, and other projects.  I will attempt to write one work per year until I meet with a bullet fired from the gun of a madman, or mad insurgent, or I meet my fate lost in thought trampled by horses as I stroll past the gray cobblestone street of an Italian village.

I don’t know how I will meet my end.  It will not be self inflicted.  I will burn brightly shining for my brothers in the darkness.  I have made my decision.  No matter how low it goes, I will claw my way to the surface to breathe.  It is all we can do.

Don’t get lost in yourself.  When you start to turn inwards, use the great works of classical literature to fashion handholds for yourself.  Understand that your lack of emotion only enables you to see the stream for what it is.  This life.  You will be in it, but you will be above it.  You shall not rage against your enemies.  You will merely understand what makes them rage.  And you will defeat them.

I am sorry, you are going to die.  I know I am going to meet my fate, I tell myself that everyday.  I am no longer afraid.  As a conscious entity I cannot comprehend nothingness.  This is not a source of despair.  My death will not happen to me, but for others around me.  I will simply be removed.  But know this, you are going to go the way of the Pharaoh.  Generations will pile on top of you carrying your traits, provided you spread your traits to them.  You came from nothingness, and it did not affect you in the least.  You are alive now.  You know there exists a world in need of your aid, you genius of tomorrow, you teacher of men.  Here is your chance to draw a line.  Set down your game controllers and your remote control.  It is your duty.  You must.  Start by envisioning a world.

Jeffrey M. Hopkins is the author of Broken Under Interrogation, therapy for him to avoid taking poison following his second tour in Iraq.  Writing is the therapy of my choice.  Otherwise I would rage against myself, which is unhealthy after your twenties.  Philosophy is the best therapy.  Construct possible worlds in your mind and destroy them.  One writes to avoid rotting from their toes up, dipped in the river Styx, to no avail.  Immortality is never possible, and frequently a source of upset.  Revel in your mortality.  Give praise to the old ones around you.  Talk to them and discover the past.  Learn their mistakes.  Try your hardest to avoid them.