Anger

Anger. It’s a destructive emotion, both to the self and to others. It provides strength through passion, but it is a fire in the soul. It burns through a body, leaving nothing but a dead soul and empty husk. It starts off in the minutia of details – small mistakes made by another, incessant inane chatter about something you’re not interested in. The tiny things pile up until before you know it you are grinding your teeth, the fire rises, feeling the rage behind your eyes like an unremitting itch you can’t scratch; each recurring instance tossing petrol on the fire, flames leaping higher through your body, cauterising where they touch. The pressure starts building on the back of your head, pressure that needs a drill hole at the base of your skull to release, it grips your brain tightly, constricting.

Despite your best efforts, you are a slave to the fire. Your words are barbs, lashing at those undeserving of your anger; scathing when you only mean sarcasm, tearing when you only mean to taunt. A flicker in the eyes as they reel a little from the vitriolic bites and, somewhere inside them, some tiny piece of their soul hardens, Humanity’s defence mechanism, stopping them from flinching a second time.

At the time you don’t consider it, just another razor wittism you crack at them like a whip but, as the fire dies down and the heat recedes, as the ashes of your soul flitter down through the gutted cathedral of flesh to settle in smouldering embers, you come to realise that are contributing towards destroying another’s soul with your words, and somewhere within that gutted cathedral a charred figure claws its way out of the embers to stand defiantly before your mind’s eye.

The sickeningly burnt face of your conscience demands your unwavering attention, you can’t look away, you can never outrun yourself. Karma always demands a balancing of the scales; perhaps, in the grand scheme of life, you are only a slave to the fire because you are being guided by the will of someone, something, else; meshed seamlessly into the gears of this particular social machine long enough for the fire to build again to a suitable peak that can be unleashed at someone Karma demands a balancing of the scales from before Karma moves you on.

However, it would be all too easy to say that your actions are directed as a result of Fate or Karma or some other metaphysical essence. That you are at the beck and call of a higher power; but that is the easy way, the simplistic way, the undignified way. Perhaps you are guided and manipulated at times, a push here, a redirection there but the rest of the time you are your own person, the rest of the time the fire is cold. It only stirs when you deliberately call on it, when you feed it with your own prejudices and your own failings. That is not Fate or Karma at work, that is mere selfish humanity.

***
Some days, the fire is always burning…. just below the surface and nothing can put it out. It strains and twists, threatening to consume you if you don’t give it some form of release, some outlet that it can flare against, that it can burn, char, cremate. But you don’t, you keep it locked away for fear of what damage this untamed fire could cause. You try to smother it down and bury it under layers and layers of something, anything – work, alcohol, drugs, love, whatever works. Maybe music can bury it; just turn it up loud, let the music drown out the roar of the fire, let the white noise fill your mind, give it no quarter, until at last the fire slumbers once more; smouldering, seething, beneath the layers, waiting patiently for the next time.

But when the flames die there’s nothing but the cold, the bitter, bitter cold that permeates deep not just into your bones but also into your soul, another piece blackened by the rage. You wonder just how much more of your soul is left untouched; how much is left unblackened? A lot? A tiny fragment? Probably only a small fraction, thinking of how frequently the rage has been flaring inside you recently.

Is there anyway out? Anyway to preserve what’s left of your… soul? No, wrong word… spirituality? essence? You realise that no, preservation isn’t what you are after. A way out, some kind of escape clause. That’s what you are really searching for. A way to get rid of the fire, to quench the eternal candle that burns bright inside the cathedral of your flesh.

Redirection won’t work, the flame burns what it touches, it can’t be used as a catharsis. The only way to expunge the flame is to ride it out, let it flare up at the appropriate time, unleash it where it can do no damage. Pulling the trigger of a gun would give no release for the fire – it’s a dispassionate act, there is nothing for it to transfer to, no emotional outlet for the fire. No, what is needed is something more physical, more personal. Closing your hand around the scabbard of the simple wakazashi, long slow steps carry you to the garden, eyes closed, hands wrapped around the scabbard and the hilt, the sharp hiss as the blade is drawn like an expectant serpent. Then the sudden jarring as the blade cuts through the air and bites into the trunks of the bamboo trees. Sharp spasms race around your arms as, with another sweep, you neatly slice through shaft after shaft of bamboo.

The candle within the cathedral of your flesh flaring with each swing, the flame travelling down your arms, through your hands, keening the blade. In your mind the iceberg of your problems begins to fragment, great chunks shear away, toppling down into the dark waters of your consciousness. Each swing shears off another fragment until at last you are left with nothing but cold black emptiness flooding through your head. Closing both hands around the hilt, you feel yourself awakening from the fire’s embrace. Your eyes are finally your own once more, feeling much relaxed you become aware of the scattered lengths of bamboo that you devastated.

The price has been paid, the balance redressed, but once more something beautiful has had to die to sate the fire.