As for man, his days are numbered,
whatever he may do, it is but wind.
— Epic of Gilgamesh
I taste the fruit of knowledge and a chasm opens up beneath me.
There is no ground below me. I'm falling and there is no bottom. I spiral down, further down. Drowning. I'm drowning and there is no air. No surface to break and gasp into. Crushing my lungs the pressure is so intense.
I can't escape. Burning, my lungs are burning. Still farther down I fall.
Nothing seems real, the sheen of dreams glimmers off every surface. I walk but end up nowhere. I run but find myself in the same spot.
What is the point of it all? What is the meaning of it all? Nothing echoes back. Deafening silence.
Why even live, just marching then crawling to death at the end? Even the greatest human life will be reduced to a pithy quote. Memory of the common man or woman lives only as long as a grieving family member visits a lonely grave.
In a few dozen years forgotten by all. In a few hundred years not even a trace remaining. In the end even the greatest mind fades and burns away as the sun spirals out of control and sears the Earth away in one final holocaust.
What is the point of it all? Why even live?
Life is just sating hungers and thirsts that endlessly grow and return. Spewing seed into a womb to grow more seeds, more wombs. Another hungry mouth and appetite. Another life destined for inevitable death.
Refined by a merciless nature to be ever more efficient at killing and eating flesh, drinking blood. Colorfully packaged cruelty sold and fed to mindless drones. Living but not thinking. Thinking but not mattering.
What is the meaning behind it all? Is this all there is?
Damn God for being a lie. Damn God for giving false hope and meaning. And damn all those who follow him in their mindless crusades.
Caught in a trap with no escape. There really isn't anything out there, is there? With no one listening why speak, why pray? Screams and whimpers into the void where all becomes lost in a tangle of dust and decay.
The fruit is bitter.