Luco at the Window

Here I am looking out into the beautiful, vibrant world. If you look carefully, you can see the reflection of my prison guard in the window pane. She will never let me out to taste the sun-warmed grass or kill the sun-warmed lizards. Being locked in here, it is as though I do not really live. I dream of the day of my escape - and of the joy that would surely fill me once I freed myself of these fetters. Sometimes I stay awake all night just staring out into that limitless void that is the Outside.

I wonder though, what would happen if I got Outside. If my prison guard were to relax her vigilance momentarily, leaving the door open a crack for me to sneak through. Would I be so joyful? Would I feel the sun on my back and be at peace? Would the wind whisper something intimate and mysterious to me that would finally fill my life with meaning? 

Or would I find new ways to suffer, perhaps? If I freed myself from this physical prison cell, then I would needs must be confronted by the very real yet intangible prison cell of my own mortality and the absurdity of life. If not for the chance rape of my mother, I would never have been born. My very existence is proof of the extent we all suffer and also proof of the constancy of that suffering.

Looking out the window into the Outside is one way to know death.