I have traveled upon the rings many times, and each revolution yields diminishing returns. The repetitions unravel different variations of a theme, but the theme will always remain the same. No matter how many times I lap around, no matter how many variations and different resonances I encounter, I can never escape its plain and simple truth. It’s not an universal truth or one that’s deciphered by philosophical contemplation, but one that resides deep within the viscera of your bowels. It’s calcified within your bones. It’s the sound you hear when nails and a chalkboard meet and your ears bleed from the searing and screeching noise. After a while, it relentlessly makes its presence known, impatient at the fact that you’ve been trying to obscure it by embellishing it with different suits.

The truth is as bilious as it is resounding. Everyone fears the hand of Saturn. In Rueben’s and Goya’s paintings of Saturn devouring his children, the old order stifles the new, asserting its power and dominion. What has been will always be whether it be the old traditional order or the darkness that always haunts us in the background no matter how much things are progressing or looking up. What is new will inevitably decay and so on.

The truth is as damning as it is mundane. The repetitions recur and recur. But why revolve around Saturn? This malefic planet seems to draw me in, as if my fate is tied to its fortunes. As I travel along its rings, I can only experience a prolonged and protracted numbness. It’s an apathy that betrays a deep dissatisfaction but I have an inability to escape from it. The past, the present, and the future amount to more of the same. Apathy is a hell disguised as a purgatory. It is an eternal waiting room for those passively waiting for nothing to come.

I think I’m starting to understand why I’m so drawn to masochism. For a moment, the pain transports me into a garden of plenitude, a garden where thorns, poison ivy, and venus fly traps lay in wait to inflict their torturous gifts onto those who seek them. Like the mystics who encounter the face of God at their most vulnerable and abject, I experience God from my blood that’s drawn, my torn flesh, and my tears. Sometimes I want to escape from the pain of the apathy, but knowing me, I’d rather fall deeper into it, allowing myself to be cannibalized by it. A few times, I’ve fantasized about cutting off all contact with the world, starving myself, and letting myself rot in my apartment until I die because it is then that I’ll experience the apex of life by edging closer to death and falling deeper into madness. I won’t because I already am.