– Here is the repeated image –
— of the lover destroyed —

› › › alive in paroxysm

Desperately, he tries to lose himself, and there are many places to which he as turned. Vices: liquor, drugs, and all other manners of shameless self-indulgence. Academia: the study of retrieving what has been thought irrevocably lost, the study of the self and the divine, and what manner of great and terrible creatures that roam this plane and beyond. Religion: Halonic self-flagellation and Rhalgric acts of purposeful destruction. Yet the soul is not so easily dissolved no matter how many multitudes of solvents are mixed into it. At the end of it all, it remains, and there is no eternal euphoria or endless text that can consume and keep it.So then, Aghi thinks, there is nothing left but to make some cosmic sense of the act of running: to form a purpose from the formless and eke out an existence above and outside of the suffering (though that, too, is formless and bears no meaning that he can yet discern). He could stop, of course, from a detached perspective; but the thought of stopping has not and will not occur to him. It is as inconceivable as the cessation of breath and other involuntary motions that constitute the body’s desperate commitment to living. There has to be a point to it all: this is the thought that inevitably manifests between the drinks and the lines of printed letters and the cracks in the stone statues that stand silent in the grand cathedral of Ishgard and beyond.If no point or purpose or meaning are forthcoming, then he must find it himself through the avenues readily available to him. There must be something. There is no alternative but to run.