Rivers of the Underground: Styx

This promise that leads to our death, is to desire life. We are so faithful and stand at the side of the father like a flock of children. Zeus is grateful and tragically obliges our wishes without much thought. Yet what is happiness but the absence of unhappiness, what is pleasure but the absence of pain. To avoid our suffering, we desire to live. To fulfill my yearning, all I crave for is to avoid unhappiness. So I seek more pleasure, I must fulfill this desire, even if it means my certain death. So I enter this underworld of the subway at Grand Army Plaza, and every morning, dutifully, to avoid discomfort, I repeat this same, civic ritual, I descend, I wait. Then I see the head lights approaching, growing larger as they roll near. There I see the shadow of the driver of souls, appearing on the dreary side of the traced, yellow line on the platform. I step back at the roaring proximity of the flashing eyes. I get on, and am shaken silently, tens of meters under the East river to the island of Manhattan, where rivers are split, bordering the marshes of Jersey. Who is immersed here, finds eternity, invulnerable to the suffering of life, but lost of all human measure.