Dostoevsky Notes from Underground Part III

I never intended this blog to be an outlet for creative writing, but I was recently assigned an essay on Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground in which we had to continue the novel. I decided to write a Part III. For anyone who has read the book, I would really appreciate it if you read this critically and leave a comment with your feedback.

Part III

I should not continue this work. I should end it here. But something nags at me, perhaps it is my tooth-ache. No, it is some outside force. Some outside force that has let me, no, made me sit down and put pen to paper once again to finish this wretched work, to show to you gentlemen who I truly am, that in the days after writing this awful piece of nothing, something extraordinary happened to me. It was sudden and it was strange. I cannot help the words from slipping, dripping out of my pen onto this sheet as I sit on a bench, still isolated and alone, and still so close to the underground, but so far from the underground man that I was, so far from the spot I dwelled for so long.

It hit me a short while ago. I am not quite sure if it was just a few hours or several days ago. Something compelled me to leave the underground, leave everything that has made me feel so comfortable. Something pushed me. Something that felt liberating, exciting, moving, something that I normally would have ignored but simply could not.

I was sleeping, if you can call it that. I felt perfectly awake but perfectly sleeping in this sleep. Dreaming and not dreaming. And yes, in this state I can dream and not dream. I can be the insect and the hero. I can be both – everyone can be both. But let me get back to the story.
I was dreaming and not dreaming when something moved me to stretch my legs, to climb out of my crawl space and go into the world, to recognize the other perspective, while remaining in my own head. I thought I would conduct a few experiments on the human kind. I began to make plans in my head, when…no. That was not it at all. I began to walk – it was as if I was not walking at all, but being compelled by something, pulled by something.

I emerged out of my crawl space and began walking down the street. Heel toe, heel toe. I was walking, when, right as I passed the church, the bells began to toll. I peered in, but without stopping. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. I saw the priest inside the church cross someone and say, “You are dust and unto dust you shall return.” Yes. It was Ash Wednesday, but I have no need for church. I thought, stupid people mindlessly praying, attending church every weekend just for something, someone who doesn’t exist. I fought the slight urge, the force that drew me to the sound of the bells. I ignored it and concentrated on walking to nowhere, to everywhere. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. I kept walking and found myself a few moments later aboard a train. I was surrounded by people. People were everywhere, standing, sitting, reading their morning papers and all I could think was, where are you going and why? What drives these people to board this train, to read their newspapers? And I looked at them, really looked at them and suddenly saw hundreds of crosses on their foreheads. Every forehead with a huge black cross of ash. I was the only one without a cross. I felt out of place like I did at that wretched dinner table – I felt alone and isolated like I was underground once again. I put my finger up to my forehead and back down again to my lap. As I looked down, my finger was covered in black ash. I, too, had a cross on my forehead. I was branded as these people were. All packed in a train, branded with ash. We are all something but nothing, with invisible crosses on all of our foreheads, whether we recognize them or not. We have free will but we have no free will to make the cross on our foreheads.

It was then, at this thought, that I awakened and noticed that I had been in a deep sleep. I did not know how long I had been sleeping, but something makes me think a long time. My entire existence. I awoke, looked up, the ashes had disappeared from my finger and no one else had ashes on their foreheads.

It occurred to me that I was moving all this time in the train, moving fast, very very fast but I needed to get off. I needed to retreat to the underground once again. I needed to fight the cross, to doubt everything, to complain about my tooth-ache. I dodged the people, not looking into their eyes, but at their bare foreheads, the foreheads without remnants of ash or otherwise. I was able to squeeze through people who were paying no attention to me, nor anyone on the train. I just needed to get off. I needed to find where I was and find my way home, wherever that was. The doors opened in front of me and I stepped off the train, only to discover that I was in the same place that I had started. The doors closed, and the train’s whistle made the loudest noise, wait, not noise, but bells. Yes. They were bells. I started walking away, as more bells, from the church across the street rang in my ears. I was not compelled at this moment to go into the church, but to take to my pen and paper and write about this dream, this reality. I was thinking of a phrase now, something I had heard before: “There is always more there.” Each step that I took, although it cannot be assumed that I was going anywhere at all, I said to myself, “There is always more there.” Heel, toe. Heel, toe.

And now, the words come streaming out of my pen, golden drop by golden drop when I say, “There is always more there.” “There is always more there.” For this is the answer to everything, to life itself. However hard you look, there is always more there. How conclusive a statement of the world. It’s the most all encompassing sentence I’ve ever met. Every conclusion we make, the opposite can apply. Duality is the meanings of our lives. Two things existing in harmony – being able to conclude two things at a time. Dreaming and not dreaming. We can never see everything. There’s always more you can write down, more thoughts, more expressions. We do not know why humans do the things they do, but they do – their subconscious, some outside force, yes! God. That is it! Man cannot create this, no, no one can create this but Him himself. Forgive me for my morbid ways, my depressing expressions. I wrote them to represent the other side, the side that you do not see, but I see. But with this exclamation, I see your side. I see and live both sides. I have a cross of ash and do not have a cross of ash. I live by them both from now on. I live in duality. I am both the master and slave in every aspect of my life. I drive my life but my life drives me. An outside force drives me.

And with the conclusive statement that “there is always more there.” I can never finish this novel, these notes. For these notes are ongoing logs of the encounters I have had, my thought process, and my ever-changing advice to you gentlemen. We are everything, and we are nothing. “You are dust and unto dust you shall return.”