Everything Is F*cked

Amor Fati
It was Meta’s last day in Sils Maria, Switzerland, and she planned to spend as
much of it as she could outdoors.
Friedrich’s  favorite  walk  was  around  the  east  bank  of  Lake  Silvaplana,
half a kilometer from town. The lake was a shimmering, crystalline thing this
time  of  year,  wreathed  by  the  mountains  on  a  horizon  pulverized  by  white
peaks. It was on walks around this lake that he and Meta had first bonded four
summers ago. This was how she wanted to spend her last day with him. This
was how she wanted to remember him.
They  left  shortly  after  breakfast.  The  sun  was  perfect,  and  the  air  was
silky. She led, and he hobbled along behind her with his walking stick. They
passed barns and fields of cattle and a small sugar beet farm. Friedrich joked
that the cows would be his most intellectual companions once Meta left. The
two laughed and sang and picked walnuts as they went.
They stopped and ate around noon, beneath a larch tree. It was then that
Meta  began  to  worry.  They  had  come  far  in  their  excitement.  Much  farther
than  she  had  anticipated.  And  now  she  could  see  that  Friedrich  was
struggling, both physically and mentally, to keep it together.
The walk back was arduous for him. He dragged noticeably now. And the
reality of her leaving the next morning fell over them like an ominous moon,
a pall upon their words.
He had grown grumpy, and achy. The stops were frequent. And he began
muttering to himself.
Not like this, Meta thought. She didn’t want to leave him like this, but she
must.
It was late afternoon by the time they approached the village. The sun was
waning,  and  the  air  was  now  a  burden.  Friedrich  lagged  by  a  good  twenty
meters, yet Meta knew the only way to get him all the way home was by not

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stopping for him.
They passed the same sugar beet farm, the same barn and the same cattle,
his new companions.
“What was that?” Friedrich shouted. “Where has God gone, you say?”
Meta turned around and knew what she would find before she even saw it:
Friedrich,  walking  stick  waving  in  the  air,  shouting  maniacally  at  a  small
group of cows chewing in front of him.
“I  shall  tell  you,”  he  said,  breathing  heavily.  He  raised  his  stick  and
gestured  to  the  mountains  around.  “We  have  killed  him—you  and  I!  We  are
his murderers. But how have we done this?”
The cows chewed placidly. One swatted a fly with its tail.
“How were we able to drink up the seas? Who gave us the sponge to wipe
away the horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?
Are we not perpetually falling in all directions? Are we not straying as though
through some Infinite nothing?”
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“Friedrich, this is silly,” Meta said, trying to grab his sleeve and pull him
along. But he yanked his arm away; there was madness in his eyes.
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“Where  is  God?  God  is  Dead.  God  remains  dead.  And  we  have  killed
him,” he declared.
“Please, stop this nonsense, Friedrich. Come on, let’s go to the house.”
“How  shall  we  comfort  ourselves,  the  murderers  of  all  murderers?  What
was holiest and mightiest of all has bled to death under our knives: who will
wipe this blood off us?”
Meta shook her head. It was no use. This was it. This was how it would
end. She began to walk away.
“What  water  is  there  for  us  to  clean  ourselves?  What  festivals  of
atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of
this  deed  too  great  for  us?  Must  we  ourselves  not  become  gods  simply  to
appear worthy of it?”
Silence. A moo rang out in the distance.
“Man is a rope, tied between beast and Superman—a rope over an abyss.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in
man is that he is an overture [to something greater.]”
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The words struck her. She turned and locked her gaze on his. It was this
idea  of  man  being  an  overture  to  something  greater  that  had  drawn  her  to

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Nietzsche  so  many  years  ago.  It  was  this  thought  that  had  intellectually
seduced  her,  because,  for  her,  feminism  and  women’s  liberation  (her
ideological  religion)  were  that  “something  greater.”  But,  she  realized,  to
Nietzsche,  it  was  simply  another  construct,  another  conceit,  another  human
failure, another dead god.
Meta  would  go  on  and  do  great  things.  In  Germany  and  Austria,  she
would  organize  marches  for  women’s  suffrage—and  achieve  it.  She  would
inspire thousands of women worldwide to stand up for their own god projects,
for  their  own  redemption,  their  own  liberation.  She  would  quietly,
anonymously,  change  the  world.  She  would  liberate  and  free  more  human
beings than Nietzsche and most other “great” men, yet she would do this from
the  shadows,  from  the  backstage  of  history.  Indeed,  today,  she  is  known
mostly for being the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche—not as a star of women’s
liberation, but as a supporting character in a play about a man who correctly
prophesized a hundred years of ideological destruction. Like a hidden thread,
she  would  hold  the  world  together,  despite  being  barely  seen  and  quickly
forgotten.
She  would  go  on,  though.  She  knew  she  would.  She  must  go  on  and
attempt to cross the abyss, as we all must do; to live for others despite still not
knowing how to live for herself.
“Meta,” Nietzsche said.
“Yes?”
“I  love  those  who  do  not  know  how  to  live,”  he  said.  “For  they  are  the
ones who cross over.”

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