start.
i am driving down a road and it's raining and I can smell damp air like so many people have in so many stories and I pause to consider the implications that this very fact has on the outcome of my actions. In this short moment I glance into my rear view mirror into a black void that stares right back at me with eyes that seem to be everywhere, it is at this moment that I notice that the initial I that I typed was not capitalized and abandon this free write concept.
the tape rewinds with a sound highly reminiscent of a turntable running backward and I'm reminded of the beatles and of a gramophone and of magnavox and of philips and all of the companies of the world that work so hard to make sure that every home has a television set and cable and access to high definition programming and hd-dvd players and blu ray and sex toys and quarterly fiscal magazines and tabloids and pop music and pornography that costs thirty dollars a month while people starve in other countries; I say this as a hypocrite that has considered, on several occasions, subscriptions to one or more of the aforementioned services but the point is still made by a source with no validity that something should be done about this, as long as money is not removed from my paycheck, because I need products and video games and hardcover books and movies in order to keep me happy. I am a soul trapped inside of a machine, I am a machine in a world of machines, I am an army in a world of governments, a government in a world of industries, and an industry in a world full of consumers. The people hold the power at any point to stop consuming, to give up on this system, and some day they might and then everything would fall, or it wouldn't, depending on what you're reading, whose newsletter, whose pamphlet, is Jesus coming back just for you, is he coming for all of us, are you sure you're worthy, do you think the end is here, are the Mayans right? Where are we?
We're still driving, and you're with me now. you can smell it too, the rain, right? so cliche, so perfectly ideal... Like guided meditation. Now close your eyes and we'll drive faster now, try to keep up.
If everyone felt like they were powerless and everyone most certainly does and if everyone trusted an individual who said these things and if charisma was a real quality and not just an excuse for being suckered into something, if you could really change the world in the way that the miss hometown girl always says that she would want to, if you could take away the pageantry and competition and oppression and peer pressure and drug use and alcoholism and gender roles and homophobia and dirty nasty things in this world, if you could turn off the television and go outside and be in the woods and grow a beard of some kind and live off the land and be naked and regress, would it really be worth losing civilization over? Would you miss living in a conflicted world, full of pain for you to capitalize on? Would you miss suffering for the experience of it, would you miss love that led to heartbreak? These aren't valid questions, I'm afraid you're missing the point.
I brake slightly.
If I was writing a novel about your life and we came to the climax of the story, if you were chasing a villain and we discovered his whereabouts and your sidekick was there, cracking wise, and your love interest was held hostage, waiting to be saved, ready to make love to you, to get married, to have kids but be independent and a role model to all young girls everywhere in her own spin off book series that would sell because my name was on it, if you were about to leap into some final battle that is being written based on the fact that this book was optioned in advance as a summer blockbuster movie, if you're about to fight the big boss and after saying something threatening about your past he charges at you, and then he kills you, do you think people would like that ending? Do you think that certain people thrive on suffering in life, and in turn either accept or reject a mirror of that same suffering in art? do you want to watch a movie where the hero dies, where the bad guy wins, where the love interest isn't interested? or attractive?
Is conflict the nature of humanity?
is singularity the only solution?
what are these musings
what do my words or thoughts mean
they carry no weight
Do you ever wonder how it feels to love?
do you ever consider what if feels like to be conscious
to be aware
of everything at once
to take in what you consider reality
to process input on such a massive scale?
No one does
but it has been said
that this is humanity
that this is what it is to be a human in our world
to question things
to understand
to seek the truth
to seek the idea of truth
and it is one forty six in the morning on saturday
and I am sitting at a desk and I am thinking about these things
as I do occasionally
and I feel like I've come full circle
Do you know what it feels like?
Can you explain your experience to me?
does it move you to tears to consider it?
We are alive. Feel it.
each drop of rain is a million tiny messages
each step is another miracle of bipedal motion
look into the sky
and imagine yourself as the smallest, most insignificant thing in the entire universe
and also as the largest, most incredible, important thing
because you are
both
an infinity extends above and beneath you
and that you understand that is a gift.
I pass out on wet grass
dreaming of my future
and knowing that half a billion people are dreaming the same dreams
And someday i'll die
and so will you
and we'll have lived.
lived!
WE WILL HAVE LIVED, EXPERIENCED.
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