A Moment

Another post I wrote before starting "Comondi".  I think it may have been this moment that finally catapulted me towards work I believe in.

I'm having a moment. It must be similar to the moment in "The Matrix" when Neo finally discerns the patterns of numbers which keep him imprisoned in a world not of his choosing. Except along with this realization, he also taps into unimaginable powers which enable him to shatter the illusion and take back his life. I wonder where my powers are.

I walked in a haze today, blurry shapes passing me by, grey rectangles looming above me, grey ribbon beneath me. And I couldn't touch anything, I couldn't feel anything because it was as if there was nothing to sense...it was all dead. A replica of life that can't actually BE life. Where are these shapes going? What are these rectangles for? It's like my whole view of the world has been catapulted into METALOOK. What do all these elements mean? And it seems to me they mean nothing, nothing of any importance. Why am I returning to this hollowed out echo of brick and mortar? Why am I willing to sit and stare at a cube for hours on end without even a shred of discomfort? The rain of numbers holds me fast.

"Who would I be and how would I live if I were not part of this system?"

This is the question we all need to answer. This system based on hatred and coercion, competition and corruption wavers a little bit more each time I look directly into its heart, black as it is. Everything looks like a TV screen when the lines run across it and the images start to jitter. My job begins to jitter, those ladies in their perfectly tailored dress suits with their perfectly shaped lips begin to jitter, the streetcar hauling its numbed cargo begins to jitter...and I begin to jitter. Because for so long I have relied on the numbers to tell me who I am, where I'm going, why I'm here. Perhaps by this time, there is only a tiny part of me, a mere flicker which doesn't cascade along with the 1s and 0s. It is this part of me that tries to alert me to the absurdity of a world which has twisted the idea of "human" and "humane" so much that we are more machine than natural. At the same time I try to fan this flicker into something more, I'm terrified that I won't know how to control it once it burns a hole through the fabric of my incarceration. What will I do with all those frayed and blackened edges?

What I would like to do is stop trading hours, MY hours, for a green-backed deity which I've never believed in and which is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated in human history. Only more numbers, always numbers, like bars on a cage. Numbers pitting us against each other, against the earth, against those remnants that are still human, that still hold fast to earth and water and sweat and mud and all that is TRULY sensory. There is no earth in my cubicle, water contained only in a glass, mud never and sweat only when the recycled air begins to induce sickness and fatigue.

There must be a chink through which I can crawl, a hole that hasn't been plastered up yet.

Perhaps Thoreau knew how to draw back the curtain,

"We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life."

I'm having a moment...but I'm already starting to lose it again. I'm feeling my feet under me again and I know this isn't a good thing.

Comments

[Sean Howard]

One of my favorite things you've ever written. I think because it was so raw and real. And even cooler now as it actually brought you to action.