I normally don’t think about the past; what happened may (or may not have) happened and things can’t really change when it comes to that. Still, we have to look back on what we’ve gone through in order to continue on with the present and future. My story…well, it was a lot less bloody then the stories of my kith and kin, and for that I am grateful. There are others who lived through worse, or didn’t live through them at all. But even with that gratitude fresh in my mind I can still smell the dank mold of the past, seeping through past the coolness and out into the open. My past is better then others, but it wasn’t fun and games.
The first few snatches of memory I have are of the four Walls and a blanket. I’ve talked about the Walls before; their comfort and existence as boundaries to my blissfully small, peaceful little world. Up and down the stair-Wall my mother and father would come, bringing food, water, and sometimes small rectangular things called “books.” The food and water would be happily consumed by me, while the “books” would be split apart into smaller, wafer-pieces called “pages’ and held open while a parent rumbled words at me. Over time it became clear that the books spoke a different language, a silent tongue called “reading” that I could speak too, if I scratched odd lines and curves called “letters” on the pages. Even though no sound came from me I could talk, and I loved it as much as I loved sleep and thinking. The books gave me new things to dream and wonder about—I didn’t have to just measure cracks in the wall and try to guess how long they’d be later, I could read about “philosophy” and “words” and all sorts of strange things!
Life went on—food, water, thinking, reading, sleeping—for some time, I knew not how long. My world was safe from the Outside, that strange thing that threatened me and I was never to try to go near. I had mother and Father. I was happy. Then, a new addition came to my little world—a structure with not four Walls, but six! One could move, in and out, and I bounced inside, kicking at the movable Wall and having a great time. I heard the rumble of approval from Father just as the Wall moved in and things got black. “Good boy.”
When the wall opened again, I clambered out. I was sleepy, and there was an odd feeling on the lower part of me. It hurt like a scrape or a cut, yet stung like when I jumped up and touched the “light bulb” that hung from the ceiling. A quick look revealed a long, thin cut to the area close to my legs, black lines and a hollow ache. The six-walled thing was taken away to the Outside. Though I had the means to ask about the strange wound, I never did. There was something shameful about it—the rumination of a part of me that Mother and Father seemed concerned and yet nonchalant about. A part of me that was not like them…but then again so much of me was not like them.
Whatever I was, it was not like Father or Mother, and I knew it. Only much, much later did I find out why I was different. At that point, I was simply freakish, a strange quirk that was rightfully guarded and kept away from the Outside. “Poleepkwa” or “prawns” were things I had never read or heard of, while “human” was a thing I read about but shirked for more fun things like “religions” or “isms.”
It makes me laugh a bit, how I figured things out when I was younger. All of it was assumption, little to no given, provable information available to the imaginary laws and standards I created. It’s funny how it was all upended when I was thrust out into the Outside…but then that’s another story I guess. I’ve droned on about the past enough; there’s the present here calling for me, in the form of two little poleepkwa called Jack and Jill. They’re much more important then the memory of what happened.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Paradox.
"The statement below is false."
"The statement above is true."
Paradox. Again--that wonderful, confounding, euphonic term. The logic is endless: if the above statement is true, then the second sentence is false. The second statement is true, which makes the above concept false...ad infinum, turtles all the way down, circular logic. A seemingly pointless couplet, isn't it? Absolutely irrelevant to everyday life, completely unnecessary and useless. Yet even when I stare at the collection of syllables, I can't help but find it relevant to our lives.
Is it right to prevent violence by killing the violent? Can you promote equality between species by raising up one of the two? We all live our own little paradoxes, striving to figure out an answer and finding only more questions, more logic chains repeating on and on until we are consumed by the search for a solution. There may be one; there may not be one, and maybe that's not the point. Maybe it's the question that matters and not the answer, like the old saying that life is a journey and not a destination. By attempting to figure things out we shape ourselves and the groups we are a part of. I guess, then, that the only thing there is to hope for is that people are willing to spend time thinking in circles...
Sunday, November 29, 2009
quasi-Nirvana
When you meditate, the key is to ignore everything around you and inside you. It's rather odd, but the concept is simple; find a quiet space, sit down and relax. Steady breathing, not focusing on anything but allowing your mind to drift from one tentative train of logic to another, trickles of emotion and thought relinquishing their grip on the brain like a sleeper's grip. Over time--if you have the patience--the senses quietly flick off, their continued functioning useless in the stillness and unchangingness of the environment. All that you have is the self. You see it, but at the same time you're blind; you can hear the beating of your heart, so faint like a drumbeat and just as impersonal. It turns from a vital, private function to a meaningless whisper through what? Limbs? I can't feel them, I don't need to--I'm not locomotive, not sluggishly dragging myself around space, through time, like quicksand, like a snake through closely woven grass...
Nothing matters; nothing beyond you being can bother you. Time and space: meaningless theories that only serve to tie the world and its inhabitants--if the two are separate; how can one ever tell, if we are all Brahman, we are all one?--together. Restrictive ties on a bundle of straws, but without them there wouldn't be order or community. It's worth it, in the long run, to be limited to one moment and place at a time. Everything is a lot more simple then.
Simplicity. That's it. No details or qualities or actions here; I am. Nothing else is necessary. Pain or time or even the gradual wearing-down of age are, at this moment--this one endless, nonexistent moment, forever and never at once--pointless and beyond me. There is nothing, and for that it is everything.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
They say that only the good die young; that isn't true, is it? Maybe one dies at a young numerical age, but by the time they are finally struck down they've seen so much, done so much, that they've aged internally. they die young of body, but old of soul and mind. Life sure has some quirks. What Vishnu does for His followers...
George laughs bitterly. I can hear the cynicism in his voice even as I type his words...the tones hover by my antennae for whole moments after they are uttered. It would be beautiful if it weren't so sharp at my thoughts, like a sculpting tool at the malleable clay of myself.
"Vishnu? The preserver? Preserver of what, Olo? Hate? Fear? Injustice? What gods would let their followers suffer and die, or continue to punish their comrades who don't follow them? Face it, you've been following a shadow."
Shadow. The shadow of evil? I don't knowingly believe in a deity that causes pain and preserves the negative way of things...but that is what Vishnu does: preserve the world until Shiva comes and brings the cycle back to Brahman...
No. Not that kind of shadow. A reflection, a fleeting ghost. That's what I've been following; not a flesh-and-blood being but a concept, an idea. One that doesn't act on its own to begin, preserve, or end, but exists to drive others to do just those things. How many wars were fought for Shiva? How many good deeds for Brahman? How many--oh dear--how many ideas struck down in order to keep the norm, to preserve and please Vishnu? This wasn't what I wanted, I didn't expect--
"Expect what? Somebody to save us all and end MNU? Nothing will ever do that; only those who walk this earth can ever change things here. You are alone here, and there is nothing else."
Nothing else? But wait--by simply believing in these gods and acting either in their stead or to please them, we make them real to us. Vishnu doesn't exist in the flesh anyway, except for when avatars manefest. that's the point of a god, is it not? Having a being that exists in some way that is better then mortals, higher then physical existance. that way we have something more reliable that we can trust in, something that won't fail even when we do.
What about the afterlife? Everyone that's died knows what happens after death, too. They just haven't gotten back here and spoken with the living about it. In that respect we are alone; we must guess about what we don't know and we won't find out if we're right until it's too late.
I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Even if Vishnu doesn't exist, I still think that he does, in some way, which is great for me. But does that prove the existance of a god for any other world but mine? Can a god exist subjectively?
I need to think this one over.
"Caged Bird", by Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
"Writ on the Streets of Puerto Rican Harlem", by Gregory Corso
There’s a truth limits man
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth
Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death
I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard
I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth
Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death
I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard
I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant
Sunday, November 22, 2009
The language we were conversing in wasn’t English, Poleepkwan, or even Latin, as I’d experienced in previous trips and dreams. What it was…I don’t know, but it was basic and yet eloquent for it, a raw transmission of words and feelings back and forth without need for words. You’d think it, the other person would just know it, without any explanation on your part. On a whim, I glanced up at my antennae--had they changed?
Yes. The small, stubby feelers of flesh were gone. In their stead were two inflexible, silver-grey radio antennae, vibrating ever so slightly with transmissions. There would be a shiver down the length of one--somehow I felt this, even though the new additions were strangely numb--and an instant later, a sentence or emotion. Oh, so that was why I had such good reception: I’d gotten an upgrade in my equipment.
“Alright, you’ve gotten the main hang of it. Now to business.” George flickered blue and green and happily gestured to the surroundings with a sweep of his analogous arm. “This…is the inside of your head. Welcome to your own mind, Olo Doorbell Lamna.”
The landscape was complex and seemed to shift slightly in my peripheral vision, fading away and dissolving into vague shapes and blurs only to spring back into sharp focus as I looked out the corner of my eye. This must be my own doing, I think, I must be forming all of this so I can understand what I’m looking at. My brain is forming the world for my mind to explore in…jeez, this blew the homunculi thought experiment out of the water.
“Give the poleepkwa in the back a cigar!” George laughed, and I realized that I must have been transmitting the entire train of thought by mistake. Ah well…
…a forest. That seemed to be the main thing here. A forest, with large trees--some “regular”, others more bizarre and alien in shape, texture, and color. Occasionally one would turn to dust and become part of the rubbery, slightly spongy ground; another, smaller tree would sprout and set to work growing. And constantly, there was the swimming of things in the corner of my vision, that strange blurriness, a pounding of blood in my head…but was that just me? Something seemed off, and suddenly I figured out what that something was.
“Wait…we’re upside down. We are upside down.” The trees were jutting out into a turquoise and mauve sky like teeth from the top jaw of some massive beast. How were we possibly holding on to the floor--er, ceiling? Any moment now we’d fall out into the wide expanse of emptiness. That kind of fall would never end!
I quickly flattened myself on the square of turf that I stood on and held on tight. Quietly I began to pray.
That was a mistake on my part; the landscape went topsy-turvy and began to twist in all directions. The turf began to shorten, leaving me less to hold on to--frantically I tightened my grip and prayed even more. This process might have continued on for a while had not everything abruptly stopped spinning. Something inside told me that it was okay to stand up now, that I wouldn’t fall out of my own head. However, I didn’t stand up, simply lying on the ground and enjoying what odd version of gravity I had inside my mind.
George again. “Get up. Get up now.” .
I oblige, and suddenly my head is covered in smoke that clings to every centimeter of my plating and wisps down into my lungs, assimilating into the blood that’s still, sort of, I think, pumping through that network of veins and arteries and making me a little bit closer to it in composition. An idea blooms, bright as a flower and just as appealing. I‘d been looking at it wrong the entire time, oh Vishnu, oh deity, this was the solution--
George drags me out of the cloud. I writhe away and try to escape into the heady mist--the idea! The idea! I knew it--I knew it and I could…I could what? What was I talking about? Odd…
“I told you to get out of that fog. You stay in there too long and there won’t be anything left in a while.”
I cough, hack out a puff of grey air. Already the rush of concept and understanding was fading, the flower dimming and wilting in on itself. In a few seconds it was gone entirely and I had no idea of what the original idea had been. Turning to George, I blinked. “What was that?”
“Pure thought, unfocused and open to anything. It can form and interact with anything here, but when it’s in a cloud like that it usually stays static.“ His plates flicked red for a moment, then lightened to tangerine. “Your inspiration.” He snorted and beat at some of it that was inching out tentatively towards us like a tentacle, driving it away. “The stuff that drives you, makes you write and draw and indulge in all manners of philosophical contemplation.”
“So…why wouldn’t I want to stay in the cloud? If I was inside there…wouldn’t I become enlightened?” There was a temptation worthy of Eve and Adam…knowing that the potential for comprehending everything there was lurked inside your mind, but being told not to actually take advantage of it. Why wouldn’t George let me stay there…wasn’t his ulterior goal to make me understand things and find the Truth?
My friend chuckled and pointed to my head. “Check out your antennae, Olo.”
I looked up. The smooth metal had corroded and melted partway, turning a blotchy rust-red. The pulses and vibrations had decreased tenfold; I could barely hear George, much less the rest of my inner world. “What--”
“The longer you spend in that mist, the more you understand, that’s true. But at the same time, it eats away at you. If you give in to inspiration too long, you’ll be corroded beyond recognition and there won’t be anything left to communicate those ideas to the rest of the world. You’ll be trapped inside your own head, without any way out or a method to contacting the outside.”
He wasn’t just talking about my mind. I remember all those thought-jags I’ve gone on before, where I don’t eat or sleep but just think and write, think and write. My escape when I was small, alone and unaware of the fact I was part of a different species then human--had I really gotten that close to oblivion? Yes, I had; I’d be completely off my rocker now if I wasn’t booted out the door. Not the benevolent crazy, either…strange, incomprehensible, rotten insanity would have been the main focus of my thoughts. Would have been my thoughts.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Rhyming Couplet I
The solution seems within my grasp, O answer, O Truth sublime!
Such wonder permeates my soul; will you ever be mine?
Such wonder permeates my soul; will you ever be mine?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Sides.
There's no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going;
There's no knowing where we're going, or which way the river's flowing...
There really is no way of knowing where our actions will take us. It's nice to think that the resistance and all of the efforts of the ARFA, Versus Novus, and Miss Miss' own little organization have been for the right reasons. It's nice to think that MNU and District 10 are "bad" and that freeing all of the poleepkwa and going home is "good."
Really, though, it can't be proven. There are no "good" or "bad" actions in this frame of existence, this moment in time, this universe; there are only actions that appear to be beneficial or disadvantageous to a certain group. To us, the poleepkwa and fighters for freedom, MNU is evil and must be stopped. I believed that MNU's atrocities were one of the certain things in my short life--it was only by talking to someone on the opposite side as me that I actually realised that morals are subjective. To MNU, we are evil, we are the bad guys who must be halted in our efforts. No doubt that if we were to go to thrid, fourth, even fifth parties the viewpoints would change. It is all subjective, all of it.
I am not going to give up--don't think that for a moment. However, as I continue to do my small part to stop the processes and ideas that created and sustain MNU and others like it, I will keep in mind that I may--most likely, in fact--be considered the "bad guy." I will also keep in mind that this cannot be proven false.
There's no knowing where we're going, or which way the river's flowing...
There really is no way of knowing where our actions will take us. It's nice to think that the resistance and all of the efforts of the ARFA, Versus Novus, and Miss Miss' own little organization have been for the right reasons. It's nice to think that MNU and District 10 are "bad" and that freeing all of the poleepkwa and going home is "good."
Really, though, it can't be proven. There are no "good" or "bad" actions in this frame of existence, this moment in time, this universe; there are only actions that appear to be beneficial or disadvantageous to a certain group. To us, the poleepkwa and fighters for freedom, MNU is evil and must be stopped. I believed that MNU's atrocities were one of the certain things in my short life--it was only by talking to someone on the opposite side as me that I actually realised that morals are subjective. To MNU, we are evil, we are the bad guys who must be halted in our efforts. No doubt that if we were to go to thrid, fourth, even fifth parties the viewpoints would change. It is all subjective, all of it.
I am not going to give up--don't think that for a moment. However, as I continue to do my small part to stop the processes and ideas that created and sustain MNU and others like it, I will keep in mind that I may--most likely, in fact--be considered the "bad guy." I will also keep in mind that this cannot be proven false.
If knowledge is acid, at least for me, then love is like heroin. The intitial blast of pleasure at being a parent is overwhelmingly wonderful and blissful; the content and utter happiness that follows soon after is even better. I may not be Jack and Jill's birth parent, but I'll try my best to be a good foster parent to them. They know that too, I think--and that makes it even better. The two of them could have decided not to trust me or simply chosen to hate my guts, but they didn't, and we're together now, a family, a freakin' family! It's great.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
What makes things real? What separates the mundane and proven from the uncertain and fantastic? Is it the majority that decides; the viewpoint shared by the most people declared true? Would that make a delusion real, then, to the population of an asylum?
Who decides what is real, and how can you tell if they actually exist or not?
Senses, logic, faith? They don’t prove a thing. There’s no way of being certain if what you see, along with everyone else, is true. Still, there is a point to be made. If I—along with everyone else— “saw” a chair where there was none, it wouldn’t matter. Yes, we could smell it, touch it, taste it, hear it—presumably…and I would still fall down if I tried to sit in it.
There’s got to be something that can be taken for granted, some given information in the proof. Without it, you can’t ground the assumptions; you can’t ever hope to find a true solution…
So are we all drifting, then, since we don’t know exactly what the given information is? Even the ideas of gravity and the ideas behind the stars are still theories—there just hasn’t been anything to disprove them yet. All we have is mist that we’ve been able to cup in our hands, separating it from the fog around us. Until something more solid comes along, that’s it.
What am I trying to say here? I honestly don’t know; I’ve forgotten, or maybe I didn’t know where this was going to begin with. But what I keep thinking is…you can’t be certain what you see is what everyone else sees. Even if it’s real to you—even if you’re the only sane one and the rest of the world is sharing the same madness, it can’t be real.
If we do give in to another reality, though, we lose. Isn’t that what MNU has done for all these years? Created a world populated by humans and bizarre, violent monsters called prawns? That isn’t true—not to me, since I am a “prawn” and I would never harm someone—but goddamnit! How am I right either? Both ideas could be madness, just a different delusion masking a truth we can’t understand. The Truth…the given information, the perfect, undeniable facts that give sense to all the ethereal worlds out there. If we are to find ‘real”, we must find truth then! Yes, yes we must…but can we?
That’s for another day, I guess. Another wild jag of thought and doubt…this post is too long already and I have other things to do; the “real” world and all its responsibilities are beckoning and I have no choice but to answer the call. If I didn’t--haha!--I’d be considered insane.
It’s true that we can’t live in our own dream worlds, I know that, but we can’t sunder our thoughts and observations from our interactions with the outside world. Without madness, I believe, there wouldn’t be insight—there wouldn’t be those jolts of understanding and creativity that provide for advancement and change. There’s got to be some kind of diffusion between worlds—perhaps not equilibrium, not even a dynamic one, but some form of balance.
We can dream, we can ponder, we can doubt and ask for other opinions, but there’s still got to be a happy medium.
Who decides what is real, and how can you tell if they actually exist or not?
Senses, logic, faith? They don’t prove a thing. There’s no way of being certain if what you see, along with everyone else, is true. Still, there is a point to be made. If I—along with everyone else— “saw” a chair where there was none, it wouldn’t matter. Yes, we could smell it, touch it, taste it, hear it—presumably…and I would still fall down if I tried to sit in it.
There’s got to be something that can be taken for granted, some given information in the proof. Without it, you can’t ground the assumptions; you can’t ever hope to find a true solution…
So are we all drifting, then, since we don’t know exactly what the given information is? Even the ideas of gravity and the ideas behind the stars are still theories—there just hasn’t been anything to disprove them yet. All we have is mist that we’ve been able to cup in our hands, separating it from the fog around us. Until something more solid comes along, that’s it.
What am I trying to say here? I honestly don’t know; I’ve forgotten, or maybe I didn’t know where this was going to begin with. But what I keep thinking is…you can’t be certain what you see is what everyone else sees. Even if it’s real to you—even if you’re the only sane one and the rest of the world is sharing the same madness, it can’t be real.
If we do give in to another reality, though, we lose. Isn’t that what MNU has done for all these years? Created a world populated by humans and bizarre, violent monsters called prawns? That isn’t true—not to me, since I am a “prawn” and I would never harm someone—but goddamnit! How am I right either? Both ideas could be madness, just a different delusion masking a truth we can’t understand. The Truth…the given information, the perfect, undeniable facts that give sense to all the ethereal worlds out there. If we are to find ‘real”, we must find truth then! Yes, yes we must…but can we?
That’s for another day, I guess. Another wild jag of thought and doubt…this post is too long already and I have other things to do; the “real” world and all its responsibilities are beckoning and I have no choice but to answer the call. If I didn’t--haha!--I’d be considered insane.
It’s true that we can’t live in our own dream worlds, I know that, but we can’t sunder our thoughts and observations from our interactions with the outside world. Without madness, I believe, there wouldn’t be insight—there wouldn’t be those jolts of understanding and creativity that provide for advancement and change. There’s got to be some kind of diffusion between worlds—perhaps not equilibrium, not even a dynamic one, but some form of balance.
We can dream, we can ponder, we can doubt and ask for other opinions, but there’s still got to be a happy medium.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
I don't know what's going on...am I asleep and dreaming of typing this, or am I typing this and dreaming of sleeping? I swallowed a few tranquilizer pills, enough to knock out something at least my size, if not more, but I'm awake now and still thinking. I'm seeing, in some odd way that makes no sense. George is next to me, maybe he knows.
"You know I don't. I’m here, but I know what you know. Nothing more, nothing less.” He grins and flickers out of sight, pops back in so I can see him, vanishes again. “I just look at it differently.”
What is it? “Everything. Life, un-life, the things between.” Things between? "Of course. There's black and white, then the shades in between. Not just grey, everything."
Thomas said you were a "muse". A part of a process, along with a vision and a message. Messages. That’s why you’re here, and that’s it. If there was no message, there wouldn’t be you.
“Of course. The same goes for you, too. If you didn’t have a reason to be, you wouldn’t be. The only problem is finding out why you’re here.”
The ideas. The loa, they use me like a horse, a draft animal for labor. The ideas need to escape. That’s why I’m here, to…what? Capture them? Inform others? Teach--guess--live--prophesize?
“No. Provide a viewpoint. Prophecy is misleading--the future never changes, it just repeats, so as long as you understand the pattern you can see what lies ahead.”
What lies ahead? We’re in a war, aren’t we? People on two differing sides, fighting and killing each other to prove that their idea is better, more right then the other. What comes next…a ceasefire? No…no, that wouldn’t make sense, the ratio is too uneven. Maybe if one side loses followers, or the other side gains fighters, it may happen, but for the time being there is only one thing.
“Persecution. The ones on the smaller idea’s side will be tracked, killed, followed to the best of their opponent’s ability.”
So we have to hide. “No. That would let the foe win. We cannot hide or back down, but must continue forward.”
But that will lead to our doom. If we continue to fight, we will die, we will be struck down.
“Yes, but remember what happens next in the pattern; the ‘renegade’ idea takes hold, gains followers, and there’s a revolution. What happens next you know.”
Yes, yes I do know…don’t I?
"You know I don't. I’m here, but I know what you know. Nothing more, nothing less.” He grins and flickers out of sight, pops back in so I can see him, vanishes again. “I just look at it differently.”
What is it? “Everything. Life, un-life, the things between.” Things between? "Of course. There's black and white, then the shades in between. Not just grey, everything."
Thomas said you were a "muse". A part of a process, along with a vision and a message. Messages. That’s why you’re here, and that’s it. If there was no message, there wouldn’t be you.
“Of course. The same goes for you, too. If you didn’t have a reason to be, you wouldn’t be. The only problem is finding out why you’re here.”
The ideas. The loa, they use me like a horse, a draft animal for labor. The ideas need to escape. That’s why I’m here, to…what? Capture them? Inform others? Teach--guess--live--prophesize?
“No. Provide a viewpoint. Prophecy is misleading--the future never changes, it just repeats, so as long as you understand the pattern you can see what lies ahead.”
What lies ahead? We’re in a war, aren’t we? People on two differing sides, fighting and killing each other to prove that their idea is better, more right then the other. What comes next…a ceasefire? No…no, that wouldn’t make sense, the ratio is too uneven. Maybe if one side loses followers, or the other side gains fighters, it may happen, but for the time being there is only one thing.
“Persecution. The ones on the smaller idea’s side will be tracked, killed, followed to the best of their opponent’s ability.”
So we have to hide. “No. That would let the foe win. We cannot hide or back down, but must continue forward.”
But that will lead to our doom. If we continue to fight, we will die, we will be struck down.
“Yes, but remember what happens next in the pattern; the ‘renegade’ idea takes hold, gains followers, and there’s a revolution. What happens next you know.”
Yes, yes I do know…don’t I?
After a long time using acid, you get used to the feeling of going off on a trip. You learn to recognise the signs; sight and hearing blending together, touch fading, everything feeling too far away. Finally the world drops beneath you and you begin to drift...
My feet met solid ground--cold tile, to be exact. A whiff of cool, air-conditioned air caressed my antennae and I looked around. People dressed in suits and formal clothing bustled down the hallway, ducking into cubicles, trading papers, chatting around a water cooler that bubbled like a plastic cauldron. Where was I?
"Welcome to MNU. Or, at least, an MNU building." George jumped up and sat down on a fax machine, ignoring the human who passed through him as she went about her work sending some sort of a document. "See everybody?"
"Uh..." I looked around, analyzing the faces swarming in the hallways. "Yes."
"Alright." George held up a hand and began counting down with his fingers, ignoring my bewildered gaze. "Three...Two...One."
A resonating bang exploded somewhere underneath me and orange bloomed all around. Like the last time I'd been "spirited away", it was sensed only as a mild, dim warmth--a fraction of what others felt around me. I had time to count to two before the walls shook and smoke billowed out, blocking the view. The flames roared and there came loud crashing, banging, shattering--
Scream. One scream, choked, gurgling, female. It was the fax machine girl, her document now just ash. Most of her was ash, too; a leg, an arm, half of the twisted, reddened lump of flesh that had once been a torso. Black, charcoaled meat, cooked well done.
I could feel her pain, I really could. The struggling boom-boom of her heart as the pauses between got longer and longer. Boom-Boom Boom. Boom. Boom...Boom. Boom...
What's going on? A voice at my ear, sibilant and quiet. I don't understand--what's going ON? She seemed to understand what had happened and dull panic set in, pushing into my heart like a butter knife instead of a razor. Funny how everyone says that pain cuts clean; it really crushes your organs and thoughts, drawing them in and compressing, compressing, smaller smaller smaller...
No. Nononononononono. Was it the prawns? The--prawns? Did this? No. John-- I saw a man, blond hair, laughing. --alive? Pleasegod let him be okay...ohgod. ohgod.I didn't ask--badbadbadwhy? whybadwhybadwhybadwhybad--
"Shut up!" I couldn't take it, the sluggish trickle of thoughts, so i started to yell at her. "Shut up! I can't--I can't listen to you! Shut--"
The stream of thought cut off, the trickle of emotion and pain died down. I froze and stared at her as she stopped moving. I'd told her to shut up, but not like this. "No--no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--!"
Others joined in my screaming, as if the one cry of pain had broken the ice and everyone was free to give voice to their agony. I could hear them too. All of it, the thoughts, the straining of lungs and hearts as they struggled to work. Most gave out without completing what they set out to do.
I turned away, facing George, who was still glowing and outshining the embers. "Get me out of here."
"That's not the way it works, bud." George snickered. "You're here now, and you'll never leave. You can't kill a ghost, and this will stay with you wherever you are."
"Are you a ghost? Is this a ghost?" I wanted to strike out at him, but I somehow knew it would do nothing. My blow would pass through him like a blade through mist, or would hit him and not damage him; a feather against steel. "Or are you just another hallucination, like those people--" The memory of their strained thoughts
what'sgoingonohgodohGODpleasehelpIdon'twantthis
flooded my brain again and I sobbed.
George's antennae flicked, but he did nothing to quell my lamenting. "It doesn't matter if it was a hallucination--nobody knows what happened, and most likely nobody cares much. Ryan sure as hell doesn't." George's words pierced into me like bullets, or the shrapnel that had most likely pierced those people when the bomb went off. "Only you know what happened. Does that make it real? I don't know."
"But--" This was Ryan's doing? This is when he blew up the building? I'd known it had happened, but I hadn't thought of the pain this had caused--
"Do the technicalities matter? Stuff like this happens on both sides. The specifics aren't important, what matters is the idea."
The idea. The idea that there are casualites on both sides? No. There are casualites, but there are also families left behind. That was the point George had tried to make. These people worked for MNU, and did awful things, but they weren't bad. They just had bills to pay, mouths to feed. They helped kill poleepkwa, both indirectly and directly, for good reasons--as good as reasons could be--and we kill them for it. We still do.
My feet met solid ground--cold tile, to be exact. A whiff of cool, air-conditioned air caressed my antennae and I looked around. People dressed in suits and formal clothing bustled down the hallway, ducking into cubicles, trading papers, chatting around a water cooler that bubbled like a plastic cauldron. Where was I?
"Welcome to MNU. Or, at least, an MNU building." George jumped up and sat down on a fax machine, ignoring the human who passed through him as she went about her work sending some sort of a document. "See everybody?"
"Uh..." I looked around, analyzing the faces swarming in the hallways. "Yes."
"Alright." George held up a hand and began counting down with his fingers, ignoring my bewildered gaze. "Three...Two...One."
A resonating bang exploded somewhere underneath me and orange bloomed all around. Like the last time I'd been "spirited away", it was sensed only as a mild, dim warmth--a fraction of what others felt around me. I had time to count to two before the walls shook and smoke billowed out, blocking the view. The flames roared and there came loud crashing, banging, shattering--
Scream. One scream, choked, gurgling, female. It was the fax machine girl, her document now just ash. Most of her was ash, too; a leg, an arm, half of the twisted, reddened lump of flesh that had once been a torso. Black, charcoaled meat, cooked well done.
I could feel her pain, I really could. The struggling boom-boom of her heart as the pauses between got longer and longer. Boom-Boom Boom. Boom. Boom...Boom. Boom...
What's going on? A voice at my ear, sibilant and quiet. I don't understand--what's going ON? She seemed to understand what had happened and dull panic set in, pushing into my heart like a butter knife instead of a razor. Funny how everyone says that pain cuts clean; it really crushes your organs and thoughts, drawing them in and compressing, compressing, smaller smaller smaller...
No. Nononononononono. Was it the prawns? The--prawns? Did this? No. John-- I saw a man, blond hair, laughing. --alive? Pleasegod let him be okay...ohgod. ohgod.I didn't ask--badbadbadwhy? whybadwhybadwhybadwhybad--
"Shut up!" I couldn't take it, the sluggish trickle of thoughts, so i started to yell at her. "Shut up! I can't--I can't listen to you! Shut--"
The stream of thought cut off, the trickle of emotion and pain died down. I froze and stared at her as she stopped moving. I'd told her to shut up, but not like this. "No--no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--!"
Others joined in my screaming, as if the one cry of pain had broken the ice and everyone was free to give voice to their agony. I could hear them too. All of it, the thoughts, the straining of lungs and hearts as they struggled to work. Most gave out without completing what they set out to do.
I turned away, facing George, who was still glowing and outshining the embers. "Get me out of here."
"That's not the way it works, bud." George snickered. "You're here now, and you'll never leave. You can't kill a ghost, and this will stay with you wherever you are."
"Are you a ghost? Is this a ghost?" I wanted to strike out at him, but I somehow knew it would do nothing. My blow would pass through him like a blade through mist, or would hit him and not damage him; a feather against steel. "Or are you just another hallucination, like those people--" The memory of their strained thoughts
what'sgoingonohgodohGODpleasehelpIdon'twantthis
flooded my brain again and I sobbed.
George's antennae flicked, but he did nothing to quell my lamenting. "It doesn't matter if it was a hallucination--nobody knows what happened, and most likely nobody cares much. Ryan sure as hell doesn't." George's words pierced into me like bullets, or the shrapnel that had most likely pierced those people when the bomb went off. "Only you know what happened. Does that make it real? I don't know."
"But--" This was Ryan's doing? This is when he blew up the building? I'd known it had happened, but I hadn't thought of the pain this had caused--
"Do the technicalities matter? Stuff like this happens on both sides. The specifics aren't important, what matters is the idea."
The idea. The idea that there are casualites on both sides? No. There are casualites, but there are also families left behind. That was the point George had tried to make. These people worked for MNU, and did awful things, but they weren't bad. They just had bills to pay, mouths to feed. They helped kill poleepkwa, both indirectly and directly, for good reasons--as good as reasons could be--and we kill them for it. We still do.
Is integration possible anymore, in both this world and the one we left behind? We've become different then the race that touched down almost three decades ago, bewildered and confused. The years have given us time to adapt and understand this new land we've found ourselves in, but it's also robbed us of what we once were. All the conflict and knowledge and pain our race has experienced has impacted us, not for the better. Whether we like it or not, we've become "prawns".
Maybe that's the wrong term to use; it's not just the hate, but trying to fit in and become part of a different culture--hell, a different planet--that has made us something different. Prawn, along with Outlander, Non-human, and Alien are just names the humans have given us in an attempt to understand what we are; to put us in easy-to-define, commonly known terms. Even "poleepkwa", the "correct" term for us, is a human attempt to pronounce our native tongue. We've been lost in translation, so to speak...something not-quite poleepkwan, but definately not human.
We'll never be humans, and that's a good thing, but will we ever be "poleepkwa" either?
Maybe that's the wrong term to use; it's not just the hate, but trying to fit in and become part of a different culture--hell, a different planet--that has made us something different. Prawn, along with Outlander, Non-human, and Alien are just names the humans have given us in an attempt to understand what we are; to put us in easy-to-define, commonly known terms. Even "poleepkwa", the "correct" term for us, is a human attempt to pronounce our native tongue. We've been lost in translation, so to speak...something not-quite poleepkwan, but definately not human.
We'll never be humans, and that's a good thing, but will we ever be "poleepkwa" either?
Friday, November 13, 2009
Names.
What’s in a name? It’s a title to distinguish yourself from the masses, but what happens when you have the same name as others? What if there are crowds of people who share your name, but not your looks or manners or memories? Are you a separate thing that happened to be classified under an umbrella term—it’s a “Jill!”, it’s a “Jack”!—or are you doomed to conform, to slowly sink into the grooves left behind by the ones who came before you so that when you state your name people say “oh yes, you look like a—” and pay no more mind to your self, who you really are.
That seems to have been one of the ways MNU drags us down, or at least it has become that. Never mind the names being in a foreign tongue; humans simply cannot speak our language, even if they tried and wanted to. But by being grouped in with the mobs of Johns or Alices or Roberts or Christines, even though we are drastically different in both appearance and mindset, we lose our identities. We become “just another”, just as the stamps poleepkwa are forced to wear classify us by numbers and “behavioral classes” instead of our viewpoints and feelings as sentient, emotional beings.
But will it be enough to wash off the tags and pick new names? No. No, because choosing who you are to prove someone else wrong isn’t choosing at all. You can’t choose your self—that is something that evolves over time, with everything you go through and think and ponder every moment in your life. “You”, who you are, is never static, but dynamic and quick to change as the earth and the living things on it. The only time you will ever know for sure, I think, is death, and then it may not do much.
Jack, Jill, don’t be so quick to give up your names and your lives. I will help you the best I can to overcome what D10 has taught you and shown you…admittedly that is not much. But don’t think for a minute—for a second—that you can walk away from the past unscathed. The tags can be taken away, but the mark they leave takes much longer to heal and be gone. It will take time for you to figure out who you are and what you want to do; remember, it took Odysseus twenty years. Hopefully, it won't be as long, but it won't be instant.
That seems to have been one of the ways MNU drags us down, or at least it has become that. Never mind the names being in a foreign tongue; humans simply cannot speak our language, even if they tried and wanted to. But by being grouped in with the mobs of Johns or Alices or Roberts or Christines, even though we are drastically different in both appearance and mindset, we lose our identities. We become “just another”, just as the stamps poleepkwa are forced to wear classify us by numbers and “behavioral classes” instead of our viewpoints and feelings as sentient, emotional beings.
But will it be enough to wash off the tags and pick new names? No. No, because choosing who you are to prove someone else wrong isn’t choosing at all. You can’t choose your self—that is something that evolves over time, with everything you go through and think and ponder every moment in your life. “You”, who you are, is never static, but dynamic and quick to change as the earth and the living things on it. The only time you will ever know for sure, I think, is death, and then it may not do much.
Jack, Jill, don’t be so quick to give up your names and your lives. I will help you the best I can to overcome what D10 has taught you and shown you…admittedly that is not much. But don’t think for a minute—for a second—that you can walk away from the past unscathed. The tags can be taken away, but the mark they leave takes much longer to heal and be gone. It will take time for you to figure out who you are and what you want to do; remember, it took Odysseus twenty years. Hopefully, it won't be as long, but it won't be instant.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
A trip to D10.
When I realized that my consciousness was separate from my body the first thing I felt was irritation, like when you drop something because you had too much in your hands and you can’t pick it up without letting other things fall. My hands sunk through the plates of my corporeal body as if through quicksand and I pulled them out, annoyed and vaguely horrified at the feeling of my own organs at my fingertips. So much for that.
Then logic set in and I realized I was having another trip. That was great, as long as my physical body didn’t do anything stupid. I stared at it, sitting there as if in a coma or asleep. Highly unlikely, unless you counted not doing anything as stupid. Then I was an imbecile.
“Well, long time no see, if there is time and you are seeing this.” George snickered from behind me. My friend clapped a glowing hand on my shoulder and smiled. “How are you?” He froze and cocked his head to the side; it seemed like he was listening to something--or someone--I couldn’t hear. “Oh--right--” He looked at me. “No time for swapping stories. I’ve got to show you something.”
“Show what--” Time and space warped and shivered into multiple images before reforming into a totally different scene. Skeletal trees had been replaced with an open space, dirt ground and row upon row of uniform white tents. An air of hatred and bewilderment hung over the uniform grid like a fog. I knew where this was.
“Yeah, it’s D-10.” George blinked and swished his antennae at me. “Also known as Awshitz, also known as District 10, also known as despair. Like the view?” He pointed to the tents and an MNU guard tower in the distance. “It’s best from there.”
Nearby, a poleepkwa with plates painted grey was scrounging through a trash pile. He looked up for a moment, as if sensing our presence, then went back to his search. An MNU truck rolled by, the driver and passengers silent and immobile from what I could see. Immediately the poleepkwa bolted, scurrying off and running through me. I felt the brush of a heartbeat, a twinge of fear--he didn’t seem to notice anything.
George snorted. “Weird, huh? I never seem to get used to that, even with you.” He gestured to other places. “Here, let me give you a tour.”
We continued in this fashion, George showing the injustices and cruelties of D-10 while I followed him and watched. Each second there made me understand more and more why Sherry and the others are so adamant about leaving--it was hell, it was a shithole, and above all it was a place of terror. You didn’t know what could or would or might happen next; poleepkwa and people were slowly beaten down into more fundamental codes, more basic needs. Strikingly, horrifyingly, I could understand how MNU made drones out of our people--living in the chaos, coupled with the “education“, would break even the best of us if given enough time. If I was actually there in a physical sense there’s no doubt I would have died from my stupidity.
“Oh. Oh shit…’ George paused as we walked past a tent. MNU guards swarmed the thing like black flies on a carcass, chatting and arguing. They seemed to be waiting for someone.
I saw the tongue of flame slither inside the tent, hiss in pleasure and explode outward into a sheet of orange that covered the eggs inside. The white skin of the tent was lit from within and very object inside was visible, silhouettes against the orange and yellow. I could dimly feel the heat, but it was too much for the small sacs of life within--I could hear the young onesalready broiling and getting ready to pop out of life. Damnit--I tried to put the fire out, I really did, but how could I? I didn’t exist on a level that could do anything.
“That’s what happens to us, every day.” George gently yanked me away from the flames and guided me out of the shack, his plates never being outshone by the firelight. “You had to know. You believe that we can coexist with humans, no matter what? Try being civil to Kurt after seeing this.”
“You know about Kurt?” was the question almost on my tongue, but then I realized George had probably noticed when I was near-death. Besides, that wasn’t important--Kurt and I were individuals, and a race was at stake. Instead, I sighed. “I hoped--”
“Hope has nothing to do with it. Get to work, otherwise all those born prawns will die as prawns. I don’t know what you plan to do, but you’ve gotta implement it fast.” George waved. “Until then--”
Feeling returned. I let the shutters over my eyes lift up, relieved that I was home. But when the world focused I didn’t see the familiar walls of my place in the warehouse where I lived; there were walls, alright, but they were grey, dank, and cracked as the foundations had settled over the years. I remembered measuring the cracks every day, charting and keeping track of their growth and wondering how long it would take for the house to collapse.
I was smaller, the green of my plates paler and the plates themselves somehow ill-fitting, like a suit of armor that was much too big for the wearer. I knew this place, too.
Then logic set in and I realized I was having another trip. That was great, as long as my physical body didn’t do anything stupid. I stared at it, sitting there as if in a coma or asleep. Highly unlikely, unless you counted not doing anything as stupid. Then I was an imbecile.
“Well, long time no see, if there is time and you are seeing this.” George snickered from behind me. My friend clapped a glowing hand on my shoulder and smiled. “How are you?” He froze and cocked his head to the side; it seemed like he was listening to something--or someone--I couldn’t hear. “Oh--right--” He looked at me. “No time for swapping stories. I’ve got to show you something.”
“Show what--” Time and space warped and shivered into multiple images before reforming into a totally different scene. Skeletal trees had been replaced with an open space, dirt ground and row upon row of uniform white tents. An air of hatred and bewilderment hung over the uniform grid like a fog. I knew where this was.
“Yeah, it’s D-10.” George blinked and swished his antennae at me. “Also known as Awshitz, also known as District 10, also known as despair. Like the view?” He pointed to the tents and an MNU guard tower in the distance. “It’s best from there.”
Nearby, a poleepkwa with plates painted grey was scrounging through a trash pile. He looked up for a moment, as if sensing our presence, then went back to his search. An MNU truck rolled by, the driver and passengers silent and immobile from what I could see. Immediately the poleepkwa bolted, scurrying off and running through me. I felt the brush of a heartbeat, a twinge of fear--he didn’t seem to notice anything.
George snorted. “Weird, huh? I never seem to get used to that, even with you.” He gestured to other places. “Here, let me give you a tour.”
We continued in this fashion, George showing the injustices and cruelties of D-10 while I followed him and watched. Each second there made me understand more and more why Sherry and the others are so adamant about leaving--it was hell, it was a shithole, and above all it was a place of terror. You didn’t know what could or would or might happen next; poleepkwa and people were slowly beaten down into more fundamental codes, more basic needs. Strikingly, horrifyingly, I could understand how MNU made drones out of our people--living in the chaos, coupled with the “education“, would break even the best of us if given enough time. If I was actually there in a physical sense there’s no doubt I would have died from my stupidity.
“Oh. Oh shit…’ George paused as we walked past a tent. MNU guards swarmed the thing like black flies on a carcass, chatting and arguing. They seemed to be waiting for someone.
I saw the tongue of flame slither inside the tent, hiss in pleasure and explode outward into a sheet of orange that covered the eggs inside. The white skin of the tent was lit from within and very object inside was visible, silhouettes against the orange and yellow. I could dimly feel the heat, but it was too much for the small sacs of life within--I could hear the young onesalready broiling and getting ready to pop out of life. Damnit--I tried to put the fire out, I really did, but how could I? I didn’t exist on a level that could do anything.
“That’s what happens to us, every day.” George gently yanked me away from the flames and guided me out of the shack, his plates never being outshone by the firelight. “You had to know. You believe that we can coexist with humans, no matter what? Try being civil to Kurt after seeing this.”
“You know about Kurt?” was the question almost on my tongue, but then I realized George had probably noticed when I was near-death. Besides, that wasn’t important--Kurt and I were individuals, and a race was at stake. Instead, I sighed. “I hoped--”
“Hope has nothing to do with it. Get to work, otherwise all those born prawns will die as prawns. I don’t know what you plan to do, but you’ve gotta implement it fast.” George waved. “Until then--”
Feeling returned. I let the shutters over my eyes lift up, relieved that I was home. But when the world focused I didn’t see the familiar walls of my place in the warehouse where I lived; there were walls, alright, but they were grey, dank, and cracked as the foundations had settled over the years. I remembered measuring the cracks every day, charting and keeping track of their growth and wondering how long it would take for the house to collapse.
I was smaller, the green of my plates paler and the plates themselves somehow ill-fitting, like a suit of armor that was much too big for the wearer. I knew this place, too.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Plea to the Elders.
With blackened eyes and beaten soul do we look on our fate;
Quite possible the chance may be that it’s been a mistake.
But even still, the spirit yearns for something it can’t grasp,
That it may break the fettered chains and may be free at last.
Trying to break a mold made tight with everlasting shame;
Whose constrains have broken, beaten; thoughts struggle, ever lame.
Never to live the life that lurks inside the lusting mind;
A life open to joy and pain, to instincts that entwine
with the base of our being, yet we cannot show this side--
Like ivy climbing towards the sun to be removed in time.
So now do we put on faces that will never be thine,
and go out to this world we know and leave our dreams behind.
Quite possible the chance may be that it’s been a mistake.
But even still, the spirit yearns for something it can’t grasp,
That it may break the fettered chains and may be free at last.
Trying to break a mold made tight with everlasting shame;
Whose constrains have broken, beaten; thoughts struggle, ever lame.
Never to live the life that lurks inside the lusting mind;
A life open to joy and pain, to instincts that entwine
with the base of our being, yet we cannot show this side--
Like ivy climbing towards the sun to be removed in time.
So now do we put on faces that will never be thine,
and go out to this world we know and leave our dreams behind.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Differences.
She was beautiful, that's true, but it was that kind of odd, otherworldly beauty that seems so far away; the person possessing it somehow is unappealing and plain to you, only to bloom and flower in radiant wonder as they leave your field of vision. Out the corner of your eye, you see them in all their glory--try to look again and its gone. That kind of beauty blends into a crowd so easily, one fish among hundreds in the big sea. She was stocky, expressive, built out of a single block of smooth ivory, marble; seamless and impervious to the wear and tear of the world. I don't know what she saw in me. Perhaps it was the novelty of something different. I was the geode to her marble; unappealing and likely to be ignored, yet, hopefully, when inspected and shattered...
It was night when we left the seemingly vacant warehouse. The lights and sound and goodwill inside were muffled and insulated by the silent metal and mortar. You'd never guess there was a party going on if it weren't for the sporadic trickle of tired ravers, sweating even in the cold air. The clouds hung over the sky, visible and pale against the dull gloss of the space beyond the atmosphere, like wisps of cotton lint on a funeral gown. It was strange, I told her, to look at the stars. I was glad they didn't show tonight.
Of course, she responded. It would be strange for her to stare at the stars now that she was going to be with one of their people. 'With' was the word she used. I liked the complete absence of intimacy; if she had said 'sleeping with' I would have left her on the spot. The idea was too unknown to both of us to be spoken aloud, too vulgar for words or even direct thought.
Her car was nice. I think it was a 'Bug' or something of the sort. Small, compact, and curved, a nice powder-blue color that stood out, I assumed, only as it drove past. I tried not to think of the similarities between the vehicle and the woman as she turned the key with an expert flick of the wrist and drove off. The windows were tinted, so I didn't have to hide; the only issue would be getting pulled over, and she told me that wouldn't be an issue. She hadn't gotten a ticket since 1990. That sudden comment alerted me to a rough estimate of her age and I panicked. This was, without a doubt, the most stupid thing I would ever do, and Vishnu almighty it was going to get me killed. It had to be a trap, or a trick, and any second now an MNU truck would appear out of nowhere and I'd be yanked away and deported--
We arrived at her house, a modest one-story affair with a postage-stamp of grass in the front and a veritable woods in the backyard. All four knees quaking, I scrambled out of the car and bolted inside so her neighbors wouldn't see.
Silently she steered me through the house, occasionally chuckling at some knickknack or appliance that caught my eye and giving a short description. I knew half of the things she told me but it was such a pleasure to listen to her talk, the self-assured tone resonating, just a bit lower then pride. Down a hallway, past a table, over a small black-and-white cat that was stretched out on the red carpet like a speed bump, until at last—at last!--the bedroom, with its decent bed and clean sheets. Wasting no time, she removed her outer clothing; I took off the tattered phat pants, held together with duct tape and safety pins to accommodate my unusual legs and hip structures. The two of us were on opposite sides of the bed. It took mental steel on her part, no doubt, to actually clamber onto the damn thing.
I could understand the idea of lust right then and there--there was something about her that I desired and needed and would fight plate and mandible and fist for, if need be. By all gods, human, poleepkwan and otherwise, I wanted her. A thin trill managed to work its way up my throat, contrasting the raspy rhythm of her breathing. I put one leg on the bed and leaned in, closer, so I could see the brown pigment of her eyes, the skin of her lips, the shining porousness of her skin. One mandible lifted up to slide against her cheek, against my judgement--I wanted to do that, but hadn't willed myself to do it yet. Another joined it, and another. She brushed my antennae with a delicate finger, rubbing along the base and tapping the tip. After a few moments we drew back. Preliminaries done--now we'd actually get started. I bent the leg resting on the bed and readied myself for the leap into the unknown, that figurative, literal, all-emcompassing unknown.
Something held me in place, freezing all of my muscles and petrifying me. It was like quicksand had been flowing around us all this time, sucking us deeper and deeper in only to harden into hard glass. We could see each other, we could feel each other, but we could never be close in the way we wanted to be. I let my leg slide off of the bed and rejoin its partner in supporting my weight. It wouldn't happen, ever, despite the emotion throbbing still in the room like a swollen heart; a heart that now skipped a beat and burst. We weren't the same, and because of that we'd always be separate. I would be acting in love when my people knew only hate...she would be giving up her gift of blending in. It was stupid, it was sentimental, but the fact was there and we couldn't ignore it now.
It was okay, she said. She understood. I knew she did--we'd been close enough for me to sense it, smell it on her skin. But that didn't help with the guilt; I felt like I had betrayed her and myself. So much effort was taken in getting our paths to cross, so much time spent in negotiating what was to occur, and nothing was actually happened.
The drive to an area close to Miss Miss' place was short and silent. There was nothing to say--everything we both could have thought of wouldn't have been adequate. Quiet was the best thing to describe the feeling of a bond severed, a bond that hadn't even formed but was broken, like a leech before it has attached to a vein, sucking and sucking at the empty air that provides no nourishment. Finally we arrived at the spot alongside the highway--"my neck of the woods", I told her. We embraced one last time, then I gathered my few possessions from the backseat and left. The little blue car stayed there for a moment, a wordless gesture of 'goodbye, godspeed', and it was gone.
I still don't know her name.
It was night when we left the seemingly vacant warehouse. The lights and sound and goodwill inside were muffled and insulated by the silent metal and mortar. You'd never guess there was a party going on if it weren't for the sporadic trickle of tired ravers, sweating even in the cold air. The clouds hung over the sky, visible and pale against the dull gloss of the space beyond the atmosphere, like wisps of cotton lint on a funeral gown. It was strange, I told her, to look at the stars. I was glad they didn't show tonight.
Of course, she responded. It would be strange for her to stare at the stars now that she was going to be with one of their people. 'With' was the word she used. I liked the complete absence of intimacy; if she had said 'sleeping with' I would have left her on the spot. The idea was too unknown to both of us to be spoken aloud, too vulgar for words or even direct thought.
Her car was nice. I think it was a 'Bug' or something of the sort. Small, compact, and curved, a nice powder-blue color that stood out, I assumed, only as it drove past. I tried not to think of the similarities between the vehicle and the woman as she turned the key with an expert flick of the wrist and drove off. The windows were tinted, so I didn't have to hide; the only issue would be getting pulled over, and she told me that wouldn't be an issue. She hadn't gotten a ticket since 1990. That sudden comment alerted me to a rough estimate of her age and I panicked. This was, without a doubt, the most stupid thing I would ever do, and Vishnu almighty it was going to get me killed. It had to be a trap, or a trick, and any second now an MNU truck would appear out of nowhere and I'd be yanked away and deported--
We arrived at her house, a modest one-story affair with a postage-stamp of grass in the front and a veritable woods in the backyard. All four knees quaking, I scrambled out of the car and bolted inside so her neighbors wouldn't see.
Silently she steered me through the house, occasionally chuckling at some knickknack or appliance that caught my eye and giving a short description. I knew half of the things she told me but it was such a pleasure to listen to her talk, the self-assured tone resonating, just a bit lower then pride. Down a hallway, past a table, over a small black-and-white cat that was stretched out on the red carpet like a speed bump, until at last—at last!--the bedroom, with its decent bed and clean sheets. Wasting no time, she removed her outer clothing; I took off the tattered phat pants, held together with duct tape and safety pins to accommodate my unusual legs and hip structures. The two of us were on opposite sides of the bed. It took mental steel on her part, no doubt, to actually clamber onto the damn thing.
I could understand the idea of lust right then and there--there was something about her that I desired and needed and would fight plate and mandible and fist for, if need be. By all gods, human, poleepkwan and otherwise, I wanted her. A thin trill managed to work its way up my throat, contrasting the raspy rhythm of her breathing. I put one leg on the bed and leaned in, closer, so I could see the brown pigment of her eyes, the skin of her lips, the shining porousness of her skin. One mandible lifted up to slide against her cheek, against my judgement--I wanted to do that, but hadn't willed myself to do it yet. Another joined it, and another. She brushed my antennae with a delicate finger, rubbing along the base and tapping the tip. After a few moments we drew back. Preliminaries done--now we'd actually get started. I bent the leg resting on the bed and readied myself for the leap into the unknown, that figurative, literal, all-emcompassing unknown.
Something held me in place, freezing all of my muscles and petrifying me. It was like quicksand had been flowing around us all this time, sucking us deeper and deeper in only to harden into hard glass. We could see each other, we could feel each other, but we could never be close in the way we wanted to be. I let my leg slide off of the bed and rejoin its partner in supporting my weight. It wouldn't happen, ever, despite the emotion throbbing still in the room like a swollen heart; a heart that now skipped a beat and burst. We weren't the same, and because of that we'd always be separate. I would be acting in love when my people knew only hate...she would be giving up her gift of blending in. It was stupid, it was sentimental, but the fact was there and we couldn't ignore it now.
It was okay, she said. She understood. I knew she did--we'd been close enough for me to sense it, smell it on her skin. But that didn't help with the guilt; I felt like I had betrayed her and myself. So much effort was taken in getting our paths to cross, so much time spent in negotiating what was to occur, and nothing was actually happened.
The drive to an area close to Miss Miss' place was short and silent. There was nothing to say--everything we both could have thought of wouldn't have been adequate. Quiet was the best thing to describe the feeling of a bond severed, a bond that hadn't even formed but was broken, like a leech before it has attached to a vein, sucking and sucking at the empty air that provides no nourishment. Finally we arrived at the spot alongside the highway--"my neck of the woods", I told her. We embraced one last time, then I gathered my few possessions from the backseat and left. The little blue car stayed there for a moment, a wordless gesture of 'goodbye, godspeed', and it was gone.
I still don't know her name.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Radio.
Radio. That was it; a radio. There was a radio in my head; the static so rough and loud, irritating the membranes of whatever brain cells I had left at the moment. I could have coped with it if it was music I was hearing, but the constant meaningless noise wore at my nerves like sandpaper. Have you ever been so angry at a thing that you want to destroy it? I have. I hated static, I hated the idea of static, I wanted the static to end.
But it persisted anyway--the volume even turned up and garbled outside voices. Snow buzzed in my vision, like a broken monitor had been stuck in the space behind my eyes and left with the power on, operating but not working. Blocking out sight, sound, movement, anything--there was the static and there was me and that was all. If the two of us occupied an entire universe on our own, it couldn't be measured or proven. We may have been in a world full of matter or consciousness; trillions of other lifeforms living all around...I couldn't tell. You could almost feel the brush of their little bodies against you sometimes; a moment later you'd find that you've gone numb and there's no way for you to feel anything.
The radiowaves changed in tone, sliding from higher to lower pitch as if someone was tuning it. Finally, all the backround noise coalesced into a few syllables, then a word, then a voice.
After contemplating the complete and utter fallibility of his life thus far, Olo Lamna, commonly known as Olo "Doorbell" Lamna, decided it was in the best interest of those around him to off himself. He hadn't accomplished much in his life yet, and with things the way they were it was highly unlikely he would ever do so.
The voice, so rough and jagged, narrating my thoughts along with lies. But were they lies, or were they things that were going to happen? Time was absent here along with the senses; the future blended into the past into the present into what would never happen. Was this voice a product of my own thoughts or another thing entirely?
In the course of his travels into the bowels of his own mind, he had uncovered a simple truth; even if things were not real to begin with it was still possible for them to impact three-dimensional corporeal beings, existing in an environment called space and time.
Well, that was true...ideas did more damage then blows or bullets. A cut or a broken bone would heal in time, naturally. An injury to the mind would take far more to go away. It may never go away--that was why we all had to be careful while fighting for or freedom. What if, in the process, we become slaves to our own actions and thirst for revenge? Then we'll have lost.
The incorporeal and corporeal fed off of each other every day, waxing and waning in unison to achieve equilibrium. Following this train of thought, Olo came to the conclusion that destroying the ideas of MNU would not be enough; the employees would carry the concepts away to re-create the company.
We couldn't kill, though. That would make us no better then them...would it? Was it okay to kill those who have killed innocents? The scars that action would leave are unimaginable. They'd never leave, so that meant--
His beliefs had been wrong all this time; he had assumed that things were better then they actually were. Ideas never die, but they could kill, quite easily in fact.
That was it. I wanted to walk away from this voice, but where would I run to? Nevermind that my legs were somewhere out of reach...I couldn't run away. It had taken root in my brain, digging into the tissue and sparks of thoughts like a tapeworm, seeking the warmth and spinning out accounts of my actions, my wrongdoings, what I failed to do and what I failed at doing. Little offspring, little mini-worms to repeat the process. Would they chew their way out of me to infect others, or would I just carry them along inside until they ate up everything and left a shell? A shell...that was interesting...an organic puppet to hide their lithe bodies from the world. Could they actually do this--would they do it? There was no way I could know, no way I could ever know.
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