It happened again. Like clockwork. Parked in my work cubicle, those unseen hands commence their cruel strangulation and choke me. My upper trapezius fibers clench like wolf jaws. A throbbing pain slowly permeates my head like a slow-moving fog.
When did the cycle first begin, I wonder. Perhaps knowing that, I can re-work a long rooted frame of reference and forget what tension is. I see no other option. Or viable one anyway.
Sure, my Doc could write a script but it’s early in the year. I haven’t met my deductible yet and the pill company is running a TV campaign encouraging you to ask your doctor about their latest phantom cure. Ad spots are expensive, you know?
I could take up meditation, if I even knew what that means. Yes, I understand the concept and every patchouli-reeking hippy at the community college could instruct me as to how. But if it really works, then why do they need to resort to smoking the Northern Cali Purple Hair?
Maybe this happens because I’ve internalized my peers disapproval from not partaking in their approved methods of whiling away life. No, I didn’t catch the new hit show “A Day in the Life of an Enema”. No, I made it a point not to watch the superbowl yet again this year. What am I doing this weekend? I figure I’ll take a case of Thunderbird downtown and incite hobos to slapfight for some boss video clips. I’m enterprising like that.
Allow me my own diversions, won’t you? Isn’t that the point of life? Once our taxes and tributes are paid, our loan terms settled and signed, our retirement accounts funded, our vehicle maintenance taken care of, our personas emblazoned with suitable brands and our gods placated, then what? Surely I can’t be alone in the solitude of universal creation with neither compatriots nor complaints. That must be what death is like.
If grinding monotony is unacceptable then how is it that we consider glorified data entry and phone conversations to be labor? Yet it must be of some value because India and China were only too eager to receive it from us and pursue it in their own quality fashion. Industry still lives here, mind you, we buy and sell. Houses, cars, dreams, scams, souls. Everything is to be metered as that fine mind Edison taught us.
But the nagging feeling of decline still haunts me none-the-less. How much ludicracy and grift can one civilization tolerate? And like any sentient entity, beneath it all it seeks to prolong its own existence whatever the expense. While not recognizing the structural mis-allocations adopted along the way.
Now it could just be me, right? For the world and it’s entire reality is beheld by only individual perceptions. And maybe there is but a single intelligence and all others are branches. Or worse yet, automatons. Please, don’t let that be it, because this would mean I screwed up massively. I cannot stand before the creator(s) and explain how I dreamt this manuscript of vile, systemic inhumanity. Who possibly could? Let us immediately terminate their contract if such lies exist. Post haste. We cannot bear that responsibility.
Our own corner of the yard is mostly tolerable, which I believe is why the world continues to spin. Our livelihood is rationed out, sparingly and traded for experiences and fashionable trinkets du jour. We convince ourselves there is honor in that. Something compels us to continue running on the hamster wheel. Is it ignorance, fear, conditioning? Is there another way?
I am reminded of an “educational channel” program I saw regarding the population explosion of jellyfish in the world’s seas and oceans. Overfishing is the likely cause, because certainly portly Las Vegas tourists are entitled to endless buffets, but I digress. What struck me was how these mindless blobs thrive in their own world but are completely unaware ours exists. In a brief flash of understanding, it occurred to me that we might be the mindless blobs relative to others and how many worlds exist of which we are unaware?
No other explanation is reasonable. The tangible world must not exist solely as a resource for the mouths at the top of the pyramid. This perception is driven with desperate cause, but I need not ride that train. It is overcrowded and it is destined for the slaughterfield.
It is no wonder that the New-Agers want to ascend so badly. I even tried it, but only ended up with bad gas. I’ve read Jonathan Livingston Seagull thrice and still can’t teleport. Though, I suppose if it really worked, it wouldn’t have been required reading in Freshman English class. But I wanted to believe, just like now I want to believe in a purpose beyond supplementing the incomes of politicians, pastors and other assorted prostitutes.
Indeed, belief is the wrong term here as it is prone to driving madness. Instead, we will substitute ideas and understandings. They are incompatible with dogma.
My personal favorite idea, provided by some kind soul is that we are here for creation to experience itself. And when electrons blink out of existence, as we believe they do, they are reporting back to the source.
In this light, love and acceptance are my only obligations, joy is my only emotion and pain is left among the lower vibrations to which I no longer relate.
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