For the Other Insects.
I have come to these machines because they are my deepest solace in this place i fail to understand. i have known earthly delight, and most likely shall further feel it in some day, but for now find only warmth in the cold of this internal world. This is the introversion for the intellectually insane.
The scars possess me, i am trying, flailing for them to leave once in a while. the blisters and callouses are deep and heavy, they impede my travel and my thought. i peel them off in the night when i cant sleep, but they are there again when i wake. its too difficult- so i travel these wires and speak in electronic voices- i find those who somehow can offer sustainance. but i cant know their names, we must abandon photographs and tangible reality. if you want me i'll be here- look me up and give me a chance. it is difficult to do much more than beg. in this weakness, until i find a self-satiation and comfort, i can only plead for otherly acknowledment
In the time I spend in my cell of an apartment, the walls almost talk to me-- I know they do when I sleep-- they dictate my dreams and they become the mouths of the bodies I see on the city streets. These mouths talk to me, beckon me to beds and arms and wet warmth embrace however shallow. I wake with the covers twisted and a cold perspiration soaking my four a.m skin. The nightlight flickers like a candle-- I can see the faint shadows of the mouths and throats in the walls, open mouths asking and telling and speaking to me. Two days ago I was walking by the river, crossing the bridge, swinging my black metal lunchbox in my presumptious spirited way (how I can often portray a content person, gayly walking here or there, hiding my desperation) and I caught reflections in the water of the six p.m. foot traffic-- amazing-- even amidst the sludge I could make out the faces of those parading aside me down the strips, the conveyors to our slavery and then back again. And it all seemed so peaceful- I was able to forget in those moments, able to push aside all that was straining me to keep the doors locked and just stop eating. That night I took a beautifully long bath, and kept the telephone unplugged (as I tend to do with the exception of connecting to the internal network, the veins that sustain.) The steam lifting from the tubwater was my meaning in the evening, I laid my head back and let the water drip ice drops from the faucet onto my forehead, with my toes at the other end breaking the skin of the hot pool-- feeling the cold air. I felt so cleansed afterward, so emptied of the dirt collected outside. With my new clean body I sat again before the screen and typed until almost dawn.
I have yet to quite solve the nutrition problem. It is my dreams that I could more adequately maintain this frame, my weak body, such as only a machine that is a part of the machinery that I embrace. My skin has become only the vehicle, the tool, for the transference of the information from my brain to the guts and banks of this integrated, cumbersome, intricate and connected home of a billion paths. I seek to only feed and recharge this machine-body-- put food into it, rest in my slumber to accomodate its needs and power its drive. But there are only so many vitamins that I can take, so much plain foods and staples that I can so inextravigantly consume. Perhaps it is that my tastes and desires have not yet been effectively dismantled-- were I able to erase the distinctions and variety, maybe I would not feel ill content in the monotony of unseasoned grains. There is work I must tend to, refinements I must make. Am I to integrate into this place, become it outstretched eyes and hands and ears, then I must eliminate these binds to the tangible. They seemingly only contribute to my malcontent and incomplacency. I must kill my human urges, my absurd wants and dreams. But I am so bound to them, such a slave, still.
The fantasy is to me what most people perceive as real and tangible. I have no such grasps or embrace of the physical world. I am so much more realized in this electronic sea. Here I can speak and listen, create and appreciate. Unconnected from this universe I am nothing-- I am just a useless frame that needs food, rest, and shelter. In here, these intangible tunnels are my shelter. The world outside this machinery does not provide the input or definition for this digital existence, rather, even if it is really related to this chemical life, the digital dictates other reality. My breathing body's living and vision does not seek representation here in this digital realm, instead, my identity seeks to manifest itself here. In failure of rational existence in the social and biological structure of the world, I am attaining to an identity and existence that is here. This is where my words come out, where I truly breathe, really speak, can actually extend my abstract hands into this maliable network and come out. I was only born when I learned to integrate myself in this universe online. All previous was mere slumber, and labouring and living outside of here is further sleep, further idling.
Excerpts: ...holes in my being that have stretched and torn from the augmentation of my insides. There are pieces of me lying about. This is what the world has done to me. I have tried my best. I have fought. I have kicked. I have tried honesty, I have tried dishonesty. I have tried purity, I have tried sin. I tried the decadent, I lived with discipline. I am fit for nothing, for no one. My scars are testament to my travels, evidences of my experiences.
Sometimes in the the middle of the night I play with them. I take their hand again and cross the creeks and the fields, and we collect more dirt on our shoes and more thorns in our socks. And occasionally again in my mind they are mine and I am theirs. In those mid-morning dark hours I can see them as my dreams recreate us as we were. There is no real continuation. |