Instead of borrowed time we should steal it as we do in shadows from the burning sun and kisses stolen for fun, for granted revelations. Instead of social graces we should feel it as we do with madness on the run, laughing and then some, for given damnation.
And maybe we as a collective civilization are unstable, because our place within the universe is unstable. The bubble of our brief existence is popping and the atmosphere inside will have to mix it up with everything there ever was and ever will be that is outside. There’s cracks in the mirrors we keep in front of ourselves to block out everything that ever was and ever will be outside ourselves. Maybe *it* seeps out unwitnessed and immeasurable, coloring our minds and giving us our dreams and nightmares, bouts of genius and flying bicycle kicks into insanity. Maybe the whole idea of “god” came from what was hinted at in those cracks.
So then none of this will really matter, these things we choose to see in our mirrors of choice.
Everything’s relative. News stories repeat ebbs and flows due to what Nietzsche called eternal recurrence, as though the maker is on an unimaginative loop. With similar lack of creativity we misidentify derivative ploys of cultural arts as archetypes. Likewise are we structured by our society only for reaction and repetition, revolutions televangelized like bedtime stories to save us the demanding trouble of exerting more than the tap of a button, giving the practice the misnomer of having opinions when free publicity granted for the stifling array of profiteering artificial cultures of powers enabled to remake ourselves, from ideals to products at our disposal, is neither thought or feeling. The technologies of online social networks are crowded with underworked minds oblivious to how none may preach beyond their respective choir, accepting the segregation for fear of the integration the universe will irrevocably lead us toward nonetheless. Of the natural order, beyond human instinct to cower while calling it anything grander, such as renaming the internet’s public restroom walls as infinity pools, trees arise from seeds unanimously. They grow, mysteriously deciding directions for where and when to lean, and while they may reach in any direction their fancy strikes, they might only turn and twist and extend themselves so far before their limits. Repeating themselves in reaction to their environments without thought or feeling, generation following generation following generation. They never know to cower.
I cannot pretend ideological captivity is anything but, and because I oppose all forms of killing no matter the rationale, I will oppose every aspect of my country to my dying day, the machinery, the fashionable couture dependent on the dehumanization and exploitation of its makers and audiences alike, the warped logic of nonchalance, all of it. There is no reason not to. I will kick and I will scream til authoritarians finally shoot me dead in another 2 or 3 years. I am fine with that. Most are never made aware of their path, and I have had enough fast food.
And it means flying solo. The most perfect union must be denied, as it amounts to selfishness on my part to ask others to share in this, when a healthy relationship fundamentally requires equal portions of both give and take. Friendships as well. My cleverness with words is unmatched, but with no prospects beyond the devout and mindful undoing of this society I am left with nothing to offer, substantially or metaphorically. I am smitten beyond words by my mom’s nurse practitioner, so casually righting so much of our ship these past few months to the extent of proving professionals twice and thrice her age to be overpaid dinosaurs. But every iota of thought which passes through my head knows that her life is so much better off with me as a minor footnote, if anything. I’m not bringing anything to the table, as I would rather upturn it to board up the windows against the oncoming onslaught of the ominous dead, rising to take the one thing I have to my name. Words are my power, but wielding them for any other cause is lacking responsibility. True purpose leaves all else in shadow, and any sense of self is not even periphery. What I feel I want or think I need has nothing to do with what others earnestly want or desperately need, and never the two should meet.
The big picture is just never about love, as that was what first distracted our ancestors from lying about in the mud wondering what to do with themselves. By focusing on what pleases ourselves, we reach only so far as our limits, no matter how pleasing it may be.