I am just another statistic. Another set of numbers, another piece of data. I am simply another unknown in a computer that knows everything about me.
In school they say my name, but that is all they know. I am one more student out of a few thousand this year and thousands upon thousands more throughout the school's history. They do not understand how I think or how I speak, or what I do. I am a part of this or that, I take this class or that class. Those bits of information could turn me into something more, but those classes and clubs too, have turned to numbers.
In my choir I am a little closer to being the human I am supposed to be. Here I am a voice. But I am one voice out of seventy every rehearsal, and one out of hundreds every performance. I will be forgotten once I am gone as those before me were forgotten. I will be again turned to numbers in the computer sitting in the office.
With my doctor, I am supposed to be the most human. He knows everything about me, and deals with human illnesses, not numbers. But I am written in computer charts. He only knows me because the numbers tell him what he knows. My diagnostics become data in the nation-wide system, and I eventually become part of a statistic that will soon be forgotten, saved for the day it is needed, which will never come.
Someday I will work. The day that happens will be the day my humanity is gone completely and only data exists. My boss will see me as another tool to work towards his goal, and his boss in turn will see him the same way. I will be a part of a company like all the others with a hierarchy that is the same hopeless ladder of power. I will clock in when I am told and my time will be converted to data. The work I do will also become another archived piece of useless information.
The words I compose here too are simply numbers. They are zeros and ones running through the machine sitting beside my feet. I am one of over 150 million blogs spread into the far corners of the internet. Even here where I bear my soul to the world, I am nothing more than a statistic.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Chapter None
And so it was that the world burned. We never saw it coming, although all the signs were there. Perhaps it had been the many signs that caused us to not know. Instead of accepting the evidence, we chose to block them out and refused the truth that our time was coming to an end.
On that day we also burned. Our bodies grew hotter and hotter as the planet did. Like in the town of Pompeii in earth-history, some of us turned instantly to stone under the lava of the world melting around us. Others suffocated from the smoke and ash of other burning bodies. Some of us caught fire from the flames around us and were burned to death before the rest of the havoc began. The lucky few were turned instantly to ash, swirling and falling in the sky.
Others tried to escape by boarding rockets bound for the space-void. It was a fruitless effort and the ones in those ships had it the worst. They had to watch the planet and people die before them before finally noticing the heat coming from the bottoms of the ships. The flames ignited there before any other place on our planet. So the bottom melted off; the material was made for icy void conditions, not for anything like the tragedy below. The breathing-gases escaped the ships and they died not from the heat, but because they lost could no longer breathe.
I say "we" while telling this story because I too, died that that day. Somehow I was "saved" from one of the safe-boxes in the core of the planet. It was designed for the core, so it did not melt completely, but inside I was almost baked alive. It seems I am now in a permanent care facility being kept "alive" by the machines I sense around me. Even this I cannot be sure, for I cannot hear, nor see, nor feel, nor smell, nor taste. I can only think. And so, trapped in my own mind, I look back on that day with envy of the ones who burned. I would rather be dead than have only my insanity for the rest of eternity.
On that day we also burned. Our bodies grew hotter and hotter as the planet did. Like in the town of Pompeii in earth-history, some of us turned instantly to stone under the lava of the world melting around us. Others suffocated from the smoke and ash of other burning bodies. Some of us caught fire from the flames around us and were burned to death before the rest of the havoc began. The lucky few were turned instantly to ash, swirling and falling in the sky.
Others tried to escape by boarding rockets bound for the space-void. It was a fruitless effort and the ones in those ships had it the worst. They had to watch the planet and people die before them before finally noticing the heat coming from the bottoms of the ships. The flames ignited there before any other place on our planet. So the bottom melted off; the material was made for icy void conditions, not for anything like the tragedy below. The breathing-gases escaped the ships and they died not from the heat, but because they lost could no longer breathe.
I say "we" while telling this story because I too, died that that day. Somehow I was "saved" from one of the safe-boxes in the core of the planet. It was designed for the core, so it did not melt completely, but inside I was almost baked alive. It seems I am now in a permanent care facility being kept "alive" by the machines I sense around me. Even this I cannot be sure, for I cannot hear, nor see, nor feel, nor smell, nor taste. I can only think. And so, trapped in my own mind, I look back on that day with envy of the ones who burned. I would rather be dead than have only my insanity for the rest of eternity.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
With All Due Respect
How can I be expected to sort out your life when I can hardly understand my own?
I understand. You need some comfort. I have always been willing to listen. I have even been willing to let you put your problems into my metaphorical "to do" pile. However, there comes a point when there is nothing left for me to do or say. My willingness dies very quickly once the third month has passed. Or the fourth. Or the fifth. You are at the point where you no longer need my shoulder every second of every day.
You sigh a long, loud sigh every time I mention anything she liked or anything you did with her. You sigh nosily whenever you catch a glimpse of her. You sigh heavily whenever you see a spot where she once had sat. Everyday all I hear is one long sigh. I do not think this is about her anymore. It is about me. It is about your need for my attention. And my attention is wearing thin.
I have said all I can to you. I have given you advise when you needed it and agreed with your every word when I could feel you wanted me to. Promises have been made, messages have been passed, and time has been spent. I have learned to read you better than anyone can. What I have found once I was able to read you I knew all along. You want this to go on. You want to keep being carried by me.
I have my own problems, you know. I cower to my own fears and fret over my own worries. I struggle through my own hardships and deal with my own love. There are much bigger things to deal with than one short high school fling. I am more than your blanket to cower under and hide from the world. I am a human with my own mind to sort out and unravel.
Starting today, I can do nothing more for you.
I understand. You need some comfort. I have always been willing to listen. I have even been willing to let you put your problems into my metaphorical "to do" pile. However, there comes a point when there is nothing left for me to do or say. My willingness dies very quickly once the third month has passed. Or the fourth. Or the fifth. You are at the point where you no longer need my shoulder every second of every day.
You sigh a long, loud sigh every time I mention anything she liked or anything you did with her. You sigh nosily whenever you catch a glimpse of her. You sigh heavily whenever you see a spot where she once had sat. Everyday all I hear is one long sigh. I do not think this is about her anymore. It is about me. It is about your need for my attention. And my attention is wearing thin.
I have said all I can to you. I have given you advise when you needed it and agreed with your every word when I could feel you wanted me to. Promises have been made, messages have been passed, and time has been spent. I have learned to read you better than anyone can. What I have found once I was able to read you I knew all along. You want this to go on. You want to keep being carried by me.
I have my own problems, you know. I cower to my own fears and fret over my own worries. I struggle through my own hardships and deal with my own love. There are much bigger things to deal with than one short high school fling. I am more than your blanket to cower under and hide from the world. I am a human with my own mind to sort out and unravel.
Starting today, I can do nothing more for you.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Torn Edges
We were the same soul once, I believe.
We were a radiant soul full of life and knowledge. Somehow that soul split apart, as they sometimes do, and sent two pieces flying off through the void in different directions. The split was not clean and smooth as it should have been, however. Each half managed to grow into a new soul, but each was broken. They were souls with torn edges.
Such a time was long ago, but now the story is mine.
I am one of those two broken souls.
He is the other.
We have suffered the same ailments of the mind and have discovered the same things about ourselves. We find happiness in many of the same things, and can speak to each other just as we would want to speak to ourselves.
We are not soulmates. We are not soul siblings. We are the same soul, one a little more broken in one place and the other a little more broken elsewhere. The torn edges of our souls match.
Hopefully, we can help each other heal into the new souls we were meant to become.
We were a radiant soul full of life and knowledge. Somehow that soul split apart, as they sometimes do, and sent two pieces flying off through the void in different directions. The split was not clean and smooth as it should have been, however. Each half managed to grow into a new soul, but each was broken. They were souls with torn edges.
Such a time was long ago, but now the story is mine.
I am one of those two broken souls.
He is the other.
We have suffered the same ailments of the mind and have discovered the same things about ourselves. We find happiness in many of the same things, and can speak to each other just as we would want to speak to ourselves.
We are not soulmates. We are not soul siblings. We are the same soul, one a little more broken in one place and the other a little more broken elsewhere. The torn edges of our souls match.
Hopefully, we can help each other heal into the new souls we were meant to become.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Land of Almosts
Within myself is a world beyond the grasp of reality. The laws of life and the common world have no hold there, in the place without a name.
I try to grab something, anything, but the moment I feel close enough it slips away and transforms again. It is no longer what it was and will never be the same again. It has returned to the state of almost-being.
The nameless world is border-less, constantly changing shape whenever the edge seems to be near. It shifts and morphs, its almost-colours obscuring a secret that will never be uncovered.
Words have no meaning there. The moment they are formed the world steals them away to be bound and combined with the rest of the almost-ideas. There is an immense potential for something in these almosts. A potential to go beyond what has ever been created before. As always in this place of mystery, the almosts never become solid enough to be used.
There is an ethereal air, fragile and powerful, delicate and all-knowing. It covers the space and follows the ever-changing absence of reality. The feeling seems to suggest something lurking in the non-existent corners of the unknown world. That something seems neither good nor evil, but promises a chaos that will upset the rules of this lawless land.
If I spend too long in the place without reality then I will lose my grip on all I have ever known. The chaos will eventually come and I will be there to feel it, but for now I return to the accepted world.
I try to grab something, anything, but the moment I feel close enough it slips away and transforms again. It is no longer what it was and will never be the same again. It has returned to the state of almost-being.
The nameless world is border-less, constantly changing shape whenever the edge seems to be near. It shifts and morphs, its almost-colours obscuring a secret that will never be uncovered.
Words have no meaning there. The moment they are formed the world steals them away to be bound and combined with the rest of the almost-ideas. There is an immense potential for something in these almosts. A potential to go beyond what has ever been created before. As always in this place of mystery, the almosts never become solid enough to be used.
There is an ethereal air, fragile and powerful, delicate and all-knowing. It covers the space and follows the ever-changing absence of reality. The feeling seems to suggest something lurking in the non-existent corners of the unknown world. That something seems neither good nor evil, but promises a chaos that will upset the rules of this lawless land.
If I spend too long in the place without reality then I will lose my grip on all I have ever known. The chaos will eventually come and I will be there to feel it, but for now I return to the accepted world.
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