Chapter 0
Patient number 234214 567875 456799
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Are we important?
Do our lives mean anything?
So much attention paid to the petty dramatics of one species.
We have to be important.
The question is, to whom, to what?
What makes us so necessary?
Damn, my head hurts. It's Sunday, and I feel like crap. Until recently,
I've never just lain here in my bed thinking. The questions keep multiplying,
intermingling, evolving. It's too much to handle at 9 a.m.
I should really sit up, wake up, and get moving.
And the subject will start functioning: now.
And the subject will commence feeling: now.
I should really be getting ready to go to Church at ten.
But I'm not.
I'm lying here thinking. My mind travels in waves, in currents, along
the crests and pond ripples of my blue bed sheets. Strewn about, tossed
about, my head put through a blender. A purée of slimy, gray tissue.
Nothing quite like it was before. The bed, no longer made, now wrinkled
and toyed with. No longer perfect, its previous perfection rendered
a simple illusion. Or is it delusion? Either way, the complexity of
the changing crevices in the fabric, in reality, adds a dimension of
interest. This is new, this is different, and it scares me. Thinking
isn't healthy-not like this anyway. Thought should be cool and logical,
never erratic, sporadic, separated into a million pieces, and floating,
far away, amongst distorted memories. For what memories can a human
have that aren't distorted, violent images recalled in perfect clarity,
overshadowing beauty. I am a creature of the night, and at morning's
light I hide, cringing at its coming, slow dawn, lest I be turned to
dust. Here, warm in my coffin, wrapped in shrouds, I am frightened by
these musings. The infinity of thought is what scares me. One could
think forever, and still nothing would make sense. I don't have forever
though. No one does. I will never know everything, and if beauty is
in the eye of the beholder, then truth sure as hell is. But there is
truth in one thing. There is truth in death.
I never used to consider its actuality. I was never scared before, but
now I am terrified. To face that raw and unbiased truth is to face the
unavoidable. The end of perception, the end of life. Not of all life,
but the end of one's life as an individual. In death there is no individuality,
superiority, or structure. The death of an ameba and the death of a
human intermingle, a mixed flight from sentience into oblivion.
Ah, sweet oblivion, peace at last to my tired soul.
Peace at last to my poor dysfunctional brain.
Thoughts like these scare me, and I wouldn't have been scared before.
At least, not of myself. Before, I could find truth in more than death-in
more than nothingness. I remember there was a time when I wasn't frightened
at all. I was content and happy with my life. Maybe everyone here is
addicted to perfection, and I wanted to stay that way. Maybe I enjoyed
the comforting disinterest of it all. No one asked me.
And the subject's mental state will begin deterioration: now.
Deep down, way deep down, you know, on the inside where it counts. Where
the true beauty is. Maybe in there somewhere, I am just flat out lying
to myself. My eyelids flutter, my eyes shudder, tracing the folds in
the sheets, one crinkle leading to another, and another, and another.
I am always in motion, their shape is always changing, and I can never
get to the bottom of this. There is no conceivable end in sight. I want
to just stop moving. Work my way through what is there already.
But I can't stop. I keep rolling over, restlessness adding to the problem.
A puzzle wrapped in cotton cloth. A riddle of plant matter condensed
and manufactured. Mixed with blue dye.
I hate this change.
I hope maybe I'll come to accept and understand it, but right now I
hate it.
But that is just the external. I have no clue what is inside all of
this-inside of me. The answers I must unravel. The codes I must decipher.
Acceptance must lie beneath all of this confusion.
The air in my room smells like flowers.
Air fresheners.
One of the biggest lies of this society is the smells. It starts with
scratch-and-sniff stickers, then moves up to deodorant, perfumes, breath
fresheners, mouthwash, toothpaste, soaps, oils, incense, dryer sheets,
toilet bowl cleaners, household cleaners, shampoo, conditioner, laundry
detergent, body wash.
Everything natural is cloaked in imitation.
It's not good enough to just smell human, we have to smell like daffodils
or roses or lilacs. Why don't we just let lilacs smell like lilacs,
and people like people? Is being ashamed of yourself part of some higher
order of thought? Is a culture lathered with self-pity and low self-esteem
what God had in mind for the material world? Before our baptism in a
pool of perfumes and oils, we were unsaved and smelly. Oh, but what
glorious rotting things must lie underneath those shells of falsified
smells.
Ah, my head.
I close my eyes as the morning sunlight slides in through the window.
It's too bright and it doesn't help. It's persecuting me. Trying to
force me out of my bed, out of my head, out of my room, out of my skull.
I need rest. I try to slip away from the buzzing questions. To go back
to the time when I thought I knew how the world worked and had direction
to my life. It was all planned out and now everything is falling apart.
I had my uninteresting perfect happiness, and I had my blacks and whites.
Cut and dry. Life was just a plain old safe and superficial experience.
I guess you could call what I am experiencing now withdrawal symptoms.
I close my eyes.
I go back, retracing these feelings to their origins.
Copyright 2007, Jason Glover, All Rights Reserved