3
Miles’ mind was nearing on blown. He knew that the planet was in a whole world of hurt, but he’d been under the assumption that it had only been that way since the industrious revolutionaries opted to forfeit our future in exchange for short-term financial gains. The progress of profit. Convenience. Or maybe it had been ever since the days of freely traded slave labor, a way of life that blatantly prioritized big business over the bloodshed of America’s darkest secret.
He vaguely understood that these things were all related, and that in all actuality, the systemic problems we are facing now could quite possibly be traced back to some unknown origin, even predating the founding of our foundling nation. But could it possibly have all started spiraling downhill with the founding of civilization as we know it?
That was a tough pill to swallow, but of course, so was the government mandated history curriculum that they’ve been shoving down our throats for years. But clocks and written language and agriculture and money? They were just tools, weren’t they? And humans were humans because they used tools. And maybe in the hands of an evil doer, a tool can become a weapon, but could these integral components of life as we know it, have been corrupted since their very inception?
His mind trickled through other innovations of the inhumane, from gunpowder to TNT to nuclear fission, all designed as tools of the trade until they were traded to the war machine, and once they were responsible for millions of deaths and the hostile takeover of the planet, their inventors vehemently regretted ever developing these technologies of terror.
And of course they were all men, they were the only ones allowed to attend the schools that taught this new art of oppressionism, so they were in charge of doctoring the nation in whatever way they saw fit.
So they invented a political system that systematically empowered themselves and governed the power to the people, throttled the threat of women becoming self-aware and foolishly thinking that they should get a vote on the direction of our off course trajectory, and thus they were held in captivity along with anybody else who got in the way of this new patriarchal concept of progress. Sound familiar?
As if he’d been tuned in, a man crossed the sidewalk in front of them with a sign speaking to anyone who wasn’t buried six feet deep in a cell phone. It notified them that the occurrence of sexual assault in the city had more than doubled in the last ten years.
He announced that, “Our homeless community used to be able to sleep right here in a safe public space, well lit and secured with video surveillance of any wrong doing. But the businesses and politicians got together (Miles wondered when it was that they had been separate) and decided to make it a criminal act to fall victim to the fraudulent banks and their fictitious housing crisis. There are six times the amount of empty homes than homeless people in this country, yet these folks struggling to survive have been evicted yet again, and must now seek refuge in the darkened cubbies of dangerous alleys, where unprotected women now fall vulnerable to whatever night terrors the city has to offer, including the police.”
Miles could see that the seedy underside of our man’s world was oozing from every worn-out seam of our tattered society, from the highest authority in the land, to those scraped up from the lowest points of inequality. It knows no boundaries, which in a country built of walls and fences seems abnormal, until you remember that the guidelines of normality are determined by the streams of corporate media propaganda, and not the overflowing river of actual human lives clogging the gutters of our daily commute.
But everyone knows that you’re not a real person if you can’t afford to pay rent or a mortgage, if you don’t indebt your livelihood to the kings of exploitation, and spend the rest of your life working to shed your own indentured servitude. And with all that pressure to forfeit any hopes and dreams of freedom, it becomes increasingly more difficult to worry about anyone’s problems other than your own, so you don’t, to a point that you can walk right past a fellow human in need and pretend that they don’t even exist, which only makes it that much harder for them to prove you wrong.
The man continued with, “Why, they’ve even made it illegal to feed those less privileged than the paying customers that share the same sidewalk. In fact, many of us have been arrested for committing the incredibly vile act of public decency.”
Miles looked around and realized that our social commentator was not alone, they had walked right into a crowd of the hungry and those willing to risk their own skin in order to protect another’s. Most wore insignias of the Occupy movement, a nationwide resistance to those banking on the ignorance of just how severe the situation has become. Unfortunately, most of their success at accumulating collective momentum has been long forgotten, as it was buried between headlines of horror and the upcoming fall’s fashion tips.
The rebels were serving a rather delectable spread of warm breakfast items, protected by a perimeter of boxes filled with warm clothes for the upcoming fall, and every once in a while they managed to warm a heart or two of the passing pedestrians intent on remaining passersby.
Miles turned to share in the warmth with his traveling companion, but she had vanished, though he was beginning to suspect that she might be a figment of his underworked imagination. How else could he explain the surreal feeling that he was looking into his own reflection? Except that she seemed to have a better grasp of his discontented condition than even he had been aware, plus she was a lot prettier.
But alas, the glittery mirage of unbridled kindness reappeared, even if only to him, though the street folks seemed to take notice, as she made her rounds of trading morning smiles for dirty dishes. He watched her return a stack of reusable breakfastware to the buffet, it was a zero waste operation amid the littered streets of the tourist season, and somehow the disposable population of those with no income were the only ones acting with any sense of personal responsibility. Perhaps it was because this was their home.
She bounced back into his bubble and exclaimed, “Isn’t this just wonderful? Really gives you hope that humanity might not be completely lost after all, just a little misled about the journey, confused about where we’re headed and too caught up on getting there to realize that we already live in paradise. But these guys get it, just look at all the smiling faces and full bellies around us, and even though the hipsters can’t see it, these brothers and sisters out here have sacrificed far less of their dignity by simply refusing to exchange integrity for a paycheck.”
To hear her say it, made you believe that they had stumbled upon a hidden oasis of never ending abundance, and maybe they had, though he imagined that she could spin a house made of dirt into a cozy cottage getaway that no amount of wolves could ever blow down. She had a mystical way about her, a radiating vibrance that pulled you into her orbit and refused to let go until you were consumed by the gravity of her quantum entanglement.
He was getting there, as he continued to spiral out of control, anticipating the cosmic delight that no doubt coincided with a full and complete touchdown, though it seemed his landing gear had gone weak in the knees, both left wheels, and he now found himself on a collision course for unknowable adventure.
It was at this point in his descent through time and space, that he recalled his tour guide’s scantily clad steps, she’d been barefoot all along this first leg of uncharted itinerary, but it somehow seemed to have slipped by the current occupation of his mind. He’d been unable to peel his eyes from the words she hung in the air, desperately clinging to each and every one, and helplessly hoping to catch just another glimpse of what it must mean to truly be alive.
As he finally let his gaze drift below the horizon to confirm her nonconformity, he concluded his research with the assumption that her treads must be far tougher than any hard times offered by the street, yet upon closer inspection, the delicacy of her toes told another story, as they seemed to effortlessly float across the crumbling of this concrete world.
Miles caught his breath and looked up just in time to catch the next train of her unrelenting brainwaves. He knew it was now or never, but that it was already too late for a premature ejection, so he’d better buckle in and prepare to be fully engulfed in the inebriation of her swirling atmosphere.
“If only there were a way to clue in the rest of the world to the great mystery that flows through each and every cell composing her symphony. To show them that they are a part of a whole, not the lost particles hurdling into oblivion that the control grid would have them believe.
The mechanics of mayhem are terrified that we’ll lift ourselves out of this state of separation, as we combine forces to throw a monkey wrench into the heartless core of their machine. So they keep us at war with each other, both on the battlefield, and with every iteration of a tale as old as time, us and them. Race, religion, sex, politics, and class divisions tear us apart, and remind everyone that you have to look out for number one, before you ever consider glancing towards those who seem to have no one else looking out for them.
So anyone born into a privilege that they can’t even acknowledge because it’s all they have ever known, which is basically everybody, in this country at least, they’re all caught up in the pursuit of increasing that privilege, as they simply try to create a better life for themselves and their families. And of course they’re not privileged, they’re no heir to the throne, they had to work hard for everything they’ve ever gotten, they grew up in the dirt and built a life out of nothing, even if the privilege was that they were allowed that opportunity to begin with.
So they work hard and save up, and genuinely think it a noble task to provide nice things for the ones they love, school clothes and TVs and central air and houses and cars and extravagant christmas lights all wrapped up in a disposable lifestyle, and then a vacation to forget it all. A life filled with the modern amenities that one can’t live without, except that there are millions living without food or shelter as our own streets are filled with humans dying of hunger and hypothermia. But what could they ever do about it?
So they don’t, don’t even think about it really, who would want to? They’ve got their own problems to worry about, the bills stack up pretty quick when you live without a care of the world, so what’s so wrong with letting those other people figure out their own struggle to survive for themselves? And now the victims of oppression are left with no voice, and any language that doesn’t spew subservience is left untranslated, so we’ve essentially sentenced the vast majority of our planet’s population to an eternal slide into nonexistence, but at least Junior got that new gameboy he’s been begging for.”
She paused her momentum to snatch a passing tumbleweed of plastic as Miles finally found a few words to contribute to the conversation.
“Okay, I get most of all that. You’ve connected some serious dots that I had no idea were part of this greater constellation of corruption. You broke down some preconceptions and untied whatever knots were tethering me to the weights of the world, to a point that I can’t unknow what I now understand to be some pretty universal truths, but there’s just one bit that I can’t get behind.”
She looked up from her street side scavenger hunt and focused her gaze onto his. Her eyes sparkled more than the dress, they seemed to reside just on the threshold of hazel and deep brown, gently fluctuating with the light and hinting at some ancient secret knowledge hidden even deeper beneath their cosmic web of entrapment. She seemed to be glowing even more than before, perhaps it was the satisfaction of achieving full-on engagement with yet another soul lost at sea, but he guessed that she was more excited by the prospect of a philosophical challenge.
“You see, the thing is, well, you do know that gameboys have been extinct for nearly as long as the thylacine, don’t you?”
Her intense preparation of rebuttal exploded into laughter, and then melted into a string of giggles that he wished he could somehow stuff into his jacket pocket and savor for the rest of time. She recomposed herself and shot him a big smile, seemed to be satiated with the tickle of his semantics, which he imagined might have earned him at least a few points along the trail of pursuing this weaver of dreams.
“Yeah yeah, good one, I shoulda known you were a funny guy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Another pause and a smile, “Not at all.”
“And yeah, of course I know that eight bits of black and white aren’t near enough to impress the current generation of impressionables. What, do you think I live on a cloud or something?”
He hadn’t ruled it out.
“No, no, it’ll never do. In order for the stores to sell out amid a mob of hungry consumers, to the point that their individual priorities allow good people to descend into full-blown chaos, well of course each year’s innovation must exponentially up the game. Eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, PS5, and wee here we go. Now we’ve accelerated the level of distraction all the way to the total engrossment of a virtually bleak reality, because even the followers know that this one is falling apart.
So now they become even further lost into the tunnel vision of technology, pretending to be the hero of some made-up land of reptilian oppressors, as they try to forget about their day job of pumping shit downstream. And it seems the controllers in charge have wirelessly bred an overgrown population of docile donkey kongs, who if they truly wanted to augment their own reality, need simply to step outside and see that we are the creators of the world we live in, because we are the world we live in.”
“Okay then, well I’m not that stuck in the digital dream, and I was already outside the last time I checked, so what can I do about it all?”
His question wasn’t aimed as another wind-up of semasiological observation, he genuinely wanted to know what to do, needed to know, and although he’d long given up on actually being able to do anything, he knew that if anyone had the answers, it was her. So he pushed further.
“For real this time, what can I do to help? What can anyone do?
I’m so tired of being trapped in this life I don’t believe in anymore. But as hard as I’ve tried, I’ve gotten nowhere in finding anything even remotely better. We’re caged rats caught in this endless cycle of barely surviving the maze and settling on whatever slice of complacency the warden deems fit. And then when you do somehow become self-aware and finally claw your way out of the cage, you find yourself lost in a room full of cages, and the terror of the implication chases you into a highway of halls, as each step along the way is only another cellblock of settlement. Sure, there’s a hopeful exit sign ahead, but it only leads to a darkened stairwell that endlessly spirals through floor after floor of captivity, but then again, the street outside is no place for a mouse to survive anyway.
And out there you’re just unpacking the nested levels of our complex prisons of industry, blocks full of buildings, cities full of blocks, and a country full of cities that offer the mirage of something better, but when you get there and the glitz of the travel brochure fades, it turns out that they’re all the same. Just subdivisions of a collapsing economic prison that has forgotten to provide the minimum requirements of sustaining life, and instead focuses on incarcerating even more inmates as the crumbling infrastructure sentences an entire planet to death.
And even if you did somehow escape all of that with a clever getaway scheme you ripped off of Ratflix, and then ran and ran until you reached the end of the developed world, you’d take one step into the wilderness and a hawk would swoop down and scoop up a tender little cage-kept snack who knew nothing of how to survive in such unfamiliar terrain.
So what can I do about it all? I’m at a loss. I’ve been at a loss. I’m in a losing battle with this wheel that just keeps spinning and spinning, no matter how hard I run. I try to be unconditionally compassionate, more than most it seems, and I try to be responsible with my personal impact to all of life around me. I recycle and give blood and donate to Greenpeace, but no matter how hard I try, the weight of just how astronomical this planetary crisis has become, only slams me to the ground, as it crushes any lingering hope that one person can do a damn bit of good against an entire empire of evil.”
Miles had exhausted the capacity of his lungs toward the end there, his face wearing the defeat he’d resigned himself to, and with another deep breath came an expression of pure acceptance.
“So I crawl home broken, climb back into the cage, and attempt to sleep it off so I can try it all again tomorrow.”