‘Tis sad to see that my wish — to have some dreadful disease that would end my life — has never been fulfilled.
Instead, my general practitioner tells me I am getting healthier as I get older because I have taken good care of my body.
What the hell?
You mean I won’t die of natural causes any time soon?
I wander the wilderness of this planet that we pretend is tamed with concrete sidewalks, asphalt driveways and paved parkways, never able to do more with the sets of states of energy than what they are, never able to get outside of this universe.
I shake my fist at the sky, shouting that my subculture is just not enough to make me happy — I have killed with my bare hands, I have tasted infinity, there is no love for the comfortable confines of a subculture which never truly contained me.
During the month or so of much-needed/wanted/desired self-reflection upon the threshold of self-actualisation, I assimilate my alliterative allegories and wander aimlessly.
Twixt which tweets, texts or twigs do I twist?
Having held death in my hands, there is little more to call my own.
Having stood on the edge of the abyss, there is little in the normal world that surprises me.
Yet, I want more.
I,I,I wantwantwant moremoremore.
I give the members of my childhood subculture their happy connections to our shared symbol sets, telling them I’ll perpetuate their beliefs for them and make them believe I believe them, too, if that makes them happy.
I have padded about in this comfort zone, lining the nest financially so much that I almost can’t get out of the nest or at least have raised the walls high enough to give me pause.
If only I had the impetus to generate enough income to construct a ladder or a means to helicopter myself out of this nest…
But for what purpose?
What is the core self, if there is one, the core burning desire to achieve something I am not achieving or do not see myself achieving, from this base of operations, this dilapidated modified ranch house with cathedral ceiling propped on a hillside over a crawlspace?
I am an amateur philosopher/maker/poet/writer who has been able to live below his means long enough and live in relative peace with a partner, his fellow 12-year old summer church camp attendee turned penpal turned wife of 27+ years, so that I’m closer to being stuck at home with both of us in our retirement years wondering what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives.
In other words, everything well within the normal range of people belonging to our subculture.
That, my fellow chickadees, is a revelation that hits me again and again about once a year, from when I was five, wondering how many more of the clueless adults around me I had to keep putting up with (and still wondering why!) to when I stood at the front of the church as my bride walked up the aisle to me and knowing that committing to marriage was the worst betrayal of myself that would ever happen (because I do not believe in marriage) and so on.
What I want out of life is to eliminate the self, not MYself, but the concept of the individual as more important than as just another set of states of energy generated by that burning ball of cosmic dust we call the Sun.
Then and only then will we see what the universe is, will we be able to move beyond our Earthcentric thoughts and onto the Next Great Thing that has nothing to do with the popular image of gadgets and gizmos to sell on the open market under protective cover of undercover government agents and privacy-intruding marketing departments.
Yet, how do we move a species to build spaceships for Martian settlement without peddling a lot of stuff on amazon.com and through paypal?
How do we promote the concept of conspicuous consumption in order to siphon off thousandths of a penny per sale for space exploration without overselling the concept of the individual?
Perhaps I shouldn’t care. Perhaps allowing the religious concept of the soul in society is equivalent to allowing the economic concept of the consumer in society?
What, then, of the rise of the atheist consumer? How do I address the issue of the atheist in the future where we need pooled resources to seed celestial bodies?
Euphemisms and symbology, that’s how!
