• Vol. 05
  • Chapter 06

if you head east on the pulaski, you’ll see for yourself what it means to be alive

it was right here i was standing when the moon came out from behind the door where it hid most of the night, and they say we are not automatons, that we have our own mind if which we're all aware and which guide us through this world, but some mornings it feels as though our greater fears might just be confirmed: we are only accidents with consciousness running through this existence giving life and taking life where our collective id demands… have you seen them, by any chance, the ones frozen for all time, the ones planted in the same, the tides overtaking them twice daily?… have you seen them, the ones aimed at the east so that it appears as though they're welcoming the dawn when, if you ever asked, they wouldn't really know why they were there?… oh, i think you have seen them, we've all seen them, it's just that at times our memory won't allow us to access what it knows might send us all over the edge for once and for all… but do you see how beautiful the colors, how busy the scenery? –do you see how it all distracts from the question implicit and yet so obvious, it's just a farce of a farce that we're all not struggling with it: our bodies disintegrate a little more every day, yet there's the biological imperative to make us think we'll live on through our children, in our bloodline… we die and there's nothing at all can be done about it, so look up at the moon that inches every more slowly out of orbit, that will one day be gone, but no worries because your children's children's children might just be where we are now and struggling with the same question of consciousness, of existence… and what might they discover that we could never in our own lifetime?…

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if you head east on the pulaski, you’ll see for yourself what it means to be alive

that whatever purpose we create is our own, that we are insignificant in the grander scheme of the cosmos, that there is no deified host behind all this scenery judging us, damning us, waiting for us to help complete his divine plan?… we could tell them all of that right now and saddle them with this burden upon their mantle…but then they'd never gaze up at the moon like i did last night, and, yes, one wrong move left or right, back or forward, and it's lights out, for sure…but now that the hand can at last be seen, we know it's a bloody one, we can take care, we can take control – this is what we'll tell ourselves and each other as the music begins to play because it is a new day and as you can see, really and truly, any move could be considered a wrong move: when it's your rules, though, this can be a fluid thing, no?... unless it's gravity you're arguing with, then any hello is also your goodbye…

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