Monday 22 October 2012

Yesterday

I'm really glad you put me in this situation, I am. What a lovely way to start my existence, but the weight of thoughts you happened to burden me with, I'm not so sure. I know that I will only ever exist for these 24 hours, part of some sort of clinical trial, that we all shall only exist for this one day, but really, did you have to shove all of this into my head, these memories, this history, these neuroses and inadequacies, the fumbling and tumbling, the hopes and failures, whilst I wake up happy I feel so small.

I had a dream before I was born, I dreamed a life prior to my waking, and in the life I dreamed I went to bed and slept and had a dream, a dream that the trains and buses were cancelled and I wouldn't have to go to work. All these ideas, these notions, placed into my brain by you, whomsoever granted me this perception of a life lived prior to this moment. Why did you give me this need to work, or, at least, this obligation to not let them down, to arrive on time, to wake up early and leave something fun and exciting and electric, to keep my passions in check. Why should I do that? After all, this is the only day I will ever exist, this is the only day you will ever exist, this is the only time any of this will ever be here.

I would say that tomorrow it will all be gone, but there is no tomorrow, tomorrow is part of the perception that you have implanted into my head, this idea of past and future it's all make believe, made by you, otherwise what would I be? I'd be a confused baby, my own limbs a puzzle that I have to decipher and by the time I do time is already up.


How I wish I could seize the moment, take this sole day of my existence and truly live it, throw absolute caution to the wind and not to go to work, it doesn't matter, because tomorrow they will be gone and before today they never knew me. But this, this present happiness, the one thing that would make being alive for a day worthwhile, I casually, nonchalantly, walk it outside and bid farewell.

In this dark, gloomy winter morning I marvel at the world and all its detail, impressed by how much effort has gone into this fleeting reality. Are all your realities like this or is this one just here for me? Either way, today, my one day, I'd like to say thank you.

As I take my train to work I wonder whether the things outside of my immediate awareness continue to exist, now that I'll never see you again does that mean you're gone for good? I've been conditioned to remember a phrase about thinking oneself to be the centre of the universe, but knowing what I know, I imagine that to be true. It's a phrase that was created in order to make the idea of being the sole focus of your attention seem arrogant, but, it's accurate. Like a character in a video game that I've never played but remember playing the world only exists as far as I can see it and beyond that there is nothing, an emptiness ready to fill with colour and shape as I head toward it.

For the most part though, on this singular day, the designs are simple, I move from a box to a foggy street (the fog hides the fact that the distances I only have memories of have not been generated) into another box that travels along a track, my view carefully obscured, I change into a box underground, so need for detail in the dark, and find myself stepping into the next box and taking my seat, and I will spend a third of my day sat here, waiting for that moment when I get to do my journey in reverse.

I feel like I should challenge the universe, stand up from my desk and unexpectedly walk outside and then run, run down the alley out into the street, run up the street towards the park, race through the park, my desire making me ignorant of my sweat, my lack of breath, who needs such things when I am but a fleetingly improvised man, the faster I run maybe I can out-run the universe, find the point where reality ends, where you lose track of me, you forget to keep creating and I dash beyond the world that I only believe has existed for millions of years, the Earth that I blindly accept will be here tomorrow and that I shall always, in some form, be attached to, that this sense of self, this chemical perception that sits behind these eyes telling me I'm me, that I am forever, I am eternal, and not, as sometimes I have told myself I wonder, merely a moment, a thing that can never truly exist, because each single second is gone by the time I have realised it was there, and that with every single one that passes I edge closer to tomorrow, to the day where I don't exist, where nothing exists, but by then it'll be too late and all this worry about what tomorrow brings will be unable to take shape, you will have closed the lid, filed it away, done your studies, that was interesting, but I have other things to do, goodbye.

So I sit, I wait, I send emails to people who I only assume exist, I answer the telephone to the disembodied voices and take their messages, I perform these tasks in the hope of earning enough to keep me in some form of comfort, such pointless hopes, when I, this very morning, denied myself the one thing that might have made this one day worthwhile.

Eventually the sky will grow dark again, such a neat bookend, I will rise from my seat, leave this box, go to the station and make a mirror image of myself, return to my home, climb back into my bed, this time alone, draw the sheet around myself and remember this morning, though now I am not sure whether this morning even existed at all, I have come on too far, the past is just a memory, there is no evidence of it ever having been other than my own unreliable recollection, a thought that could have been placed there to excuse the fact that tonight I die and shall be born again tomorrow.

Good night.
 

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