Journal: Entry for Novo
The wind is older than sorrow, oh anachronism.
Author: Novo Send a noteboard
Posted: 28/08/2010 11:13:16 AM
Views: 2984
Nothing slides to a halt as was predicted, there is no apocalypse. Everything moves at a sweet, steady speed: onward, the future, warm and forgetful, a sanctuary for the ill-defined.
They named all the diseases. At first they railed against us for our awful depressive slowness, our dreary mornings spent doing nothing, our nights spent pierced by unmet needs, gory passions, old losses. Those intimate acts we bared to the world, helpless narcissists, and they scrutinized us, the cultivated souls we prized, wrote calm clinical things down, disapproved.
Our beautiful paranoia: scoffed at, they said we were not ourselves when we screamed and screamed. They were gentle, with concise movements took away our desperation, all fiery symptoms, all impossible desires. They taught us to smile evenly with no quirks or curlicues, no lingering sadness, erasing the lines we worked so hard for.
They put the new words in our mouths, we forgot the meaning of others, it started early. It doesn't take generations, after all: the adaptable mind is enough, the body gets used to everything. We speak in soft, flat voices. They could raise, rise, become shrill if they were allowed to but we have no need for the upper registers anymore.
It is tempting to say they have eradicated death, or at least everyone knows when it's coming. Witnessing death is no longer an ordeal. The funerals are polite and pretty, we all are glad to see them go, easily, into the earth. No one cries, buries a fist into the crumpling face, no one feels their heart being ripped to shreds inside of them but the flesh knows, the uneasy flesh. It corrodes and corrodes despite the best of the medical marvels, it swallows everything, tries to scream but is subdued. It is unseemly to be in agony, it is unseemly to love to the extent of madness, unseemly to miss them once they are gone.
Finally when there is no drive left, no chemical energy flushed into the veins, no hope only the primal urge to fling the body from buildings, under trains, into the smooth river with rocks in our pockets, the body tells us, it knows, whittles and pleads until we listen. This is what they used to hide, say it was accidental, always; now they accept it, embrace it, these rational minds of the bright new era.
They named all the diseases. At first they railed against us for our awful depressive slowness, our dreary mornings spent doing nothing, our nights spent pierced by unmet needs, gory passions, old losses. Those intimate acts we bared to the world, helpless narcissists, and they scrutinized us, the cultivated souls we prized, wrote calm clinical things down, disapproved.
Our beautiful paranoia: scoffed at, they said we were not ourselves when we screamed and screamed. They were gentle, with concise movements took away our desperation, all fiery symptoms, all impossible desires. They taught us to smile evenly with no quirks or curlicues, no lingering sadness, erasing the lines we worked so hard for.
They put the new words in our mouths, we forgot the meaning of others, it started early. It doesn't take generations, after all: the adaptable mind is enough, the body gets used to everything. We speak in soft, flat voices. They could raise, rise, become shrill if they were allowed to but we have no need for the upper registers anymore.
It is tempting to say they have eradicated death, or at least everyone knows when it's coming. Witnessing death is no longer an ordeal. The funerals are polite and pretty, we all are glad to see them go, easily, into the earth. No one cries, buries a fist into the crumpling face, no one feels their heart being ripped to shreds inside of them but the flesh knows, the uneasy flesh. It corrodes and corrodes despite the best of the medical marvels, it swallows everything, tries to scream but is subdued. It is unseemly to be in agony, it is unseemly to love to the extent of madness, unseemly to miss them once they are gone.
Finally when there is no drive left, no chemical energy flushed into the veins, no hope only the primal urge to fling the body from buildings, under trains, into the smooth river with rocks in our pockets, the body tells us, it knows, whittles and pleads until we listen. This is what they used to hide, say it was accidental, always; now they accept it, embrace it, these rational minds of the bright new era.
