I want to Live
Doesn’t that sound empty? We are alive, but how are we living?
Day to day, swimming in the gray flow of monotony:
Trying to savor those precious minutes of sleep before and after crushing the snooze button
Finally getting out of our hallucogenic state, walking then standing in front of the bathroom mirror
What do you see? You only see a shard, a reflection, and a mirror image of yourself.
The sand underneath your eyebags, the morning drool dripping from your mouth, your messy bedhead, and the ritual-slumber clothes you wear.
Clothes: what are they good for other than hiding our vulnerability- our naked and fragile flesh.
Might as well pick up a decadent set of black silk pajamas in case you’re murdered while in La La Land.
No longer looking dressed to kill, but really- suited to die.
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The faucet turns on, and cold water splashes your face. Imagine water- something so calming, nurturing, and life-quenching- could shock us back into reality.
No wonder why eels are scary- mini scaly bottles of lightning that can surface from a pipe and into my toilet.
You don your day clothes of business this and business that (whoever tabooed pajamas in the workplace must wear a suit and tie to sleep)
With a cup of black coffee, you’re ready for the day. To think, something so black as death can give you life.
I never understood why adults needed coffee every morning- how they worshipped their Keurig and imported beans from Brazil. Maybe, the world doesn’t end with a bang but with a coffee bean.
In the blue collar workforce, coffee is second to water; your Keurig or whatever generic coffee maker you have is the pseudo fountain of life.
Coffee is masqueraded water- just blacker, tastier, and more expensive (Explains why everyone goes to Starbucks- best flavored water with whipped cream on top)
Yet, water and coffee have the same purpose- to energize our veins and shock us back to our reality.
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You hop into your car- Honda, Toyota, Subaru- whatever Japanese car that America exported to get us on the road and on the way to our mundane jobs- or capitalist responsibilities. The sluggish commute of dead end traffic, inching to the final destination (No. Not the horror movie where everyone dies. But, the office is a close second.)
The road is a dangerous battleground; everyone baring their rubber talons, trying to make their way through the left lane and the right lane. Using their signal lights as peacocks and finally flocking and nesting at the Mother Hen coop.
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Finally, clocked into the infamous 9 to 5, what a great Dolly Parton song! Keep working, working, working…
Being stuck in that temporal bubble. Bubbles were so fun and refreshing as a child- seeing rays of light refract and oohing and aahing at the luminous sheen on the aqueous surface. Popping each bubble, whether small or large, with our grubby, sticky fingers, not knowing that each pop eventually meant our childhood innocence vanishing in an instant.
That workforce bubble filled with attending meetings, kissing up to your boss for that needed promotion, and answering emails with “Warm Regards,” “All the best,” and the good old “I hope this email finds you well.” Digital greetings that masque our dread and disgust. Surrounded by other multi-colored feathers, who are supervised by the COO, or corporate operations officer. You cluck away at pencil and paper, trying to discern your chicken scratch from last week’s meeting notes. Tik Tok. Cluck Cluck. Engaging in time theft by stowing yourself in the middle stall of the bathroom, tapping your feet on the clean, Lysoled floor, and scrolling through social media. Shit! Your supervisor walks in and it’s time to roll up the toilet paper and, finally, flush away.
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It’s 5pm! Time to leave- it’s peculiar how some people have an extremely accurate sense of time. Following a schedule, being in time truly means that we represent time ourselves.
“Hey look, Gary arrived. Always 15 minutes early right on the dot, like clockwork.”
That swinging pendulum within ourselves, keeping us chronologically correct, ticking, ticking, ticking… If time was an organ, it would be the heart. The time bomb in which emotions and blood implode and explode. Those bump-bumps- those significant yet unnoticed beats that keep our flesh prisons alive.
Perhaps, we created time as a human construct to have control against the astronomical world above us- how the sun and moon dance across the sky. … I don’t get paid enough to ruminate over this; I need to get home and make dinner.
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The drive back no longer feels like inching forward from this morning’s vehicular congestion; instead, it feels like you’re jogging, running, and, finally, SPRINTING at the speed of light… or whatever is legally possible without being caught by highway patrol. I’ve always wondered why driving to a place feels longer than returning back home.
I recall an article that our sense of time feels faster when we retrace our steps because we experience this sense of euphoric familiarity. The landmarks, the trees, the streets, the entrances and exits- are something known to us; our minds no longer have this sensory overload of taking in the new scenery. We’re just cruising off into the sunset and finding our sappy, happy movie ending.
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You’re tired in this post 9 to 5 zombie, capitalist stupor when you trebuchet your business shoes on the floor, your business attire on the floor, and your business self on the couch. Eventually, sinking in crevices and drifting into sleep. Another alarm wakes you up. No, you’re not late for work- Ugh, that PTSD like trauma from the alarm- ringing like a machine gun. You. are. Hungry.
You slog through the kitchen, opening the fridge and finding nothing solid. Just cool air and bottled liquids. Closing the fridge door and checking your phone, you scroll through fast-food delivery… And the prices are outrageous. $10 delivery free for a burrito bowl from Chipotle! You could just pick it up and save money; you need to go outside your house and the office- try to meet people and socialize. Yet, that means getting dressed, looking presentable or rather socially acceptable that you’re not perceived as unhoused or mentally unstable. Fuck it. I’ll order in. With a tap here and there, ready to place that order and satisfy the hole in your stomach. (No wonder why humans are lazy) WAIT. I got to check my checking account; Total = $9.61. What’s today? The 14th. A day before you can redeem your paycheck, earning back those hours and hours of logging information into a screen.
Returning back to the fridge, that cold beer be looking like a 5 course Michelin meal. You chug it down and will care about the beer belly in the future. Stripping off the last bit of your clothes, you saunter into the shower and have the blistering hot water cascade all over you. You AH and OH until your body acquiesce to the hell water. Maybe, we use it to actually feel something other than boredom, hunger, or ennui.
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Once again, putting on our ritual-slumber clothes and laying ourselves in our personalized, tempur-pedic, and memory-foam sepulchures. Flat and lifeless with the popcorn ceiling above you, feeling as if it can collapse and crush you like a kernel at any moment, you hop onto the bright, rectangular screen for bytes of serotonin. A like there, a heart there, a tweet there, a share there, but do you even have a social media presence in that digitized world? Do you even have a presence in the real world?
Am I a shadow lurking in the light of others? Sneaking my way through society like a shitty ninja with my black medical mask on… (No wonder why they call it a blue collar job, I’ve got sadness stuffed down my throat) Shadows follow us, and I’ve been that black sheep following everyone but myself.
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I’m sad now. Phone turned off and alarm set. Snuggled underneath my blanket cocoon, the warm surrounds my body and my carbon dioxide becomes my aromatherapy to sleep. Living in this trichromatic world of grey, black, and blue. Silence and sadness are my friends.
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Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any will to live?
