C(P)U On The Other Side by Rich Mills

Roy carelessly tossed the apple core in the bin next to his computer. Constructed in a moment of sheer mindless boredom the waste-paper bin was an amalgam of newspaper strips and PVA glue, coated in a thick yellowing layer of varnish. Stuck to the outside sandwiched in-between the multiple layers of varnish was the headline 'APOCALYPSE CITY', which he'd purposely placed among many other carefully chosen dystopian hack comments about the state of the world at the time of construction. "Personal file," Bleep! "Diary," Bleep! "Open," Bleep! "New page," Bleep! A carefully considered pause for inspiration, in a moment of cybernetic connection Roy could feel his heart synchronise its rhythmic beat with the cursor flashing in the top left of the screen. Nothing happened, his muggled mind strained to fill a blank screen, while drive heads hovered and discs span in vacuous anticipation. He had a thought and pondered why was it that words of wisdom came all too easily while he wandered the streets during the day, while dealing with the mundane tasks of just striving to live a 'normal' life. This was meant to be a seminal moment, he'd decided before the last of his anarchic life force was finally drained out of him by spirit crushing day to day living, he'd sit down to put thought provoking pixelated characters down on harsh white screen. Still in the process of trying to boot-up his brain, that had spent a long period in downtime, he wound his jaw into a tight knot. He soon realise that the clenching of his teeth and the resulting increase in pressure on his jaw, did little to aid the eagerly hoped for ideas from remaining suspended in their somantic state. The only way to elevate such pressure when it occurred, and by way of reducing the risk of potential stress fractures to his already dentally challenged teeth, was to wedge open the mouth with a decent (well-packed) cannabis joint. Definitely this was the right time, not that there was ever a wrong time, for a drawn out drag on an illegal but morally defensible herbal relaxant. Rolled and inserted in the time it takes to consider the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Coming to the usual conclusion at such times, that all answers may not be contained within, yet once the process was under way the end became clear and he no longer cared for answers just the potential alternate experiences such quests were often loaded with. Rolling a joint was very much a ritualistic neo-tribal post-modern art-form, he mused as he sparked-up the hurriedly constructed creation. Mind now set adrift on a tranquil flood-land the task ahead now floated effortlessly alongside, bobbing too and fro just within his limp grasp. Characters started to appear on the screen in front of him, like an exercise in automatic writing. Time was? Time was becoming increasingly irrelevant as time passed onwards. In fact Roy hated the whole concept of time. He knew that it didn't even really exist at all. Time was no more than a way of measuring the length of transition between one static snap-shot moment and another. The unseen white-out between the frames of celluloid, too fast for the un-trained eye. A system of measurement not a system of belief as many saw it. Some had a belief in time as something substantial, something important, just as something worthy of recognition, as opposed to the actuality of it being a tool of human invention and no more than that. This annoyed him constantly. Roy only owned one clock, and even that he would purposely set to the wrong time. The clock was set to approximately the time he thought it was in accordance with whatever programme was on TV at that particular moment. Even this felt deeply wrong and somehow restrictively conformist, so he'd often close his eyes and set the clock to an unseen approximation of what the time might be, and most definitely was somewhere in this 24/7 world we all live in now. This was his concession to the world out there, the one invaded by and constructed around the nanosecond. Hours passed in minutes, minutes stretched out for hours and days blurred into distant memories when in a satisfyingly statuesque state of soft sensual surrealism. Hot rocks had replaced his marbles long ago. Tiny holes peppered the fabric of time, the escaping flow could not be stemmed. A simple logistical problem of too many holes not enough fingers. After all he thought, as an idea entered his head, he was no boy and she was no dyke. Not quite sure what that fleeting thought meant but he'd liked it all the same. He felt the corners of his mouth twitch upwards in an attempt at a self-indulgent smile. He stopped. Smiling to yourself was a waste of energy. The thought in itself was sufficient it needed no-frills. Plus the likelihood of a strained facial muscle wasn't going to enhance the thought process, just detract from it. Now fully submissive to this passive state of being and able to ignore the inner turmoil going on inside of the plastic and metal casing, he teased the one hundred and one erect nipples he felt before him. Like a blind man who has wisdom at his fingertips, Roy became at one with his instrument, manipulating the input so that he could attain a life affirming output. Composed in the knowledge that he would be putting his life in the hands of others once this piece of work was finished. He preferred the use of direct contact with the computer keyboard, as he never truly trusted the speech recognition software that everyone seemed to be using in such strange daze. He felt he had to extract the essence of himself from the oral world of language he inhibited. Having found no suitable means of expression across the sound-scape of that world beyond his cranial walls, he and only he alone knew it was left up to him and him alone, to define his own words in an encyclopaedic dictionary of his life so far. And so as the cloud of Paradise laden smoke lost itself in the darkness of Roy's tardy lungs, he began to let the fables of his new found land escape from their darkly recessed confines and into the world of others. ********************************* I've tried meditating on a number of occasions, but I can't clear my mind for more than a few seconds. I don't exist without thinking, I think constantly. I don't mean in the cogito sense, as it's commonly understood. What I think about are things, abstractions, not of this moment. There are those who'd argue that there is only this moment, that beyond this moment there is nothingness. Reality is just a simulation, never real just a sub-standard reproduction of a fleeting moment lost to sensorial history. Reality is the after image, briefly branded into us, quick to fade away often leaving us with some residual scaring on those more momentous occasions   I think about the Universe and how it's constructed in all its facets. I model it in my mind, spinning its green-screen 3-D vector graphic image around in a virtual space I've created inside my cranial cavity. My doughnut theory of the Universe is not quite complete though, it has a hole in it I've yet to fill   I'm drifting from my focal point in this dialogue, notably the work of the philosopher Baudrillard and the eastern faith of Buddhism, in relation to the transparency and ever changing fluidity of identity as a philosophy, within both social and cultural discourses, through subversion of perversion. Baudrillard, Buddha and Big Brother, a thoughtful consideration of our cultural, spiritual and socio-political selves   ********************************* continued below..

Collage courtesy of Rich.

C(P)U On The Other Side continued by Rich Mills

Full ashtray, dry mouth and thoughts connected with his inordinate hunger were momentarily side tracked by a juggling jester, the sight of which threw him off the long-winded path he'd set out on. He picked himself up dust himself off and looked back from whence he came. Blocking his way, being directly in front of him, as usual stood the lighthouse. Circling high above, crows swooped and chased through the brisk breeze being whipped-up off the eternal oceans that crashed against the ever eroding coastline somewhere off in the distance. Skirting the circumference of the tower the ravenous birds sort out a fresh exquisite corpse. Of no significance to the scavengers the long dead white tower was merely a resting point for them. Disused and cut-off it laid silently at a tangent to the horizon, blocking all views of the path that lay just beyond its thick crumbling walls. Scorching rays from the sharply silhouetted sun accelerated the ageing of the dried cracked whitewash walls. A tarnished brass bell swung majestically from a rotten drift wood bracket next to the iron clad and heavily studded door. Threatening to drop from its dutiful place at any moment, it tolled a generic knell for all his woes. The reflected glare of the sharp sunlight dazzled deep into the back of his eyes blinding him for a moment. He fought through it with a persistence of vision he'd not been able to muster before. The high-noon sun's radiation beat down on him hard, leaving him deaf, dumb and blind in a desert of silent running sand. He didn't give an inch, not a fucking micron, his senses hadn't totally abandoned him yet. With now eyes screwed tight shut and all musculature in tension around his slight frame, he drew breath and   SCREAMED  ! And   SCREAMED  ! While at the same time opening his eyes and his body to the external forces that surrounded him on all sides. He expelled whatever had been bottled-up inside that dark place for so long. Now for the first time ever he did not face a purely blank battlement. Staring into the immovable impermeable expanse before him, as the sunlight reduced to only a squinting gritty uncomfortable pain, focus fell onto what appeared to be a delicate scarlet thread which appeared to have caught itself on the wall's rough surface. Reaching out and taking hold of the soft silk thread it started to unravel and grow, coiling about his hand, creeping its way up his arm, endeavouring to wrap itself around his thorn whipped heart, eating away at his un-leaven flesh. Pulling away from the anchorage point of this epiphyte which had entwined all around the bastion wall, in what was now the somewhat subdued death throws of this briefly epic epiphany. The red thread snapped. There it lay motionless in his hand, in truth it was nothing more than a broken thread disintegrating before him. Reduced to a line of fine power a dying wind glanced against the surface of his palm taking the remnants of the thread with it. The fine red mist finally settled on the air around him, dancing about in front of his eyes before dissipation spread it too thinly to see with naked eyes any longer. White light, white noise, white out. Soft voice, soft whisper. "What is never lost, can never be found  " Back from his brief black out he swayed slightly but stood his ground, no longer needing the tower walls for support. He'd returned to the silence again, but now a soft warm silence. Finding himself now inside the tower, rather than as the travel weary visitor locked on the outside. A comforting summer silence was what he felt hummed about him, rather than a chillingly flat and all too coldly empty winter silence. He immediately turned and made his escape from the silent tower that had grown up around him while he'd been distracted. Leaving before the flood waters came rushing in again and exiled him back on this never ending island plateau. Being entombed in the torturous tower where even angels feared to tread, no one would have heard him screaming from the dark drenched interior. So with this in mind he took his only chance at freedom, willing to face without fear the mythical beasts beyond in this new found realm. Where sky, sea, river and land all meet in celebration of long ago bestowed natural glory he squinted at the infinitely curving horizon spun out in front of him. All lines meeting-up at some point beyond his reach and fused comprehension. Confidently striding out along the tree lined boulevard, a warming light played between the branches and the turning leaves. An iron-oxide pallor starting appear along their edges, as summer breathed its last, making way for autumn rust, leading to winter death. Dappled patterns of light and shade carpeted the broad avenue as it stretched out before him. The fall was on its way, but that no longer pressed heavy on his heart. With the remaining entrails of the thread by now visibly interwoven with half the naked flesh on his body, he knew without reservation that he'd carry the deep-rooted marks forever, this was to be his penance. In places he noticed that the thread rose elegantly to the surface, before sinking back deep inside him. Surface evidence of the parasitic thread worming through his flesh made the desire not to pick at it way beyond all forms of temptation he'd previously denied himself. "Some day   Some day soon   Before it's all much too late  " Thus in a short-lived twinkling epiphany he knew this was to become his confessional obsession, eternally picking at emancipation, Roy knew he must write. He must write and do nothing else, words must be carved in ethereal stone before the flooding came in and washed them away. This was his moment and only destiny stood in his way. As after God the only culprit that he could accuse of deception was himself, he knew that and he was ready to face whatever and whoever he put in his own way. So he thought with all his might, the result flowing forth from the wounded Manipura deep within his solar plexus. The resultant energies of which enflaming his gut, acting as catalyst that ignited a chemical reaction of his gastric juices. A manly belch grounded the would be ephemeron. Now looking at as opposed to through the display unit in front of him, words had etched themselves onto the glowing surface strung together in long locked sentence chains, all firmly keyed together, a substantial wall of words. The words that he was reading where not unfamiliar to him, in a definite case of de ja vu he knew that he seen these words put together in this order, or one spookily similar, somewhere before. Here it had been, on this particular monitor screen, at a moment just like now. ********************************* "In the beginning Godhead created the heaven and the plan..." The re-creation of a Utopian paradise halted by the white noise roar of a de-tuned car radio. Michael gripped the steering wheel holding his right arm with the rigidity of an iron bar. His left hand fumbled around in the dark, attempting to search out the next radio station along the airwaves. Screams, squeals, roars and howls, interspersed with telex chatter. "... Direct and exclusive from Metatron, our word is our promise. Now available in handy throw away byte size chunks!" Silence. A seemingly prolonged pause in a radio broadcast, breathing in a stagnant lung full, no soft warm breeze on an oppressive summer night like this one was. An audible silence hung heavy on the ears of those who dares to listen, each in their own way unwittingly forced to define the 'Mad March' road kill that lay before them. Unable to distinguish the fine outgrowths massed together in matted carnage on the poor unfortunates ravaged surface. Ghoulish curiosity swept away by an unconsciously anticipated dread, lead to a collective state of unrest. No longer sitting comfortably waiting for the story to begin, the brief period of dead-air had given them all time to think! ********************************* "Whoa, I think I'm gonna be sick," Roy spoke the words out loud for the captive audience of one. Days of wine and roaches had taken their toll, numb now becoming a commonplace emotional placebo in uninvited preferences to those of active and creative thought processes. Clearing his head while reviewing the short dopey ramblings he'd so far managed, Roy decide that the warm security of dreamtime was calling up to him. Another day's dying embers sank into alcohol fuelled submission, for the danger of fore-head meeting keyboard became all too tempting. Goodbye harsh squealing reality, hello the metaphor driven haven of R.E.M.'s recharging chemicals. "File," Bleep! "Save," Bleep! "File," Bleep! "Close," Bleep! "Shut-down," Bleep! The machine buzzed and clicked as in its death throws it put in a request for a final stay of execution, while it was still pleading for mercy Roy made his decision final and threw the switch at the wall. CLUNK! Then nothing more from the dreaded grey machine. A sharply inaudible squealing silence had entered the room in its place. Roy left unnoticed. ©  Rich Mills - July 2003

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