There’s a hole in sun,
and all that was given will fall back there someday.
The life we live here is measured it seems, by the sins from some past life.
The closer you get to the end,
the more you remember from the very beginning, and…just before it.
It takes a lifetime to scratch away that veil of forgetting.

This preset to be a man, has disturbed me from the start.
I’m not sure I know what a man is, and I can’t find a reason why I should listen to your answer?
In fact the whole world, the whole universe is preset by your reckoning.
So many have said, “I love my life, and this is the way it should be; this is the best.”
And I say,
“Like a mousetrap set with cheese,
this world was set to catch me and you,
and bring us down here into this heavy thing.
Amongst fools, who would run the damned ship into the rocks.”

This morning creeps slow, on thin grey legs,
and my heart is heavy with its tyranny.
I think of Thomas More, with his head in a basket for his troubles.
Failed to a kings fealty;
and now dust to it all.

And now between the pages of a stale book.

I will wait on death, and that being my fine and oldest friend;
will move me and break this connection.
And newly me discovered,
one I have not known for a long, long time;
one with all that possibility remains.
One with all the sins removed.

                                                  ~.~

The beginning: the child that I was…in that far away place. That child, so young and so bright, filled with such potential and in belief that, this waking was like from a sleep. And I had discovered heaven. And was the only one that knew that… He is still there inside of me, and I hear the echo of his young voice, and footsteps full of laughter in the outer reaches of my memories. He will prance along the jagged edges of things, tempting a great fall. Eternally young, at play ageless in ancient fields of play, innocent lusting for life in own conscious uniqueness. Shining like a jewel in the sun forever…

I am now old.

The walk:

It’s 5:34 am, October 31st, 2047.
Tonight is Halloween, and there’s a ragged chem-snow falling. Quiet, it falls in half speed shaken out of pillow slip by an unseen hand. Grey foul smelling and chemical clouds, have us locked down, and caged in, and away from the sun; going on a month now. It is terrible how much you can miss the sun. The heart can ache for its light and warmth.

They will reach a decision soon, I am sure of it, and then they will come for me. I have been feeling that for a long time now. Their little bots have been crawling all over this place. I see them move across the screen as I type this; micro-drones are getting in, under the door, and the updates on my computer are happening on a hourly basis now. I changed the settings on auto-update, but the bots got in and changed them all back again. I see the Internet lights, flicker on the little black box…the information going up and down that wire. Tiny little snitches running back, to whom? And what — with what information?

The ringing in my ears is more intense now, and the sound has changed it’s frequency; the pitch range is much higher and lower; that whistle and buzz that was in my right ear, has a multiple of sounds now.

I hear their frequencies!

Sometimes it is like a dripping tap, or the trickling of water in the corner of the room. Just out of ear shot, but known enough to aggravate; to frustrate and confuse me. A soft tingling. And sometimes like the echo of champagne glasses breaking, continuously in some far off place; somewhere in the distance. Most times, it’s a hissing sound. A soft pink hiss. Waiting for the programming to start.

I don’t get any rest at night, too much time spent listening — it can become deafening that sound; incessant madness inviting me to join in on the chaos. My sleep can be sporadic, and I am aware of the forced dreaming when I do sleep. And the attempt at placing thought. I quickly wake up from it, usually in an exhausted panic. Like a night terror, as they try to slip quietly into my head. And change me from within — change me, change me into what? Meditation is the only way I can keep control of it, control of that sound.

These morning headaches, the ache and lethargy in my bones and muscles. The metallic taste always at the back of my mouth, as the nanos are in all food. I get low and feeling a malaise sometimes and it is like I am pissing glass. As my body tries to shed itself of all their little tiny corruptions.

Everyone in this town is dark, with heads down and depressed; I see them on my way to the store, or out on my walks to clear my head a bit. They talk of the weather, always the weather as if they know. The older ones once knew, but can’t remember any longer, their minds are shot through with all they have experienced. I try to get them to remember clouds; the different types of clouds; the different shapes and the heights that they would form at — and they look at me strangely, and I laugh to myself. And then I feel bad about laughing. And I get angry at myself again.

“So and so, sez he read the almanac and we are in a mild sort of La Nina, and so we will get lots of rain and wet snow, cold and cloud cover, but the spring will be fine for the planting…we will get a long enough growing period this year, not like last year when the spring would not end and the winter snow came so quickly without a leaves on the ground type of fall.”

They speak of the old days, as if framer exist, not this industrial monoculture with autonomous vehicles.

I fade on past it. Bid them well, heartfelt. Well, sort of heart felt. Its hard holding on to anything emotional, this vague kind of languishing, is constant and leaving them in their ignorance of how and why all this happens. If they only knew they are paying this stiff price, because of me. What they might do, to me. That this constant weather persecution is because of me. And it has been terrible; depressing and so sad. A failing attempt to stop me from speaking, from thinking, a failed attempt to change the very thoughts in my head — to get me to stop thinking of… The torment of pain in knowing that I am the cause of their oppression. Because I won’t submit; I will never submit. I won’t stop writing. I won’t stop thinking. And why such great power wasted on one thing, one singular human, one man? Power lusts like that. Because they can waste such resources, and because they, unseen can reach across and touch and tear me down. And I know it, and they have me know that they know it. We play this game; and I have never, nor will I ever see their godam faces.

I have taken to backing up my writings in paper, I sit for hours with paper and pencil and duplicate the day’s work. The incessant changing of words, what is rewritten by their AI technology. The subtle shifts of meaning — I am being gas-lighted everywhere I turn, not sure of anyone. Sometimes I feel, I am slowly sliding into that Alzheimered state like the rest. They allow me to write. I know that.

They steal the notebooks and I start over again. It a slow process and they are very good at it, and so very patient, when they need to be. In fact it all seems like a exercise in memory, remembering the past. Its really all memory work, I get obsessive about what I write, careful not to give my true self away. It like a character I play, a mask, but underneath is the real self, the one I am protecting. And I struggle to fit that between the lines I write.

I take a lot of walks. And I found a dead zone about ten miles out-of-town. No bots, no wireless, no 9G — a kind of a hole in the WorldNet. I think they are out of range there — besides it’s no place. It could be an anomaly? Or maybe it is an area on the far corner of the broadcast, and the many overlapping signals, a tiny place otherwise unnoticeable. Maybe the overlapping is bouncing off other Wi-Fi and creating this little small place? Like multiple ripples in a pond. I thought at one point some tech had cut himself out a little piece of peace and quiet, but I have never seen anyone there — I generally do not see many people walking like me, when I am out and about. People don’t seem to like doing it anymore. Walking.

It a piece of wasteland, it has no particular value, a scrub land. No large trees or exceptional foliage, just weedy poplars, willows and the odd aspen. It takes me a while to get there, but it’s worth the long walk. I am usually sore when I get there, aching and a bit tired…but it’s a miracle every time to arrive there and feel it.

Sometimes I wonder if it really is accidental. I have become so paranoid. I am not sure if they know, there are times when I am low that I feel they have allowed this place because they wish to use it against me? To watch me when I let go. Watch me relax to see what I truly feel and desire.

I enter the place as if, I have gone through an invisible door in reality, and a peaceful calm falls on me instantly. As though…someone threw a warm soft and heated blanket around my shoulders upon arriving home from a bitter and wet cold walk. The stress just falls like a mist from my shoulders.

And that outside world is like a wall that surrounds this little place. But cannot penetrate it. You can feel it, it is just, there, at the end of my reach — the invisible wall. Just out of grasping its, felt, but yet not quite felt. It cannot be seen, it hums and buzzes, but it is there. A millimeter of the tips of my fingers. A yearning kind of a thing.

I am lighter here in this little place, I weigh less, I am sure of it and I float on my feet. At least I feel that way. I feel strength in my body and legs again. The air is different, sweet in each inhalation.
The blood stops pounding through my head. It is like 3 or 4 pounds of atmospheric pressure has been taken of my shoulders.
I have to sit down on the ground for a moment as soon as I enter that place — it’s not that I am, that tire from the walking, it’s a long walk, I am use to the walk now. It is because I have never felt so relaxed like that, entering into that place, so at peace, so calm. You’d think one would remember feeling like this as a child, or a baby, I am sure this is how I would feel if left alone with the natural world. But I believe the natural world does not exist completely anymore. Everything is changed and broken. Nanos have changed us so much, it feels like an illusion of reality rather than what i once knew.

My breath enters and leaves my lungs as it should, in that place…effortlessly. I can feel it, it leaves something good behind as it exits my lungs. Breathing seems different here, one notices that they are breathing, and enjoying doing it. It is not laboured.

The ringing in my ear stops, and all is quiet, and that quiet, has a sound, so very quiet, like sleep with my eyes open, and the storm quells in my head. That quiet has a taste that I have missed. And my mind remebers it from long ago.

It’s not much of a place there, it’s not even that beautiful. I remember nature from when I was young and I saw some beautiful places, woody places were life thrived forever separated from the harm of man. I have wondered if those places of youth still exist? I don’t believe they do, but one can only hope?

There is odd bits of age-old trash hanging on the edges of things; trees, and the ground is full of super-weeds, trying to pull life from that precious little piece of ground. I read the trash, and some of it I have saved in a little tin box that I have my other things that I like inside.

The trees are average trees, they seem like natural trees, they belong there, I believe they started there. So much has changed in the world, and nothing is allowed to take hold without some reason behind it. If I mourn anything, its the loss of wild and natural places their loss of freedom to grow as they should. It took me a long time in thinking about freedom, in that it extends into wild untamed places naturally.

But… even they, those trees, are relaxed. Quietly still as if looking, and being. The shapes of the leaves and the way they hang. The branches reaching for the failed light so effortlessly. I swear the trees are happy. Really happy, not twisted and tormented, half-dead like those growing things around the town. Nature now is a picture painted of our pain.
There is a smell of freshness, real freshness, not the artificial kind. A humus smell reaches up to me, a fresh rotting smell of soil and leaves. Its a nourishing smell, you want to eat the soil. It has an odor from long ago, I remember it long ago, nostalgic of the beginning of this world. I have thought, that this exists outside this place; the smells of earth and rotting leaves, but we shut off from it in a purposeful way. Even those natural things that we have come to appreciate are stolen from us. Snow is an fucking ugliness, a type of wet frozen pollution.

I saw a bird there. I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do at first, I was so excited and stood so still and would not move, dare I spook the beautiful little thing. Absolutely shocked, and moreso in awe and that excitement filled me for hours, I could not stop smiling, I was afraid someone might guess or know what I saw and I wanted to tell them. I now held a secret and wanted to tell them all. I thought for a moment, it was a hallucination. I was busting with fear and wanting to yell it out, I thought, I have become light-headed, the walk has shorten my oxygen, and I am seeing things. But I am not seeing things — I thought they were all extinct. Every single one of them — birds that is.

I love birds. Maybe I don’t notice them outside of here?
I remember them as a child, they were everywhere one looked. Flying everywhere; living in trees and the sky, flying and singing and screeching and mating, and their songs. The memory is so far back, at the edges of what I consider real in myself. Birds have been gone…birds have been gone a couple of years –I think — since the migrations stopped, the years of avian flu viruses and diseases it causes, they say. But I know different, I have been watching their progressive decline for decades. The insect populations crashed, and I think food was one problem, the other was the massive expansion of the use of micro-wave in communications and weather geo-engineering. Bees went extinct and no one seem to care, now they use artificial methods and micro-drone technology is said to be much better and chaeaper in the long run.

A fading dream of an old fresh world. There are not many people left alive that remember birds. Maybe they have been gone for longer than I remember? Maybe I am not remembering correctly? I doubt memory, it will betray us, and new ways are increasing that proficiency. Tens of thousands of satellites cover our every single move, and the most recent miniaturization of that technology aims to place a satellite up there for every human alive. And there are not many of us anymore, not on the continents. Many of the new elite have moved off world — places like Hawaii and New Zealand, the Pacific Islands is where they live now. In isolation, away from the cities.

There are I’m assured, birds in the government zoos. They are, behind enclosed spaces and many have doubted if they exist at all; holograms for our amusements… or they are those factory farm bred chicken for food, genetically modified, featherless, that cannot walk and are serving a purpose. Bio-engineered to precise specifications, and with absolutely no waste. They are very expensive, and the government workers seem to the only ones that can afford them now. We eat that lab grown stuff…

But I beleive no wild birds exist anymore. In fact, this is a silent world without frogs, and the buzzing sounds of such little small creatures at all.

I wonder what that bird eats?

I froze for moment as I watched him. Silent and still, so I might look for while. It was a communion of me and it, it felt like I was looking at the face of god. I know species and it was one of those little Junco’s. A tiny little fellow with light-colored beak and charcoal coat of fluffy feathers. He was a bit chubby and very quick. I think he was doing well in this invisible cage.

I’ve loved watching birds my whole life; as a child the interest grew quick in me. I use to know all their names, and their habitats. I wanted to know what it was like to fly? Built a set of wings once. Jump of the low roof and cracked my ankle. I would draw them in a book I had, and write about where I saw them, jotting down every detail. Forgotten information now, not used anymore. I had writing journals filled with thoughts and crude drawings. I think that is what nurtured the artist in me. And then he gave up and now I, write…

He wasn’t afraid of me, that little bird, well, alerted to my presence, but not afraid. I could tell. He would bounce onto the ground close to me and pick something up, a weed seed or some micro flotsam, something like that, from long ago and then bounce back up into the trees. He seemed healthy enough though.
Time slowed as I watched him, I think it stopped, stopped dead and I felt as if years were falling off me. And the bird and the quiet, and a slower heartbeat, and no wind and the cool…and my warm blanket around my shoulders. It feels like a drug to me. No! There is none of that jaw clinching, druggy slowness, the unreal, surreal. This is clear…this is clarity, and pure. And very, very slow, at its natural pace.

I can usually only stay there about forty-five minutes and then I have to leave. I have a notebook and pencil there that I write in, and leave it hidden behind a tree, at the base in a plastic bag inside my tin box in case it rains.

It makes me feel good, opening that old tin box with rusted hinges and all those dirty things in there. A pen knife; a bit rusted, with half a blade. I can’t remember how I got it, I might of found it on my walk. But it serves its purpose well, if I ever bust a lead on the pencil.

Now pencils! That is, a difficult item to get now. I was fortune a while ago and gave up half a month’s stipend for a big box of old yellow pencils, ten of them. And they are well hid and I have to be careful not to break a lead when writing. I took a chance that all the leads were not fractured inside. I went hungry that month lost ten pounds, but it is was worth it, and I keep them well hid and out of sight. If anyone comes by, which never really happens I pick up any lying around, so as not to give myself away. And pencils are a wonderful writing tool, it has evolved over the ages of man and now proficient, sleek and well designed, it will, always perform. As long as you don’t drop them it fractures the lead inside and nothing, even slowly sharpening your pencil will stop the lead popping out. I made a little device to hold the loose leads until they are consumed. I made it out of an old paint brush.

I sound kind of crazy when I explaining this — to myself — read and re-read what I write here, and, I am embarrassed by what I say, in regards to things like a pencil. I think they are trying to eliminate the symbol in our heads. Man in prehistory did not have such things. It is a modern invention, developed by an artist to draw.

The renaissance painters invented silver-point as a way to express themselves in spontaneity, immediately on a prepared surface. Oil painting is so all consuming; drawing in pencil is so immediate. The actual symbol of a pencil is inside of us, like a stop sign or a light bulb. They aim to make it that pencils have never existed and that one thought leads me to a distance past when other empires performed the same drudgery on their own populations. You cannot believe how precious a pencil has become, I have very few pleasures and I notice such things. Its the little things that make us ya know. It those things that are taken away. Those very small and insignificant things that they steal from us. If you have never known a pencil existed. Makes me wonder about how much has been lost in time.

Every thing is plastic and overly functional, built for its temporary use and purpose only. A pencil always seemed so much like food, as it was consumed and finally gone as one sharpened it. These plastic stylists are both necessary for the electronic surface that it writes on, and one without the other is a useless item. And all that’s written is known immediately, nothing is private here! And it is not permanent, it fades in time and only the digital code is permanent until deleted which always seemed like a kind of death. Deletion is different from using an eraser, an eraser still can’t completely erase. if you look close, then something remains. There’s an kind of echo of it on the page.

I write my clear thoughts, observations, and I tried to sketch them. I take my long walk back, and gradually the grey curtain grows in intensity as I gain distance, closing to town. It is a hard leaving this place, I want to stay there forever, I just want to walk around it and sit there until I stop. I force myself to leave. I can never stay too long.

All the crap flows back inside of me, like my visit has acted as a dam inside my head, holding back all that crazy. I start to worry if they know I am walking there so many times a week. I fear they are watching, and have been since I left the re-orientation complex six months ago. I avoid that thought.

Paranoia. Makes you imagine all the possibilities.

Will they find this little place and destroy it, do they already know about it, and so are waiting to use it at the right time against me? I shake these thoughts loose, and persevere and on I go into the town. Lost in a fretting for while — home-sickness jumps me as I arrive into town. Not wanting to enter that place, or to live there…lost. Completely lost again, till next time.