One of the Crowd

We're all in a fuckin sci-fi show here and I ain't the hero. One thing the pandemic's shown me is that I'm not Tom Cruise with the cure who'll kill his way to the top, through a bunch of bad guys, and take out a global conspiracy to save the whole planet.

Nope. I'm one of the crowd. In the scene in the movie where the ferry's jammed with cars and swarms of people and it's pulling away from the dock and people are falling into the water, I'm way at the back, not even on the dock but way back on the road. My tall skinny ass is stuck in a crush, about to be wiped out by the oncoming aliens.

It's weird though cause I'm one of the crowd but I'm also the hero. I'm on my own hero's journey here. I'm not the center of the world but the center of a world.

As one of the crowd, I move along as directed. I have no control over my actions. I'm a cog in a piece of a part of a machine in a shed in a shop out on the coast somewhere. I ain't disconnected or even disconnectable from the surrounding system. I'm integrated like a motherfucker. I'm a cell in a tissue in an organ in a body. I am a leaf on a tree.

There's no difference between me, my culture, and my society. I think its thoughts. I speak its words. And there I was thinking I was the Marlboro Man, sitting atop my steed at a safe distance, surveilling the scene with wise, silent eyes.

The truth is I'm not independent in mind, body, or soul.

The Difference Between Mother Nature and Me

I got too comfy and let my guard down.

What happens when a zebra lets its guard down?

Chomp.

I am not separate from Mother Earth. Even though I try my hardest: walking on concrete, only touching plastic, metal and glass. I am unnatural, and I live in an unnatural world.

Fuck Mother Nature. She's a pain in my ass. She's the ants in my kitchen. She's my lawn that needs mowing. She's the rain on my windshield when I'm driving to work. She's always in my way, slowing me down.

And I wonder why I'm in prison.

Mother Nature lets me do whatever I want. She's the best kind of teacher, letting me figure out shit for myself. If it gets too much and I get tired and crabby, she holds me and sings me to sleep.

Mother Nature didn't go away because I concreted her over. She is the air I breathe, the bacteria on my hands, the flora and fauna prancing around in my gut. The distance between me and Mother Nature is a half a fraction of a millisecond of a micron, not even.

Because I am Mother Nature and Mother Nature is me.

What I Want (or The Kids Fucked Up)

I want to be able to go outside whenever I want. But we've all been a bunch of dicks and now we're locked up for three to six months.

We've gotten so nasty, so fuckin dirty, so dependent on fragile systems that one tiny bat-shaped mistake got us all breathing poison over each other.

Now we're on the Naughty Step. A whole species forced to wash their hands for six months and think about what we did wrong.

Sutpidhead, I keep telling myself as I stand at my kitchen sink, looking out the window at a silent street.

The kids fucked up. Now we're all grounded. What's the best thing to do? Stamp around red-faced for a while and let off some steam then carry on exactly as before? Do we keep doing the same shit that got us here in the first place? Fuck yeah. Let's learn nothing. Let's crouch in the dust and keep torturing insects and mammals unfortunate enough to scuttle near our hunting, gathering fingers.

Or we can grow the fuck up. We can sit on the edge of our bed with our chin in our hands and stare into the distance and try to do what we're actually supposed to be doing which is think about what we did wrong in the first place.

So let's think about it. I don't know what you've done, rightly or wrongly, so I'll rephrase the question: What did I do wrong?

I'm not sure but my gut instinct is this: I got totally obsessed with a screen. I became so preoccupied with my screens that I let personal relationships suffer. I made the mistake of thinking people on screens were more important than their real-life selves, or, in fact, the real-life people right next to me. I ignored all my neighbors. I can't name a single one. I don't live close to any of my friends or family. I have to get on a plane to see my brother.

My relationship with products has also changed since getting hooked on the Screen. Now I assume buying something means looking it up on Amazon then it shows up at my door in a couple days.

Wrong. That product is an unbroken chain of people stretching halfway around the world. I was happy to ignore the people working in the shadows. Why did I allow my soul to harden? Everyone else was doing it. (Some people called out the bullshit – they've either got dreadlocks or shaved heads though.) Enough people like me were doing it that it felt normal to me.

Then a coronavirus-shaped baseball comes outta left field and knocks us the fuck out.

And so I sit on the edge of my imaginary bed and my little heart sinks because I know, deep down, that the voices in my head are right. I fucked up.