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.