I don’t read the papers or watch the television anymore; there is no point. I don’t need the news to tell me that it’s the end of the world; I can feel that in the ache of my bones.
Somewhere in the back of his head I hear the sound of Eden’s perpetual reconstruction. I lean on the stainless railing and look down on the first spits and spots of an afternoon shower on the river’s glazed surface and see Mars’ reflection looking right back in mirror image. I haven’t shaved for days now, and I watch as Mars lifts a hand from the railing to scratch the itchy red beard at my neck.
Here in the doldrums I have no need to resist his impulses, spent as they are by the last furore. He allows me time to breathe my own memories; to recover from the exhaustion; to try and figure it all out.
“Hey Red” comes the old refrain from behind me “Didn’t your momma tell you not to stand out in the rain.” Wait for it…
“You gonna get rusted” the inevitable sniggering, as if nobody’s ever said anything that funny before.
I feel it coming up from my gut – that dead feeling, like nothing, nothing is worth it – I fight back with the hope that maybe tomorrow it’ll all be different.
It feels, on days like these, as if there is something akin to fibre glass shards that flow in my blood. They aggravate me in a truly fundamental way, a way that language cannot define. What is it that my body requires of me?
We, Mars and I, are the first generation to be born to a dead God. Freedom is our human right. Freedom - the big myth. We slave away, working all the hours of the day, stumbling home tired and irate to curse at the lies that spew from the TV screen, and to sleep fitfully in overheated houses under over-thick covers, dreaming of nothing save the prospect of freedom that comes with the week’s end.
Mars laughs quietly in the back of my head – Mars has no need for freedom.
Mars is his own god - the god of war and of vengeance.
Not for him the agonising search for meaning; or the numbing arms of alcohol or barbituate. Mars lives and acts in the moment. What Mars wants, Mars takes. Mars doesn’t care to consider that everything might only exist inside our head – the whole fucking ball game – a product of an organic operating system, a lump of meat, trapped behind our eyes like some mad ringmaster in this circus of blood and guts.
Another reason for me to avoid the papers - aside from all the other stuff, the macrocosm – I do not wish to find out what atrocities have been committed by the gods. What difference would it make for me to see all those details anyway? It is, after all, the end of the world.
Somewhere in the back of his head I hear the sound of Eden’s perpetual reconstruction. I lean on the stainless railing and look down on the first spits and spots of an afternoon shower on the river’s glazed surface and see Mars’ reflection looking right back in mirror image. I haven’t shaved for days now, and I watch as Mars lifts a hand from the railing to scratch the itchy red beard at my neck.
Here in the doldrums I have no need to resist his impulses, spent as they are by the last furore. He allows me time to breathe my own memories; to recover from the exhaustion; to try and figure it all out.
“Hey Red” comes the old refrain from behind me “Didn’t your momma tell you not to stand out in the rain.” Wait for it…
“You gonna get rusted” the inevitable sniggering, as if nobody’s ever said anything that funny before.
I feel it coming up from my gut – that dead feeling, like nothing, nothing is worth it – I fight back with the hope that maybe tomorrow it’ll all be different.
It feels, on days like these, as if there is something akin to fibre glass shards that flow in my blood. They aggravate me in a truly fundamental way, a way that language cannot define. What is it that my body requires of me?
We, Mars and I, are the first generation to be born to a dead God. Freedom is our human right. Freedom - the big myth. We slave away, working all the hours of the day, stumbling home tired and irate to curse at the lies that spew from the TV screen, and to sleep fitfully in overheated houses under over-thick covers, dreaming of nothing save the prospect of freedom that comes with the week’s end.
Mars laughs quietly in the back of my head – Mars has no need for freedom.
Mars is his own god - the god of war and of vengeance.
Not for him the agonising search for meaning; or the numbing arms of alcohol or barbituate. Mars lives and acts in the moment. What Mars wants, Mars takes. Mars doesn’t care to consider that everything might only exist inside our head – the whole fucking ball game – a product of an organic operating system, a lump of meat, trapped behind our eyes like some mad ringmaster in this circus of blood and guts.
Another reason for me to avoid the papers - aside from all the other stuff, the macrocosm – I do not wish to find out what atrocities have been committed by the gods. What difference would it make for me to see all those details anyway? It is, after all, the end of the world.
Extract from 'Markov Chain'
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