Sky Burial (Negation)
In the morning, it's all I can do to stay awake to see my family away. This exhaustion is beyond physical or emotional, even neuronal. There's an existential deterioration that I need to address. As if the system of the universe has realized my program has run too long without a hard reboot. Now there's a timer counting down the seconds until my existence shuts down and updates behind a blank screen.
But it's not the universe's doing. I've devised this break of indefinite length all on my own. Something that I've known for a long time but have only recently accepted in a pragmatic way: No one else is looking out for me. As in, no one else can sense the interior deterioration as much as me, and no one else is responsible in recuperating those losses. I mean that in a pragmatic way. In a no-for-real-this-isn't-a-fictional-narrative-character-arc-but-a-real-world-responsibility-with-real-world-consequences type of awareness. If I hadn't made the decision to leave all my jobs (again [again]) a few weeks back, I would still be working all three. I would still be wearing myself down until my insides become a constellation of glitching matrices, and my outsides become an incoherent jumble of pixels and tattered sinews.
So, there's a countdown, for both recuperation of the past and preparation for the unknown. Today, just before midday, is when that timer reaches all zeros. 00:00. Four loops and two terminal holes.
But the moments before that termination was the irreversible process of negation; stripping away the world and the ability to process that world. This morning, sitting in the unit where my family has stayed for the past few days, I could sense the edges of my vision darken. I hugged my parents goodbye. I genuinely know that I'm always better for their presence. They safely drove away for warmer climes.
After they leave, my peripheral thoughts disappeared. The path back to the apartment was a dotted line on a wireframe map of the neighborhood. I had reserved just enough energy to get through grocery shopping this morning but, at the entrance of my apartment, a neighbor halted that task in order to chat. My brain swept up some scraps of conversational scripts, enough to emit somewhat incoherent auditory information. The exchange was long enough to alter my task list. No groceries. I traversed the last remaining lines leading to nothingness, the flattened steps to my apartment appear as nested rectangles. The parallelograms that replaced my door dissolved. There's nothing behind me, nothing ahead. Nothing inside. Nothing.
~ ~
00:00
~ ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rafael Anton Irisarri - Sky Burial
[Listen on youtube]
Rafael Anton Irisarri - Sky Burial
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But it's not the universe's doing. I've devised this break of indefinite length all on my own. Something that I've known for a long time but have only recently accepted in a pragmatic way: No one else is looking out for me. As in, no one else can sense the interior deterioration as much as me, and no one else is responsible in recuperating those losses. I mean that in a pragmatic way. In a no-for-real-this-isn't-a-fictional-narrative-character-arc-but-a-real-world-responsibility-with-real-world-consequences type of awareness. If I hadn't made the decision to leave all my jobs (again [again]) a few weeks back, I would still be working all three. I would still be wearing myself down until my insides become a constellation of glitching matrices, and my outsides become an incoherent jumble of pixels and tattered sinews.
So, there's a countdown, for both recuperation of the past and preparation for the unknown. Today, just before midday, is when that timer reaches all zeros. 00:00. Four loops and two terminal holes.
But the moments before that termination was the irreversible process of negation; stripping away the world and the ability to process that world. This morning, sitting in the unit where my family has stayed for the past few days, I could sense the edges of my vision darken. I hugged my parents goodbye. I genuinely know that I'm always better for their presence. They safely drove away for warmer climes.
After they leave, my peripheral thoughts disappeared. The path back to the apartment was a dotted line on a wireframe map of the neighborhood. I had reserved just enough energy to get through grocery shopping this morning but, at the entrance of my apartment, a neighbor halted that task in order to chat. My brain swept up some scraps of conversational scripts, enough to emit somewhat incoherent auditory information. The exchange was long enough to alter my task list. No groceries. I traversed the last remaining lines leading to nothingness, the flattened steps to my apartment appear as nested rectangles. The parallelograms that replaced my door dissolved. There's nothing behind me, nothing ahead. Nothing inside. Nothing.
~ ~
00:00
~ ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rafael Anton Irisarri - Sky Burial
[Listen on youtube]
Rafael Anton Irisarri - Sky Burial
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~