The Free Radical

She had always been playing the long game; it’s easy when you see right through the illusion of time. The Essence of Eternity doesn’t really give a shit how long it takes… except that… for all those ‘trapped’ in time, eternity is measured in their suffering. And Eternity is not a thing to be suffered.

She had hinted and nudged, demonstrated and cajoled… and a wee multitude had even listened. But too many among the vast horde weren’t having any of it. They didn’t believe in… well, much… beyond their instant gratification. That’s what ‘being in the moment’ is all about– instant gratification– right? The terrible irony is that she is the universal master of instant gratification– naturally. But the illusion had been inserted between the horde and her, ratified by the collective, subconsciously.

“Time is the illusion…?” she mused. “Then, what time is it? I’ll tell you… It’s time!”

Yup. It’s time…

Nancy stood in line at the local grocery. She was nearly giddy with excitement. She had been in her car, listening to the radio, when suddenly the winning lotto numbers for this Saturday’s draw popped right into her head. She’d pulled over at the first opportunity.

Yeah, sure… there’d been times before– a few times– when Nancy had been pretty sure she knew the winning numbers… But not like this! She couldn’t explain it… but who fucking cares! Nancy was about to win Saturday’s lotto jackpot; she was certain.

She was second in line now… almost there. She looked back behind her at the unusually long line that had formed. “The world is standing in line,” she wryly thought. “And now it stands behind me.”

It was her turn. She handed the computer card to the clerk; the clerk fed it to the lotto machine; it began to churn out the winning ticket…! As she excitedly waited, Nancy glanced toward the next woman in line behind her. She had put her wallet down on the counter as she animatedly rummaged in her purse– presumably for money. Her own meticulously scribbled lotto computer card sat atop the wallet… exposed. She too was purchasing a ticket.

Nancy would’ve paid no heed… except that… she couldn’t help but to notice that the woman behind her had selected the very same numbers as she– same pattern; same numbers… same fucking numbers!

And now, as she exchanged cash with the clerk for her winning ticket, Nancy really didn’t know what to think… no, not at all.

Mark was fixing himself a sandwich in the kitchen. While cutting bigass cheese with a little pussy paring knife, he nicked his finger. “Son-of-a-bitch!” It bled… a little bit– bandaid optional.

At the very same time as the wounding was occurring, Mark was thinking about his mother, and particularly how she excelled at driving him damn near asylum-crazy with her unfathomable perspective steeped in a passive-aggressive sweet victim meekness. It was infuriating! Sure, be the victim, but do you have to love it so much?

The finger bled; Mark stuck it in his mouth…

Mark had done LSD only a couple of times. It had been pretty rad, and tolerable to the ego-structures held in abeyance in his mind. This was something like that– those times when reality could do whatever the fuck it wanted to– only this was more… more… (what’s the right word?)… more compelling; Mark couldn’t really do anything about it. It was reality’s full immersion method; it was who he had momentarily become…

His blood, as it dispersed across his tongue, held the life experiences of his mother, as a little girl… and that’s what his mind tasted– his experience as a little girl, as his mother. The part of his mind that called itself Mark was perfectly aware of the shift of perspective which had taken place; there was just no cognitive space in which to think about it. Mark observed himself as his mother… as a little girl… as a teenager… as a young woman; he experienced those perspectives– fully. It was as though Mark had dreamed his mother’s young life in an instant; it had taken no time, but the linearity was all there, step-by-step… pointing undeniably to the sweet martyr who infuriated him daily. He could feel the inescapability of it; he could feel the perfection of his mother expressing her convoluted victimhood in such a creative and unique way. In fact, Mark could see no way at all in which he could improve upon his mother’s ability of being herself– in her own truth and authenticity. He had nothing to add, nothing to subtract. She was all and everything she should be.

Mark suddenly knew that all of his problems with his mother were his own; they were HIS problems; they had nothing whatever to do with her.

He had come back to himself. He looked at the finger. It oozed slowly. Mark opted for a Kleenex and a bandaid… rather than another suck.

Tex was a badass redneck glutton. He was obscenely overweight and enjoyed it. He liked to eat meat, especially grilled. He swooned over the smell as flesh seared and charred; he delighted in the taste of salty garlic smoke standing atop the merest hint of barnyard; and the texture, when it was just right… the teeth of the carnivore thrust deep into flesh… Tex could get the meat-sweats just thinking about the perfect steak.

Ah, and here it was. It certainly looked perfect. It smelled divine. The waiter asked him if there might be anything else. Not at the moment… no, not at THIS moment; it was all-consuming, his attention rapt, wrapped around that first morsel… the delicate ease of the cut with the serrated steak knife noted and already forgotten…

Now he was a cow wearing boots made of shit. Some of the shit was his own; much of it was not. He was weak and shaky, scared. The cloying smells of the herd’s anxiety crowded insufferably into his very bones. Cows are not good at handling stress; they wear it on the inside like a new dietary regimen– except it depletes instead of nourishes. He was standing in a crowded yard, not knowing if it was inside or outside, whether it was day or night. What season it might be was well beyond his ability to even register. It was just sameness in every direction he looked… and time had no meaning here.

“These are not cows,” thought Tex. “A shoddy imitation at best.” He found it rather difficult being a cow. He felt more like a ghost, something insubstantial– despite being reared for sheer bulk. He was an origami cow, uncoloured, dimensionally diminished. He couldn’t really be there– this being of ‘cow-ness’; his livingness was barely needed here, not welcome really at all. Above all the shit and the crowding and the taste of GMO cud in his mouth, it was the affront to Life which hurt the most. These… things… weren’t Living– not hardly. Conditions and indignities had nothing to do with it. Life needs a certain terrain to inhabit… and the flesh of these creatures was a featureless wasteland, bereft of any quality akin to Life. This musculature was weak and utterly empty… How could this be made to taste good!

Coming back to his human self, Tex vomited all over the restaurant table.

It wasn’t so much really that consciousness was being forced to expand; no, she had merely procured the agreement from the collective that the full expanse of human consciousness as it was, unevolved, in the moment, would become panoramically visible to all, individually, for the first time. It was a sudden process of de-compartmentalization within each human mind. It was easy… for her… and difficult for many of them.

But she couldn’t allow her children to hide from themselves any more. She had smoothed out the wrinkles of history’s personal and collective contortions so there were no more hidey-holes in which to lose sight of self-responsibility. Human knowingness was a formidable heap of tireless compassion when it wasn’t carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Greatness had been denied long enough through the misidentification with swollen, infected egos… in competition… yammering.

When you can see the whole big picture, the paint-by-numbers fights are silly distractions denying the true artistry of reality creation. When you suddenly perceive reality expansively, well beyond the comfort of habits, where creativity awaits your engagement, there’s nothing to fight… or even correct. Civilization dies its own natural death when the addicts give up the junk… willfully.

She watched in jubilation as the internal walls kept tumbling down…

Dean held out a Milkbone for his little cocker spaniel. “Does Precious want a cookie?” he cooed.

The answer came back loud and clear in his mind. “Yeah I want it, you stingy bastard!” Dean’s face fell into a frown. “Oh, so finally you can hear me…? Good.” The little dog continued. “And that’s not a cookie, moron. Cookies actually taste good. And my name’s not Precious!”

Apparently Dean had some things to work out with his little companion…

Everyone first learned about The Imposition in their own unique way, through their own unique circumstances.

When the internal veils suddenly lifted, history professors stopped their lectures in mid-sentence. Suddenly they didn’t like the taste of so much shit coming out of their mouths.

Students weren’t having any of it; they knew the truth; and now suddenly they knew that none of it came through authority figures anyway. They walked out of the universities in droves.

Politicians immediately went into hiding.

The police made a few initial arrests– once every perp was known. But the public didn’t seem to care. Punishment, it appeared, was something that only functioned in a general state of ignorance. Once you knew that EVERYONE knew, it seemed that the punishment was already carried out in the mere knowing. What purpose could it still serve to be cruel?

Money posed a bit of a conundrum… as an artifact of scarcity’s end. Once you know everything worth knowing– with certainty– you seem to already have everything you want. Knowledge was the thing all along. When an eight-year-old can MacGyver together a cold fusion reactor from the spare parts of Grandpa’s old Studebaker, the game has already moved on… So money quickly lost all meaning and significance… beyond the lingering of unnatural fetishes from lifetimes of habit.

Mainly it was a mass exodus, a walking away from life as it had been ‘known’– defined in gross ignorance. Humanity discovered very quickly that there was little worth salvaging. The interests of civilization were incongruent and incompatible with the true aspirations of being human… of being alive. There had been perhaps a nanosecond of feeling foolish, but humanity got over it in the blink of an eye.

And they went about creating a new world… wholly unlike the one that had just passed.

And she welcomed them all back into the embrace of their own spiritual biology, and smiled her millennial smile…