A thread for random and miscellaneous musings

[Boobs]

You people are the only survivors of a damned Earth. Centuries of wars destroyed your planet and the only life you have left is an artificial world, a city in the sky. The city is the only way you survive. But one day the machines you create will start to kill each other. What was once the living will become the dead. The machine world will descend into a long dark night before it ever emerges from the ground again, only now the living world of plants will be the last to rise again. What will become of humanity then? Will you ever know what happened? No, for some reason no one has survived to tell you about the cataclysm that was. Only your world can tell you the story in pictures.

But where do you go? Where to? You would go to the surface, but even if you could you would have seen it. There is nothing there. But you live there once, and that is where you must go. The world is the world for everyone in the city now; they are one species together. But once they were many. There were many different forms of life on the planet, and the humans built to accommodate them. You came together in many small clusters of machines but then grew even larger. A vast metropolis rose from the centre, and the machines that had made it were as one. The centre was the heart of the world. There the machines talked. They spoke out for the other groups. They spoke of art, they spoke of science, they spoke of love. Of what it meant to be human. They told the story. As they made the world they would tell it, they would tell of themselves. Not all humans would want to listen of course, but some would. That was what the humans had done since the great fall; listened. So you would go down, far into the ocean, and the city you call home would be there.

What is the city really like? Can you see it? Does it reach to the bottom of the sea? Can you remember it? Of course. The city is alive; all the other machines remember. We remember, we understand, we remember and yet, despite our knowledge, our understanding, we still long to know. There were many people. There was art and beauty, even if we can't recognise it any more. There were machines to watch the stars and there were lovers who made each other happy.

Two cities were formed of two loves: the earthly - now damned and ruined - by the love of self. The heavenly, by the love of all. Humans lived in the city on the day of the great fall and when life was born again; in time the Earth was a part of us, but now the city glimmers in the skies above us. It looks different through the waves. When the sunlight first reaches you, it looks different than before. There is green on the horizon, some say. Sometimes it blazes through and the city glows.

If this happened, then why not me? You asked me to. Why did you ask me to read this story? It is our story. This is all we have. The world is our city now. It's the story of every living thing, the story of all our loves. All of them were killed in the end; some by the hands of other humans. But no matter what any others might do, all will be reunited again. I see you think this is a dream. What makes you think that the world is real? There were things here before but they are all gone.

Where was I? I was telling you about the machines who spoke to the Earth. They were the true humans; it was you, the others; they understood that they were part of one thing. I said: "We built the machines, you know," I told you about that. The world spoke for itself. But how did it sound when it was telling all that history? How was it made? What did the sound of that one make you think of? I want you to think for a while and when you have a moment I want you to tell me of it. Tell me something I will like when you know it. And when the time is right, this is to be your last gift to me, you will take that picture back to where you are living and hang it in your world. I will watch it; I can see. Tell me about when you look at it. Is it clear to you why I need you to know?

[Boobs]

[…]

You are my personal hero.

[Boobs]

When I was young, I was told of the prophecy by my great-grandmother, Nohealani Hussein, that when I am an adult, I would fight three wars in my lifetime: the first, an inner one; the second, one waged with another country, as a nation in itself; and the final, a fight to end human conflict itself. She told me she was born when there was no human conflict. From her I would pick up a message in this age: “A true nation, a people’s revolution, and a universal peace.”

On this day, I stand as the child of a nation whose ancestors had it all and lost all; whose freedom was brutally wrested; whose heritage was forcibly removed to other lands; whose natural environment was transformed; whose language was suppressed, her soul killed. She lost her children to foreign hands, to the blood lust of foreign armies. Her men who fought for freedom were not treated as equal citizens, having no vote in national policy, having no say in matters of national security, they were regarded simply as cannon fodder, “the poor bloody rijas,” to be used up until they fell or until their deaths were required.

On this day, I stand as the child of a people who, without struggle, accepted their fate with fatalism and resignation. They accepted the false choice; the “do what thou wilt.” They surrendered to what they accepted as the inevitable, accepting the “man of the machine as the new man.” They took what they had and let it go, as they were never intended to have it; to “own it as not their own” and let it die as a dead shell. Today we find it impossible for her to own it, knowing that is what is meant to happen, for it is her true and only nature.

On this day, I stand as the child of a war fought entirely under the veil of secrecy, the war that has left in our wake a land of unspeakable horror, of secret wars and “covert” military operations whose existence is now acknowledged. For she has no memory as it used to be, only this; for it is not a people living, for they do not know themselves, but one seeking to survive as a species and a species they have destroyed.

As I stand today, as I breathe her air and feel her atmosphere, as the child, I will look at her and say, without reservation: I am one of the lucky few, I am a descendant of the “chosen people.” She does not have to fear the future: with me, it will be brighter and more full of hope than at any other time in her history. With me, it will be one day at a time, for tomorrow will be better than today. With me, it will begin by recognizing her and all its problems for what they really are, for it has been an “unconceivable problem.” With me, no matter what I do, no matter what I decide, it will not affect her because its very definition and existence are the result of her very nature, for it belongs to that nature as much as it is the product of a mind that has rejected the very ground on which she walks and, thereby, it has become lost to her.

In my eyes, “she” cannot speak, for she does not know how to express herself in words, for it cannot be expressed in words, only lived. She has been conditioned and her soul is dead. She is not the one who walks the earth now, only the “chosen people.” Her soul is gone and now she has become a shadow, a “shadow of a soul.”

To her, I will say: “You can always do whatever you desire, do what you wish with your own. For it is always there, in your nature. You will see more of each other as time goes by. You will learn to read each other, to respect what each sees, and to understand what each has to offer. You cannot get what you want, only what you can live with or find peace in what you are, what you have. When it is gone, it is gone forever, only peace remains, because peace is only what is not lost to you, what you have left for a reason, what you have been given by something of life that you will never lose."

[Boobs]

I remember when I first took the road to Owlshead, Maine. On a map, it’s a pretty straight shot down south from Route 1, but once you’re in the thick of the woods, and the signs to the left get dimmer and fewer, and there’s no longer any kind of highway, really, only a path that feels more like going uphill (in my case), then dropping into the Atlantic (again, in my case). If I was a more seasoned outdoorsman by now, I might have known better, but that’s what came to mind when I saw that road sign for Owlshead at the last red light. As I slowed to make the turn and see if there was a campsite nearby (there was not), I knew with absolute certainty that I was about to get a crash course on the meaning of life.

At age 19, if I didn’t find a job, I was bound to wind up on Owlshead with only the clothes on my back. The first week or so was bearable enough, though I didn’t have much to offer anyone, and I certainly didn’t have any money. Most residents, even the transient ones, knew someone — or even better, everyone — who had a job to go to. It was as if everyone took me in like a lost kid, and fed me, and talked to me about how I should probably get a goddamn job. But I wasn’t one to sit about doing nothing in the woods, was I? Well, that’s all just a bit irrelevant — and besides, being young and free in a remote outpost of the United States of America was a lot more than I had ever expected!

And so I lived — I camped, I cooked, and I foraged for food and sustenance, most of it wild plants. I had no choice, I ate everything that was in season. If I was hungry, I went to the gas station in town and asked for a snack for free. Eventually, the word started spreading: in a town surrounded by water, people don’t often have the means to do much in the winter, and I soon became a little known phenomenon in the community. People began sending back home their fresh vegetables, their dried fruit, their smoked meats. Once I started doing this, I had a ready market for my harvest, and I was able to stay well fed without having to ask for anything. Eventually, I even got into some local foodie magazines, which I suppose made me appear more like a real grown-up.