Awake
“Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
the day's divinity
First thing you see.”
In the closet dark pants hang open by the back of the waist like a rotting pirate on a swinging harbor gallows. Behind him the others, condemned men like the once-worn pair before them, hang by their legs and wait their turn. I am a scarf, bright blue, the drab remainder left behind. I am not alone, but do not actively perceive those around me. There is no noise and it is very dark, but I am not blind to colors. I step to the door to begin a quest of travel unpredicted into a deep darkness.
I know where the switch is. It clicks. All nature rushes at me; a charging bull on a man blind a deaf, I knew nothing of the approach until I am gored. When I open my eyes, I see the colors of the world are solid now, not just ideas half-remembered. They are too solid, too harsh. They bash a purple like bruises on my eyelids. I do not look at my face as I wash it.
I stumble less as my eyes begin to function. With suddenness of sound, which is imperceptibly but infinitely slower than light, a pulse-jet engine of electronic beeps announces an emergency from my nightstand. Miles away the tornado siren weeps as it is outdone. Either I am slightly early or that alarm comes slightly late. At the great expense of bleeding ears I bash this foe into submission. I can not be certain if the peace my primary senses now report is the result of conquering the erring stimulation or having fallen to it and ceased reporting entirely.
With typical infallibility I place a third sense on the firing line. Coffee is already hot, but my hands accept the temperature without complaint. I know brining this to my lips will effect equally profound detonations, but the aroma sings to me. The siren calls my warm china trireme to her and the current of habit pulls me, unwitting, without so much as wadded cotton for my tongue. First taste is bitterness like desert dunes laced with the oasis' sweetness.
A thousand chariots-without-horses cough smoke as the herd migrates from safe sleeping pastures to the daily grazing grounds. Such is the wonder of the modern world: From these ugly temples of glass and steel so much more can be farmed than ever the rich river Nile did produce for its workers. Indeed, so much children of Israel serve better Ramses could have imagined: they make bricks without straw, and without clay, and even without the sun! Never have the burning tubes of noble gas been loved and praised as the sun, but they illuminate this strange world of roofless buildings.
A market of commodities, a barter. Trade labor for goods, and time for survival. Like all good citizens, this individual follows the herd. Eventually, the one arrives. This temple is not the largest, nor the most grand, but it is his. The clock punches “time in,” and the first delivery begins.
So to, the most menial peasants serve their master: chop paper, carry coffee, as their ancestors time before time. To this one of many it falls to move the the paper from one place to another. The lifeblood of the temple is communication, and this one is a red cell.
The herds are thinner now. Thoughts of many wander to the nature of the temples. They are the houses of capitalism. They are the grandest structures in all the land, the tallest and therefore the most important. In the ancient days these were ziggurats and pyramids, for in them dwelt and labored the priest-kings, the housing of the gods. Who in life or in death decided the fate of many and insured that rain would fall and sun would shine and all could eat. Such is the power of the modern, that the priest-king is not one, but a myriad. The myriad decide the fate of all. They labor so that the many little suns illuminate their work, while their make bricks without straw or clay. This individual loves none of it, except that in the moments between temples the air and the sun, and the sky are seen.
I enter another temple. Rear entrance for deliveries. Let not the gentle customers see the rude servants. This one is my friend. We serve the same masters: debt, rent, and the stomach, but we take orders. The delivery is made. This temple has a courtyard where strangled trees fight to survive the poisoned air. It smells of cigarettes. I morn the tortured lives of these green and growing things.
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