Friday, May 20, 2011

Stop

I used to think life on land stood still while I flew. How could things even happen while with the seat belt fastened? The seat belt sign has lit. Please go back to your seat, and continue to wait like a docile cow until you reach your destination, ironically far away from your destiny. Remember, smoking is prohibited.

It turns out that reality is exactly the opposite. Time stops for YOU, the passenger, for the duration of the flight. Nothing takes place in YOUR life during the miserable hours in which you cram your body to fit on the anatomically incorrect receptacles you are assigned to.



You stop aging, your old ideas freshen up and present themselves to you anew (subconscious racism, homophobia, the traditional role of women in society), hair stops growing and falling, bacteria in your mouth multiplies while your immune system ignores your body's cry for help.



When you manage to land, in another place and at a different hour, people close to you may notice you changed a little. Less patient, slightly easier to get you annoyed, uncapable of finding humor where others see substantial comedic value. The behavioral resemblace with your parents, which you thought you had finally overcome, evident in all its glory. But you didn't move forward. You didn't move backwards either. You reached that special point in evolution only available to those that managed to stop. To really stop, as your physical you advances at the greatest speed you are likely to achieve in this life.

They always told you life goes too fast; that you should take time to smell the roses. No one told you it wasn't really about the roses, not even the single serving version that accompanied your airline breakfast to add color to those cold and tasteless microwaved scrambled eggs.

Today you asked me about my day. Once again, there was nothing that deserved to be mentioned. I just wasted another day of my life, mostly while sitting uncomfortably on a plane... Going nowhere...

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The hidden blessings of corporate life

Writing simply because you are bored is the quickest way to help others lose interest in the same fashion you managed to do so yourself. There is nothing in the plane I am on right now that will amuse me. Also, this migraine combined with nausea will end up making me ignore my seat neighbor's loud sleep as I run to the bathroom to empty my stomach in a blissful of acid vomit. A single serving barfing bag won't do this time, as I plan to empty my insides of both food and soul at once.

As I reflect on what made me feel this way, my thought process departs from physical agents. It wasn't what I ate, drank or snorted. It wasn't even the insanity of my job, nor how taxing it can be on my fragile spirit. As is frequently the case, a combination or factors conspired to have me want to reach down my throat with my bare arm and pull stomach and intestines out my mouth. Once again, germane amongst these factors is the inevitable "moving on" syndrome commonly affecting adult life.

Everybody is moving on with their lives. Having kids, buying a house, getting promoted, traveling as couples... Cars, washing machines, strollers, ties, diapers...




As normal people get their life in order, as they push their existence in the direction of their choosing, the inevitable process of losing them forever goes on the same way blood invades the clothes of the wounded.

Work has a numbing effect that helps throw these feelings of abandonment into oblivion. Work does not enslave, it liberates. It does not pollute the soul, it purifies the mind. It provides us with a false yet valuable sense of accomplishment that will allow us to go on with our purposeless lives, essential for emotional survival.




Dear Corporation:

Thank you for providing me with the circular running wheel that, save a few moments of painful sanity, keeps me thinking I am going somewhere. Without that, without religion's promise of a better afterlife, without a future or a reason, I wouldn't have made it this far alive.



Another glass of scotch will do the trick. Who cares about this nauseating headache? Scotch will once again come to my rescue. I need to be sedated in preparation for the open chest surgery that is life.

I raise my glass to you; its very content.