Dead, by the rules
Our bureaucracy is so thick, so heavy, so integrated into our heads and our skin and our internal systems that we don't even realise it is telling us what to do. That it is taking our ability to live and devouring it like sweets. That it is killing us. And, that in response to this, we are laying down like sleeping dogs in the sun to have our heads and hands and legs cut off.
Did you know you can't drink water without chemicals in it these days? Did you know you can't drink the rain without breaking a law? Did you know you can't even catch the rain to use for anything without having a state-issued permit to do so?
Did you know you can't sleep somewhere without paying for it?
Did you know you can't even live anymore without money?
There is something deeply grating and deeply depressing about that to me.
Something that my skin cries out against and my heart strains to run from.
But it is something that I cannot outrun.
Or, if I could, I haven't discovered how.
But I'm willing to learn. Willing to leave this all behind for a life that humans once had, that was much richer than all this convenience and ease and complacency.
To know what a bird's calling means, and have it mean something more than a mild interest. To know how to fell an animal, take its flesh, eat and use the remains out of necessity. To forage for edibles in a wild landscape, and actually need to survive from them. To understand what the plants did, how they lived, how they grew, and to know how to use them out of a need to use them - not out of a interest to be interesting and unique.
To be free from the ridiculous laws that are apparently protecting me from death - at the cost of the quality of my life. To be free from the ridiculous laws apparently protecting me from the danger of my fellow human - at the cost of a true community.
I am wanting increasingly more and more to run away from all of this, just drop the keys and leave it all behind. To run into the wild and try as I might to survive. To be wild and free. To make some little place for myself and own the cost of my living there and to know the reality of what my living is.
But even that I can't do without money or without breaking the law. Without being irrelevant and just as much in the system as I was before, or without being irrelevant for being locked away.
Perhaps, the latter irrelevancy would not be so irrelevant. And perhaps, we should just break the law now, at any rate.
But what can one human do alone?
Is there anyone who will go with me?
Anyone willing, anyone who can hear, anyone who wants to see again?
Anyone at all at least half willing to try for a change?
Did you know you can't drink water without chemicals in it these days? Did you know you can't drink the rain without breaking a law? Did you know you can't even catch the rain to use for anything without having a state-issued permit to do so?
Did you know you can't sleep somewhere without paying for it?
Did you know you can't even live anymore without money?
There is something deeply grating and deeply depressing about that to me.
Something that my skin cries out against and my heart strains to run from.
But it is something that I cannot outrun.
Or, if I could, I haven't discovered how.
But I'm willing to learn. Willing to leave this all behind for a life that humans once had, that was much richer than all this convenience and ease and complacency.
To know what a bird's calling means, and have it mean something more than a mild interest. To know how to fell an animal, take its flesh, eat and use the remains out of necessity. To forage for edibles in a wild landscape, and actually need to survive from them. To understand what the plants did, how they lived, how they grew, and to know how to use them out of a need to use them - not out of a interest to be interesting and unique.
To be free from the ridiculous laws that are apparently protecting me from death - at the cost of the quality of my life. To be free from the ridiculous laws apparently protecting me from the danger of my fellow human - at the cost of a true community.
I am wanting increasingly more and more to run away from all of this, just drop the keys and leave it all behind. To run into the wild and try as I might to survive. To be wild and free. To make some little place for myself and own the cost of my living there and to know the reality of what my living is.
But even that I can't do without money or without breaking the law. Without being irrelevant and just as much in the system as I was before, or without being irrelevant for being locked away.
Perhaps, the latter irrelevancy would not be so irrelevant. And perhaps, we should just break the law now, at any rate.
But what can one human do alone?
Is there anyone who will go with me?
Anyone willing, anyone who can hear, anyone who wants to see again?
Anyone at all at least half willing to try for a change?
7 Thought(s):
are you hungry?
are you sick?
are you begging for a break?
are you sweet?
are you fresh?
are you strung up by the wrists?
we want the young blood
are you fracturing?
are you torn at the seams?
would you do anything?
flea-bitten? motheaten?
we suck young blood
we suck young blood
won't let the creeping ivy
won't let the nervous bury me
our veins are thin
our rivers poisoned
we want the sweet meats
we want the young blood
It takes courage and control, but it starts by letting go...
I'm with you, I wish life could be like that. But every year our society seems to just get farther and farther away from it.
Finally! I've been searching for hours to find someone who really had something to say. Something beyond the regular dribble.
Thanks, I only hope that there are more people like you willing to listen.
I've wandered across your blog and this post by chance. It's made me think, and I thought I'd share.
As a child I remember asking my mum why we had money, why didn't everybody trade things like the Aztecs did or live in harmony with our world like the Indians. I simply didn't understand why it would not work.
I still dream of an idylic situation like that and half wish that I had been born in another time and had been offered a 'real' way of living. Alas not.
It's nice to know that there are other people who pause and realised
that our ancestors may well have had life sussed a little better than our modernised 'intelligent' world of today does. I find this comforting.
Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that the Aztecs and the Indians were both wiped out by a 'modern' race of humans. Evolution in action; gunpowder and tactical planning more than slightly trumps the spear and arrows.
I could write you an essay on why we cannot re-trace our footsteps to the wild. How humans are sociable beings, how society has become a refuge from nature and science a barracade. How true 'survival' over a long lasting period would being futile but you would not want to hear it. I, quite frankly, don't want to hear it. Realism turns into an unfortunate curse. Art and music are my release - and dreams. I smile to know that in dreams we are always free.
Thankyou for the interesting blog. It felt good to read.
This is what is so depressing to me. The inability to either return or see how to move forward in a way that is not centered solely around "technology", "advancement", "progress".
Because what have we gained, but the ability to re-create a reality we didn't find very convenient or comfortable?
We can't afford to live in dreams any longer. We have to return to reality again.
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