(Page 1 of 8) Swansong by Alex Loveless
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SUMMARY: Behind the restless decay and dissonance,
behind the flesh, behind thought;
here is the hum.
This is his swansong – too quiet to hear.
Awakenings
He awoke momentarily before his alarm sounded on the day all the people died.
His eyelids drag their way across his arid eyeballs and allow enough light in to force them into retreat. The light bellowing in through the inadequate bedroom curtains assailed his delicate visual sense and dragged his consciousness into muddle that we call awake. He doesn't get up immediately. 2 minutes to walk the tightrope between asleep and awake; the place where reality and fantasy are indistinguishable. 2 minutes becomes 2 hours as strobe like consciousness rattles through the slow seconds of an infinitely divisible minute. This is the time when we are the most whole, and consequently at our most aware. This limbotime is eternal for those travelling the closest to the black hole of dreamtime. Here time and logic are sucked away and subverted allowing the even flow of detached, selfless thought to prevail while still touching the empirical reality in which we shelter. The black whole scares us with its maw like void; we run away. He flails feverishly through this perceptive soup as if being tossed around oceanic swell. Something is disturbing his unconscious equilibrium. He flees the black hole. Fleeing to the light. Running to catch up and mount the locomotive of time. A thrust of willpower, the flex of muscles, the final thrust to mount the train and everything slips into place; reality saturates thought and sense.
He levers himself out of bed, rising to salute mans towering dominance over gravity and nature. Man stands, nature bows. We bargained and butchered ourselves to achieve our bipedal glory. Not content with this, we have devised our wings of steel assert our final dominance over the earth that we cling to. We can leave the earth anytime. Our metal birds flicking the middle finger of contempt of the earth which bore us, the splenetic teenager, contemptuous at his parents ignorance and age. We come down however, for the earth still cares for us, holds us dear and forgives us, however, we dream of flying the nest.
Erect but not alert he manoeuvres through the dazzling room. His pathetic gait - that of a half blind idiot wading through mud. He is not driving. Autopilot is in control. Don't disturb autopilot while he is driving. The slightest interruption will result in a forgotten task – this, the day cannot afford. Leave the autopilot to his job; just work on trying to put your thoughts into some coherent order.
The eddy of visions make snapshots of cognisant moments which punctuate these moments making consciousness like driving down a tree lined street on a sunny day. He pieces these together, first into memories, then into projections. It is these constructions that form the model of the day to come - a semi-prescient glimpse of a possible future. Moods and sensations accompany these, and negativity flirts with optimism as the tides of pulsing thought form clods of coherence.
While he is taking a shower his thoughts start to take of the vestiges of meaning. Emotions seesaw as edges of situations are recalled without the benefit of wholeness or context.
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