Who taught the spider?

I’m flying blind. I am without location – I’m gasping for air. The beat of my heart is my hourglass, my blood the sand. The air I breathe, the life within me – the smell of freshly cut grass, the gentle sweetness in the air before it rains. It just happened. I was too busy learning how to walk to, crawling and crying for food, tasting the good and the bad. Here I am.

My feet touch the pavement, the 20^th century’s fields, the horizonless metropolis. These are our bee-hives, dripping with the warm golden honey of currency, the pollen of war and recession, consumer optimism, fuel in the tank and end-of-year sales. Here I am.

What could have been? The windows that closed I’ll never know, only the path I tread. I follow my nose, instinct and the pang in my gut. How does the stick insect know what a tree looks like? How do I know who to love, how to breathe, which way to turn? My eyes burnt with tears and my throat was hoarse from garbled moans long before the first day of school. Here I am.

Here I am! I shout it out - but to whom? Who is there to hear my cry? Why do I love, breathe, turn?

Who taught the spider a length of web?

Here I am.

All You Have

I.

I am just a ball of controlled energy, at every moment threatening to burst through this fragile skin and explode across the universe. I am roadkill, struck dumb by the everyday, where even the mundane can plow one down in a moment of tenebrous uncertainty.

Have you ever woken up from your daytime slumber? It's like a shot across the jaw - to feel the shock - not so much pain from the blow but a crack of lightning and thunderous realisation. What am I doing here? I want to do a thousand things at once. I want to stop tapping at these keys while staring blankly at the monitor - I want to live, be alive, see what's out there. My status update is What the fuck am I doing with my life?

It's out there. Experience. Pain. Love and broken hearts. Fuck it - break my heart. I would rather that than a vacant speed-date, like choosing a 99% fat-free, all-natural soul-mate from the shelf.

I just woke up. Maybe it's only for a second so I'll to get this down before I close my eyes again.

Memories flash through my mind's eye. My past. My definition. I feel that the society that we live in traps us in little boxes, neat little brand-name boxes tied up with string and wireless connections. Why do I fear pain so much? I feel like cutting myself to prove that I'm not afraid, that I disown my cotton-wool enclosure. Blood runs through me and it spills, yet now my saviour is available in pill-form. My hand is stuck in the jar, caught as I grab a hand-full, so desperate to remain in this coma that I can't let go.

The dystopia seems so distant, so far away. It is framed as speculative-fiction and futurism, a mythology, a prediction; a prophecy. Well - what are we doing here? Jesus Christ! I can't find god in amongst any of this. Who owns the truth? Is the truth CNN, or Obama, a banner and a slogan? I feel like a cog. I work, receive my pay. I buy and remain calm. I am alert yet not alarmed. I follow the rules and catch a bus in the morning. I am a good citizen. I do not rock the boat.

The scariest thing is that maybe there are no answers. So what can I do? Is the pain I seek caused by the courage to make my own decisions? Maybe that's where I'm going. I don't trust myself, so I let MTV inform me. JT knows what to wear. If it's good enough for Tom it's good enough for me. Is that right? I won't even wear my own clothes. I need the assurance of a name, a logo. I need the church and a man in the sky to tell me what to do with my time because I'm so goddamned scared to think for myself, scared to death.

With every second on this Earth we make our decision. You may think you don't have a choice.

The truth is that is all you have.

Shell

We, so soft and vulnerable here in the midst of our private jungle, we are so scared of our innate fragility that we cover our weakness with vague simulacra of idealised demigods. We pump and preen, pimp our innocence: no more shall we fade away with grace; nay - we shall fight till our dying breath, gasping brittle obscenities through infused lips, confused and bitter, clawing at time with a strength reserved for jilted lovers.

She walks past the boys - men now but still boys where it counts. Minds in the gutter - is she now how we used to crave? The movement is technically stunning but as empty as popcorn for dinner. Hair bursting heavenwards from a taught and unfeeling brow, a shockwave shooting atop eyebrows eternally shocked. She is militarised - ready for attack, for the hoards of horny square-eyed addicts that wilt under the pressure of perfection televised.

The carapace of bad taste is impenetrable - even now, in the act - mid-flagranti all fragrance and expletives. We are building layer upon layer to hide our souls like roots beneath a poisoned soil. As deep as we bury still it seeps inevitably into our innermost secrets and whispers the gruesome and beautiful terror softly into our dreams.

Kings and Queens

Sounds seep into the store whenever someone leaves. Humid air and chatter fills the store for a few moments, mingling with the tunes playing from the stereo. The police are searching a couple of young girls out the front of the adult shop next door - pulling little bags of ecstasy from their little bags. They are led away, the walk of shame up the strip to the station.

It's quiet in here, apart from the music and the tapping of digits on keyboards. Through the glass I can feel the street jitter, see a little blood in the air while the predators circle and a million hungry and not-so-tropical fish swim with the tide, poking around for food on the ocean floor.

A couple leave, off to join the merry throng, off and lost amongst the dishevelled royalty, the blank-faced prostitutes, the drunk brutes, the jokers and the clowns, the drag queens and porn kings.