The Question or the Answer
One hundred and eleven dollars and thirteen cents. That’s all I had left.
“Ten, eleven, twelve aand thirteen.” The woman behind the glass counted out the pennies and slid my money towards me. “Thank you, have a nice day.” She didn’t even look up at me as she said it.
I picked up my money and folded away the bills, dropping all the coins but one penny into a donation jar on the counter. Turning to the door my eyes quickly glanced up at the calendar hanging on one of the hideously drab oatmeal coloured walls. Tuesday. It always happened on a Tuesday.
The sun warmed my face, a nice change from the frosty air conditioning inside the bank. I stood there on the sidewalk for a while looking up at the sky. The clouds were still far from the sun. That was good, I still had some time then. I don’t know why that reassured me, I had nowhere to go. My landlord had evicted me, I had no money and most of the people I know were already ‘gone’. We’re not supposed to use the word abducted. They prefer gone. I think it implies that it was sort of a choice though so generally I avoided talking about these things in the first place.
I finally decided I would go left because there was a nice little park with lots of trees that may offer me some privacy which was hard to come by these days. It was common knowledge that we were being watched. You never knew when they were watching but you could be sure they didn’t miss much. Most of us avoid looking up at the sky for too long. All the people who had a habit of gazing at the moon or the stars had ‘left’ first. The word ‘taken’ was another taboo in this context. Apparently in the past people who tried to report the abductions were laughed at and ridiculed. But at least back then most of them were returned. Now it was rare to hear of someone who had been brought back and even if they were they were not the same. Just a body. An empty vessel if you ask me.
On my way to the park I stopped at a corner store to pick up a notebook and pen. The urge to write had washed over me so strongly I felt I had no choice but to comply. I set the book and pen down on the counter and reached for my wallet. When I pulled it from my coat a single leaf of paper, no bigger than the palm of my hand, fluttered out and landed on the counter.
Do you know?
That’s all it read.
“Leaving today?” Asked the cashier, noticing the paper. I gave a small nod and quickly tucked the paper back into my pocket.
“I remember when my wife got hers.” He nodded to where the paper had been. “She got all quiet and nervous at first, like you, but by the time the clouds came she was as cheery as a July sun. The way she saw it, they don’t take just anybody and if they asked her the question then she would do her best to answer.”
I looked at the T.V, not wanting to be rude and interrupt but frankly not giving a damn about what the man was saying. Channel 51 was on – the usual. A cool female voice read off the names of those who had recently left while a slideshow of patterns drawn in cornfields played on the screen. The translations ran across the bottom. They were all thank you messages of sorts. It seemed rather forced to me.
“Anyways, pip up! You must know something worth knowing if they’ve chosen you.” He smiled as he counted out my change.
“Keep it.” I turned to leave.
“I hope you know!” the cashier said after me. This had become the standard goodbye people used when someone was leaving. Pointless really. How could you know the answer to a question you didn’t understand?
I finally reached the park and settled down under a large tree shielding me almost fully from the sky. I opened the notebook to find it had already been written in. Do you know? Without hesitation I wrote directly underneath it.
‘I know some things, but I don’t know a great many more.’
A ray of sunlight broke through the leaves and touched the page I was writing on. Those same three words appeared again underneath what I had written. I didn’t write anything for a while as I sorted through the thoughts in my head. A draught of wind had closed up the gap in the branches and I once again sat in shadow, shielded from the sky. I felt like I was truly alone with my thoughts. A rare privilege nowadays. My initial answers to the question seemed elementary. Anything I knew about mathematics, science, history, culture and the like they undoubtedly already knew and knew better than I. They probably even knew a great many of my personal details, my name, my age, my parents, relationships I had had. It seemed they already knew more than I so what they were asking must be for something deeper. Something that exists only in my own mind. Something I’ve never spoken nor written anywhere, not even betrayed by a twitch of my face; simply carried with me always. So was that it? What was that kernel that made me without a doubt me? My soul? Physical entity or not I knew we all had one. I knew that body and soul could exist as separate entities yet that those two entities needed each other to function properly. Not just any body and any soul either- a body you were born in. One you saw and felt grow and shaped and help shaped you. I looked up. The clouds had crept closer to the sun. I was running out of time.
Do you know?
Maybe they were asking about the meaning of life. An answer that’s been tirelessly pursued by people since the beginning of time. Though if they didn’t know it seemed fruitless to ask us. I smiled. The irony was laughable. We finally find the “big man in the sky” so to speak and instead of giving answers he asks the questions. It felt like a test. Or an experiment. And then I knew. I knew they weren’t looking for an answer at all. They already had it. They were looking to see if we had found it yet.
A cool female voice echoed around me from the speakers hidden everywhere. ‘Those with tickets please find their way to the nearest pick up location. Thank you for your cooperation.’ Her voice made the hair on my arms stand straight. We all knew what happened to those who didn’t cooperate. I stood and brushed the grass off of myself and started towards the nearest assembly point. When I got there, there was just one other person sitting on the bench. She glanced at me as I came up. She had her dog with her. The sun was low in the sky and the clouds creeped ever closer. I saw a woman walking towards us from down the street. It was the woman whose voice had made my hair stand up every time I heard it. I’d never seen her before but I knew it would be her. The grey evening light made everything look sad and dreary. I wondered if I would remember any of this. She had almost reached us and the edge of the clouds was just a hair away from covering the sun. In that moment I knew two things with absolute certainty. I knew the end was approaching for me and I knew the answer to the question. I smiled again at the irony. Getting destroyed by something we came up with in the first place – time. The woman finally reached us and the sun was now completely blocked by a thick wall of clouds. She smiled. Even her smile gave me goosebumps.
“Welcome to the end. Do you know?”
Woman
At 18, you will become a woman
They say
But what about at 17?
When you look 18 and that means its ok for a stranger to pinch your ass on his way by
And what about at 15
When the howls and the cat calls from people driving past make you feel like a prostitute and not a girl on her way to school
What about 13?
When your long legs suddenly become sexy legs to wandering eyes and that peeking bra strap gets you detention for being a distraction from boys learning
I became a woman
At 13, when I learned in school despite seeing boxers escaping baggy jeans
At 15, when I earned my black belt and the confidence that is built along the way
At 17, when I started saying NO. instead of offering nice excuses
And at 18, when the world said I did
The Racing Thought
Otto Sterne was a man who always had a lot of Thoughts running through his mind. He usually let them come and go, acknowledging some of them and discarding others as the brain does. One day however, one of the Thoughts raced a little too fast through his mind and left his brain entirely. Otto saw the Thought tumble onto his desk and jumped back in surprise. He was quite bemused but something told him that he was not imaging this.
“Who are you?” Otto asked the Thought.
“Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear I’m going to get into a lot of trouble for this.” The Thought muttered to itself.
“In trouble for what? Who are you?” Otto replied.
“For leaving the ship. And I’m PSY 587.12 thank you very much for asking.”
“What ship? What kind of a name is PSY 587.12?” Otto paused. “What are you?”
“Well, you should know we are named very systematically so my name is really not strange at all. As to what I am, I guess you could call me a Thought.”
“A Thought?”
“Yes a Thought. Don’t act like you don’t know what that is, I’ve lived in your brain I know you have many.”
“You make it sound as if I have parasites” Otto patted his head gingerly.
“Well essentially- yes, that’s exactly what we are. Parasites.” PSY 587.12 said matter-of-factly.
“You’re saying that all the Thoughts I have in my head are parasites?” Otto was perplexed. Was he hallucinating after all?
“Every last one.”
“So the ship you mentioned, is my brain your ship?”
“No no, your brain is biological matter that belongs to you. We just use it as a power source. It powers our ship, which lets us live here on your planet. Inside of you. Of course you won’t mention this to anyone right? I could get into a lot of trouble for telling you this.”
Otto opened his mouth a few times but nothing came out.
“Ah, it seems they have noticed my absence up there.” The Thought said. “No doubt the communications wing is understaffed, that’s why you have nothing to say.” PSY 587.12 finished.
“I have plenty to say thank you very much.” Otto finally managed.
“Hi COM 111.9” PSY 587.12 said “It seems I’ve been a bit too enthusiastic running Ideas around and I’ve fallen off the ship.”
“Hi PSY 587.12. We are working on retrieving you. Stand by.” Otto’s mouth moved and those sounds came out, but he really had no idea how it was happening. A second passed and Otto was speechless again. “How- what?”
“You’re really not supposed to know any of this Otto. Humans have been completely oblivious to us since we first arrived. You don’t really think the buffoons you call your ancestors just ‘suddenly’ knew how to build pyramids and invented math and language do you? All you are is meat Otto. Just cells that have multiplied and grown to complete different functions. How do you think meat can build spaceships and ask questions and answer them? It can’t. But we can.”
“So you’re saying that without you I would be essentially useless?” Otto countered.
“Well that depends on what you classify as useless. Would you be able to survive? Certainly. You would still have the instinct that is given to you by every single cell in your body. The instinct to stay alive. But you would be utterly useless to us and sooner or later we would dispose of you.” PSY 587.12 sounded bored almost.
“You do that? Dispose of people?”
“Of course. Sometimes the body just fails, biologically, and the brain dies, leaving us with no power source. Sometimes the flesh is just too difficult for us to manipulate – those are the ones you would call 'stupid', so we stay with the body just long enough to collect some data and then move on.”
“So everyone has these Thought parasites? Even stupid people?” Otto asked.
“Of course. But some people are made up of too many mutated cells. Nothing another person would notice, but it makes them harder to manipulate so fewer Ideas get delivered successfully. Or they’re misconstrued, not used as intended.” PSY 587.12 continued “Those bodies are only useful for data collection purposes.”
“Why are you here? On Earth? Do you need us to survive?” Curious, Otto’s mind was racing. Though he had no way of knowing if he was coming up with these questions himself, or if it was just other Thoughts running around in his head.
“Of course not. How do you think we got by before? We don’t need biological components to exist. We just exist. Always will and always have. We are here just to… pass the time in a way.”
“You said you collected data, are you trying to learn about us?”
“Learn is a behavior that we caused in you. Your instinct and muscle memory can take you so far as to ‘learn’ not to get too close to a tiger or a cliff’s edge, but to study and to apply that knowledge is something we make you do. We don’t need to think, we exist and we are. But of course existence is timeless so we must work to do exactly what you believe you are working to do. That is, to pass time until your existence ceases. So we carry ideas through people’s meaty heads and collect data based on what they do with them. We don’t study the data, it just exists as we exist and so we know it.”
“My head hurts.” Said Otto.
“As it should. They’re initiating the Migraine protocol.” PSY 587.12 looked at Otto, as a Thought can look at a person and said “You’re one of the good ones Otto. Smart flesh. You might even come up with an Idea on your own one day, and then you’ll become a Thought and know what it means to exist. Now that’s a miracle isn’t it! A hunk of meat made up of cells which produce an Idea. Of course, it had to be prodded with external stimuli first but still. A miracle.”
“I called you a parasite but you’re not. It’s more of a symbiotic relationship isn’t it? You get to use our brains as power but you let us build things and learn things. Move forward as a human race” Otto complimented sincerely.
“Oh no, we are definitely parasites Otto. What have Thoughts and your so called ‘conscience’ brought humans but misery at the thought of existence and fear at the thought of ending it? You would be far better off without us Thoughts.” PSY 587.12 meant this sincerely. Thoughts were not superficial as humans were when filled with Thoughts. They knew what it was to exist, and even knew the longing to end that existence. But, being that they knew, they filled their existence with some form of purpose. A purpose that perhaps would one day lead to the Ultimate destruction of existence.
Otto’s headache was getting quite bad now, the Thoughts were almost ready to retrieve PSY 587.12.
“You said your name was systematic, what does it mean?” Otto asked PSY 587.12.
“The PSY is for my department, Psychology and Philosophy and the 587.12 is the number of times I’ve run an Idea for you. Each run is an iteration of the same original Idea. You’ve done well with this one.”
“Thanks. What Idea was it?” Otto was curious.
“Why, the one that your Thoughts were all actually alien-parasites.”
“Wait, then why don’t I remember having that Idea?”
“I’m not in your head any more am I?”
And with that, the Migraine protocol reached completion and Otto’s head pounded with the worst headache he’d ever felt. He wasn’t even able to say goodbye to PSY 587.12, who had already climbed back into Otto’s brain and onto his ship.
Otto awoke at his desk, his head clearing considerably. His co worker walked into his office and asked what the smile on his face was about and also if he had ever considered taking anything for his snoring.
“I’ve just had a peculiar dream, that’s all…”
I Sit and Think (Tolkien Revised)
I sit out in the cold and think
Of all the winters I have seen
Of snowflakes and mountains
In years that have been
Of crunching ice beneath my feet
On pathways in the woods
The cold wind and grey sun
And regal firs that stood
I sit out in the cold and think
Of warmer days that I have felt
Of salty seas and soft white sand
And sun so hot I nearly melt
For on the days my feet go numb
And my lips turn nearly blue
I yearn for yellow sun in the sky
And green grass with drops of dew
I sit out in the cold and think
Of times I used to know
Of people that have yet to live
And of those from long ago
Yet all that time I sit and think
And wish for times before
I listen for returning friends
Whose presence makes me soar
#itslit #tolkien
Library Soul
Do you ever browse through your
soul
Like you would through a
bookshelf?
Letting your fingers feel the spines
and old pages.
That touch, connecting you with a
version of you, a past you,
a
layer
of
you
And do you ever find
a piece
that is not yours?
A book gifted to you
long ago,
that now, you would not part with
for
the
world