Hello friends,
I am:
Divorcing reality. Advocating immediate awareness. Victorious in defeat. Investigating the ineffable. Doubtfully certain. Generally precise. I. Lightly tapping the glass ceiling. Beyond the pale. Evolving through time. Religiously noncommittal. Targeting domestication. Playful in nature. Loving a lost cause. Answering your questions while questioning my answers. Not. Timely. Essentially under the radar.
Long ago and far away K.L. and I sat in the back of a neighborhood pub at a small battered wine dark table discussing the robotic nature of humankind.
“By the time many people graduate from high school they are already dead.” K.L. said this firmly, head shaking in wonderment.
“I think I know where you are going with that. Their minds are concrete by then. They are convinced. About everything.”
“Things they should never be convinced about.”
“Life,” I continued, “has to conform to their worldview. For it to make sense.”
“The less sense it makes the harder they try to make the world fit a fool’s parameters. They can’t keep the reality they’re witnessing superimposed over the reality they’re dreaming.”
“I’ve seen a few go off the deep end,” I said, faces briefly bubbling to the surface.
“The superimposition can never be accurate because their worldviews are pure fiction.”
Pure fiction, K.L. had said.
I think now — and it’s always now — but this now doesn’t include you, K.L. — how right you were. You exited the Shadowlands. Your time is served, friend.
Memory: small child feeling trapped, again. Hoodwinked. To have to serve time . . . here. Do others feel this way? I wondered.
When you are born into the Shadowlands, you get a ticket to the Show. The Show has been going on for a long, long time. Long before you first breathed air, the Show was a proven system of indoctrination. Under the power of a select few since its inception and continually maintained by international technicians, the Show is a grand staged play invented for a population of motley bipeds who roam the planet believing the new administration can solve the problems the old one created.
A show for the Sleepwalkers who stare at television with rapt attention, beta waves switching over to alpha, as they absorb the latest downloads and upgrades courtesy of the technocrat Shakespeares who implant prefab personalities into the cortices of the unaware. The Sleepwalkers savor the little squirts of Dopamine firing off in their nervous systems when their favorite fictional characters do something they wish they could do.
But no one does anything in the Shadowlands. Things are done to them.
The Sleepwalkers are the truly unadventurous. The creatively bankrupt who yearn to feel alive, but shun the responsibility that incurs — to be satiated, in the moment, desireless, so they succumb to the flickering box which assuages all daily horrors as it floods their synapses with absurd imagery, innocuous suggestions, violent erotica, insistent political viewpoints, celebrity psychodramas, cultural theater.
The stimuli repeat in endless disjointed loops in their minds as they lay in their beds in the dark, before they check their phones for one more reaffirmation of reality before unconsciousness.
So, they sleep . . . as they walk.
K.L. quaffed beer and noticed a young woman sitting across the room at the bar. Twenty something under the pub’s muted lighting. Attractive in a well-scrubbed, anodyne way. She held a bottle of German beer in slender hands. Tapping a crimson fingernail against the glass, the woman stared at K.L. with intent; if she had smoke coming out of her ears, her disposition might have been easier to read, but not by much.
“True, many don’t know they are indoctrinating each other into a fictional representation of reality.” K.L. finished off the beer, belched softly, inspected the label on the bottle. “They believe the con they’re perpetrating on their loved ones. Belief is the enemy. It kills off further inquiry. You cannot come to a definitive conclusion about anything.”
“I am not one hundred percent sure,” I admitted, “that I am sitting here right now.”
“Good. If you are always questioning the obvious, your eyes will open to a whole new reality.”
“But your point is, of course, many do not.”
“There is a certain kind of corruption that goes hand in hand with civilization. Why? Simply this: corrupted people are more manageable.”
“Are you going to finish those pretzels?” I asked. “Look, I am aware of the human condition. What are we going to do about it?”
“Do about it? Silly person. Are you familiar with the symbol of the swastika?”
“A bit,” I admitted after washing down gnashed pretzel with soda water. Conscientious driver. “I am no expert but I know it is one of the oldest symbols in the world. As old as the Egyptian ankh, I think.”
“Older, probably. It has been used all over the world. India. China. Greece.”
“It’s a cross, right? Like the ankh.”
“The sun.”
“Hmm,” I crunched. “To some it’s just a symbol of evil.”
“Ah, and there is the power of a symbol. The swastika was used by a certain infamous government in a certain memorable war and so it has been imprinted indelibly as a sign of barbarity in the minds of people who know very little about anything. Even things they claim they’re interested in.”
“The asleep.”
“Yes. Those who do not understand the symbols they are presented with yet react unconsciously to them.”
As I grew the many glaring flaws in the psyches of the adults of the race I was born into were clearly on display for me. Hypocritical, they often treated those they claimed to dislike with respect and those they claimed to love like mud. Corrupt, they would lie, cheat and steal while amassing huge profits from creating and promoting institutions which denounced lying, cheating and stealing. Religious rackets, legal minds outmaneuvering justice, Hollywood.
Everything that was forced into your mind as a child — from cartoons and other television absurdities which were created solely for the purpose of your conditioning, to the alphabet you were taught to recite like a mantra so you could think in their words, to the constant subtle indications as to whether your behavior was suitable or not from your elders . . . all these are necessary for the Show to be staged.
It begins with the word, as one book insists. And the word is a medium for the Show.
“If you provoke a person gently to see if they’re awake . . . and they react mechanically, without consideration, you know they are fast asleep.” K.L. signaled the woman with a raised bottle, an almost imperceptible nod to join us. She hesitated. K.L. rarely invited strangers to join our conversations during these night pilgrimages, even friendly and attractive young ladies, because K.L. wanted to reserve these outings as distinct intellectual territory — a refuge from the ho-hum flow of clichéd automatic conversation. Automata-speak.
I had been driving K.L. to bars sporadically over the course of our friendship. We had played in poker games and chess matches with mutual friends and K.L. seemed disturbingly normal in a group, but would reveal a far more philosophical side when confident in your discretion. I drank alcohol rarely but K.L. claimed to need to be a little lit to appreciate my particular company.
So, as K.L. let loose, I drove and acted as a sort of minder. K.L. owned a recently constructed car so the driving was easy and the ride comfortable. After imbibing K.L. would go places intellectually most of my friends would not — or could not — go. K.L was a great sounding board for my hypotheses. We would drive through the night, sometimes picking up another of our indiscriminate crew, night owls in awe of nocturnal beauty: barren sidewalks, moonglow, the silence of night song, faraway stars illuminating ink-black endlessness.
“Symbols represent something other than themselves,” I told K.L. as the woman stared down at her phone, back at K.L., debating with herself. “They are used to express different concepts to different people. Symbols often have opposing concepts associated with them. Depends on the time and place you were indoctrinated with them.”
K.L. smiled in a way which suggested I was on the right track — at least according to K.L. “Continue.”
“The letters C, A, T, in that sequence, form another symbol — a word. Which infers a massive amount of information in a condensed way. Evoking all our stored knowledge of what we consider cat to mean. Biology. Mythos. Our personal experiences with thing-called-cat. But we cannot pet the word cat any more than the word water will quench our thirst on a hot day. And to another culture, C, A, T, in that sequence, may infer something totally different.”
“Yeah,” K.L. said, “maybe thing-called-dog. It’s just a convenience. Symbols put us all on the same page so we can communicate quickly — but badly. They’re minefields. You know why? They really don’t mean much, yet they mean everything. You follow?”
“Many people live and die for them. They may be useful as a servant but monstrous as a master. They won’t keep you warm on a cold night.”
The woman elegantly slid off her padded stool, decision made, and started our way with an exaggerated roll to her hips. K.L. approved of the woman’s serpentine walk, eyes taking it in with rapture.
“True,” K.L. agreed. “They won’t keep you warm on a cold night. But they can certainly teach you how to make a fire.”
How difficult it can be to remember that . . . the Show . . . is only a representation of reality — never the real thing. Only a lifeless simulacrum. It is a method for the culture creators to lead us into any future they choose while the Sleepwalkers insistently call it natural evolution. It is anything but natural. It merely subverts the natural for purposes the dominant few choose. Problems are created. Solutions offered. Servitude required. Your life’s energy is being redirected through their outlets.
They use a kind of magic. But so do you.
You spell and (w)Rite words, don’t you? You cast your incantations on those you wish to influence. You can make another joyously happy, riotously angry, sadly guilty, simply with a few well-chosen words arranged in a certain order.
Is this not magic?
Think back to a time when a loved one said a delicious something that raised your heart into unknown dimensions, made you come alive, if only for a brief moment. And think back to a time when someone said something that made you feel as if the universe were crumbling around you.
Is this not magic?
We are all magicians. But not all of us know it.
As a sensitive child I would often feel hurt by an unkind comment or a dismissive look. Even from a stranger. Quickly realizing life makes short work of such overly emotional people, I strove to develop sufficient indifference to the opinions of others. Not wanting to jettison my sensitivity altogether, which I intuited was a beneficial quality, I instead attempted to create an option where I could switch it on or off at will. Depending on the circumstance.
But . . . the Show requires the love of acceptance. Approval. Glorification from others. Especially the ones already deified by the media, that technological wand wielded by the culture creators. The media gurus mandate what constitutes normalcy and sound wisdom for the Sleepwalkers. Encouraged into narcissism and immediate gratification, the Sleepwalkers would rather be incorrect and loved than correct and hated. Or worse, ignored.
Imagine a world without celebrities. From whom would the Sleepwalkers copy their facial mannerisms? How would they know which hairstyle to imitate? Where would they get their fashion sense or the cultural reference points necessary for every dull conversation? The culture creators have always given the Sleepwalkers their Heroes, Villains, and Comic Relief. If the gizmos & gadgets shut down, and never were to come back on again, how would the Sleepwalkers know how to feel about anything?
The woman introduced herself to K.L. and I. The name is lost in the corridors of memory and to make one up for her seems somehow unfair. We asked her to join us for a drink. She was talkative and did not seem to mind taking control of the conversation. She seemed pleasant enough, but in constant animation, as if she were auditioning for the part of a perky character and K.L. and I were Hollywood sharpshooters. Perhaps she just wasn’t used to being listened to. We listened.
There wasn’t much there but aimless trivia and I began to get bored. I was not her intended, anyway, K.L. was, so I crunched pretzels and observed. K.L. feigned interest but it was waning. K.L. made a show of checking the time to further along her exit but the woman seemed oblivious. I had always known K.L. to be inordinately polite — up to a point.
When the woman started ooohing and aaahing over K.L.’s phone, I knew an end to the encounter was at hand.
K.L. carried an expensive phone. It was currently fashionable among the Sleepwalkers. The woman fawned over it incessantly. K.L. asked if she would like to examine it and her eyes lit up like sparkplugs. When handing the thing over to her, K.L. intentionally dropped it on the hard wood floor to show his disgust for materialism. Played off as mere clumsiness, I was let in on the joke a microsecond before it happened by a look of unbridled mischief on K.L.’s face.
Phones. I carried a cheap throwaway for convenience’s sake. It was not traceable to any account bearing my name. I am not a fan of social media. If I want the intelligence agencies to know how I feel I’ll send them a letter. K.L. was different. I never knew what he did, only that it involved international transportation, and I didn’t care. K.L.’s phone was impressive but justifiable for business purposes, K.L. insisted. The woman picked it off the floor as if it were the Philosopher’s Stone and said: “You have a beautiful phone.”
“Yeah,” K.L. admitted, taking it back. “Beautiful. And I enjoy visiting all sorts of places with it.”
“Places? You mean websites? What kind of sites?”
“I find some real out-there places on the internet. Hot places. Classy though,” K.L. added quickly, face now unreadable.
Her right eyebrow arched and suddenly looked like a boomerang. Tip of tongue darting between red lips. The tongue moistening, leaving a faint trace of saliva across crimson. A tightening around the eyes. A reappraisal. A knowing look: I know exactly who you are, I know exactly who you ALL are. The woman studied K.L. as an ornithologist would study the plumage of an undiscovered species of bird. The wattage of the woman’s interest increased the more details she took in. She categorized K.L.’s clothes, shoes, haircut, with a jeweler’s precision yet spent the most time scrutinizing K.L.’s wristwatch, an ornate thing with all kinds of dials and nodules and functions I didn’t understand. What did I know about watches? I owned an old, cheap, nonfunctional one which I wore on the underside of my wrist to remind me time is an illusion.
K.L. regularly poked fun at blind consumerism and mindless obedience to fashion yet enjoyed finely made material goods without guilt. K.L. appreciated craftsmanship and quality but did not really care about things which could be replaced. Never a braggart, and often choosing things which were exceptionally well made but not currently popular, K.L. did not see this as hypocrisy and neither did I.
“What,” she repeated, “sites? And it better not be vanilla. I have been to college.” K.L. had apparently passed inspection.
Teasingly drawing it out, K.L. brought up an example and showed her.
“Here.” K.L. handed the leering woman the phone once again.
She scrolled. Her face went from prurience to stone rather quickly, I remember, finally settling on a barely disguised contempt. She looked up. Her eyes made contact with mine. It seemed the first time she’d really taken notice of me in a fifteen-minute conversation.
I am a helpless passenger on this train just like you, I tried to answer with a look, we venture into the unknown together.
The woman gently put the phone down on the scarred table. Said goodbye to me tonelessly. Turned to K.L. and started to speak but thought better and aborted it. She merely shook her head, much like K.L. had done earlier that evening while discussing automatons.
She rose to go, her chair scraping the ancient grit on the floor loudly. Three large men with beards like Russian tsars and leather jackets with lots of shiny zippers on them stopped playing pool and gave us their undivided attention.
The woman returned to her barstool. She seemed older somehow, as if weighed down by yet another of life’s sudden disillusionments. She drew the bartender close. She talked. He listened. Then shot a look at K.L. of disdain mixed with a flavor of awe, a trace of exasperation. It was a look I was familiar with. The bartender had a military haircut and looked as if he practiced lifting barbells when he wasn’t mixing margaritas. Great. Another place we could not revisit.
“Let’s go.” I stood. The best way to avoid being hurt in a barfight is to not be there when it begins. Looking down at K.L. I noticed another look I was familiar with, a maniacal grin, an attempt to stifle irrepressible laughter. K.L. overtipped as we made our getaway, a device useful in inducing favorable remembrances in the minds of the Sleepwalkers.
Later, in the car, I saw what K.L. had shown the woman — a series of photos of beautiful young women wearing uniforms with swastikas emblazoned on them. The women all seemed grimly determined about something. They didn’t play to the camera at all. Nothing overtly sexual. Just swastikas on crisp, drab uniforms. I didn’t see anything else in the pictures which indicated these women were overly fond of men with Chaplin mustaches. But the swastikas alone had been enough to satisfy the woman’s need to feel outraged.
“Do you see?” K.L. asked, slumped in the passenger seat next to me looking out the window at the desolate three a.m. streets as I drove away from the place, my eyes scanning for anyone else out there, stumbling in the dark, like us. “Symbols,” K.L. said simply. “That woman was disturbed, visibly, by a symbol.”
“Maybe she lost family in the war,” I offered, playing Devil’s Advocate.
“Don’t let the point elude you. That wasn’t about religion, politics or pogroms. She chose to be offended. By a harmless symbol. Can you see the difference? Because it’s an important distinction. And I hate to sound conspiratorial,” K.L. grinned darkly, looking positively Mephistophelian, “but that’s how they run your mind.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Except you didn’t make any new friends.”
“Life is not a popularity contest. And everyone has lost family in the war. The only war that’s ever mattered.” K.L. tapped my temple gently. “Understand?”
I did. In the Shadowlands, symbols control the Sleepwalkers. They bounce off each other like ineffective projectiles in a demoniacal pinball game orchestrated by their slave masters. Purpose? Further into slavery. Always further.
Now, years later, K.L. is gone. Another once sharp mind ruined and consumed. But even your last act of defiance, my friend, a choice made with many tiny devils whispering in your ear, teaches a valuable lesson. Even those intimately familiar with the Shadowlands can become just another one of its victims if not vigilant. Ever vigilant.
*18*
Dispatches from the Shadowlands
If you can conclude that K.L is gone I think you can also state that you are "sitting here". I myself try to remain within certain frames, so to speak. Perhaps the only shadowland there is, exists within us and it's up to everyone individually to decide whether to allow oneself to be pathetically led via all the little drives and wants, like an animal. Surely though, this planet is a lonely place for a human. I liked your text. Clicking the heart for the dopamine squirt...