A Great Joke

Making sure the future is always the present.

We tried to discern the meaning of the playfulness of the sounds, but later we decided to just let it happen. Not all occurrences can be quantized by relegating to discrete units of comprehension.

 

Nonetheless, when we left the club and wandered into the cold black and white grit of the street, we laughed together at what seemed a great joke. Somehow Job and I found ourselves whistling the tune together as we walked. Our eyes met, and we laughed again.

 

At home, my mother had finished her Exercises, so I relaxed in the room I usually associate with my usual concept of well being. Not to say I had to go there. My coliaoscope I inverted to get a different view of the N-Channel, but after all, it’s all the same even up side down, isn’t it?

 

Later, Marhus came to see me and we rolled and tumbled a bit, but I was unsatisfied with the result. Sometimes my mind is miles away from where I am, and that usually makes me wonder if I’m anywhere at all. Probably not.

 

Oh yes, after I left Job, I visited the gates around the hidden Citadel, I must admit I’m impressed. I know it’s amateurish to call it hidden, but what you can’t see is hidden. It’s different when you don’t want to see it and it’s hidden. That way I don’t usually admit to myself its existence at all, as its better not to know some things that are unknown anyway.

 

It’s the long run that counts, someone told me once, and I think it’s true. This demanding of the Momentary gets on my nerves sometimes. Dogma is acceptable only when I can get out from under it, so to speak, but my release is always fragmentary.

 

The telescreen has started its yelping again just now, so I’d like to leave for someplace without all this constant scraping and scratching, but it’s hard to define exactly what I want. I’d run to the Temple and watch the Rituals unfold, and that would be a sort of escape, but the Preludes are actually what I want right now, but they have been temporarily excluded.

 

Our culture is escape itself, isn’t it? How does one escape from that? I conform as much as I can to elude and confuse the authorities, but secretly my desire is to discourage the Archetypes by grinning horribly in their faces.

 

Actually, this type of rebellion is encouraged in a way. I sometimes think this is what the Archetypes are for as they pace the streets and unexpectedly peer into windows. I peer into windows, too. All I discover is other me’s peering back. I think all we’ve done is create mirrors held up by discontented sentries, and we leer into them to recognize ourselves.

 

Well, it’s late anyway, and the next Period is looming its way inevitably into my present reverie. This will all pass when the new sequence advances far enough and closes in. Then I’ll have forgotten all I’ve written here. Not to worry. Inevitably the sequence will repeat itself, and I’ll find myself again revisiting this temporal node.  

 

Succession it’s really called. Succession. The inexorable Succession. I sometimes think I become lucid and I experience wisps of the Previous displayed in my memory. I know this is impossible, but how do I know the next Period is about to begin?

 

I’ve always felt separate from my Provisional Present, and that is why I secretly write. It’s a futile activity, I know. All this will soon be lost in the next episode, and I can attempt it only during the interval, so why write at all? Maybe attempting a hopeless task is reason enough.

 

I think my disconnect is about to be discovered, though. Something is peering into my personal window.  An engagement coalescing ever so slowly somewhere deep in my brain. Something alien, pitiless and unsympathetic. That’s my joke, because it’s best to laugh when you feel something like that crawling around inside your head.

 

It’s just the authorities, I know, poking around.  Maybe it’s for the best. My rebellion tortures me, and consolidation would ease my mind. A return to the Enfoldment would restore my balance, of course, but this torment of exclusion fascinates me, and it is sweet in its own manner.

 

It seems somehow I’ve discovered a crack in the coherence of the official sanctions. That’s all I know. A small fissure to look out of into…into what?

 

I feel the intrusive peering again inside, gaining momentum.  A grasping to draw me back from the lure of the fracture. The next Period is also rapidly approaching, this interlude shrinking to a point. I feel as if I’m helplessly wrenched between two gigantic irresistible forces.

 

I can’t write anymore.