A song (free at last, free at last, lord we are free at last...)

On My Way

by Nathan Brand

Well I looked into your psyche it was just the other night
I saw something strange and you and I fell into fighting
I asked myself "is this what I came into this doorway for?
Might just grow myself some legs and walk right back out that door..."

You said "we just don't want the same things" as you made another list
and I noticed I was on it and I said "I do insist on knowing what it is
you plan to do to me when all those other things are done?"
But you just mumbled rhubarb something and that meant the conversation had been won

You told me "Grown ups don't just do they plan" and It made a lot of sense
but I'm still struggling with thinking of myself in the past tense
if you've got a lot of patience then I guess it might be all right to wait . . .
but I don't, so please excuse me I'm just going to have to be on my way

Yeah I really must be going
I've got to be on my way
Yeah I really must be going
I've got to be on my way

Well I saw an advertisement it was just the other night
it was a picture of a child her eyes looked at least sixty five
and I asked myself "what is it made that kid's face look so old?"
turns out she was worrying about the world and I have to say I really was sold

Because I'm not just young at heart I am young of mind
and the things you said last night I'm sure they were really truly kind
but if I can't take your abuse there's no way I can accept your praise
Please have these apologies but I'm going to have to be on my way

Yeah I really must be going
I've got to be on my way
Yeah I really must be going
I've got to be on my way

A thousand plagues upon my house a million praises on yours
For the thing I want from you is a lot more than room and board
You can't participate in loving if your heart is so full of pain
so forgive me for my weakness but I'm gonna have to be on my way

Yeah I really must be going
I've got to be on my way
Yeah I really must be going
I've got to be on my way

Scary thoughts about the Printer

Newton said that every action had an equal and opposite reaction. That's all very well, but what if every action had an equal and opposite pre-action? It would put paid to the entire notion of indeterminacy. How can there be anything but the determined path (and before the amateur or even the professional theoretical physicists start in, you people still haven't actually proved anything apart from the fact that you're not really sure) be possible? Is it even possible that time only happens mono-directionally? Of course not, it is only our perception that dictates a past-to-future progression of time. Someone, please prove me wrong. Then I'd have a reason to at least make a decision, any kind of decision...as far as I can tell, it's all "Que Sera Sera". Whilst it'd be nice to be able to abdicate responsibility for fairly obvious reasons (imagine! no need for guilt or shame about the most completely selfish acts! Whatever happens is not your fault!) part of me dies when I think that no matter what I think I am doing to change things, it makes no difference to the possibilities, which are singular. What happens happens. Individual struggles, our attempts to mould anything outside ourselves (or even within) count for precisely nothing because existence, the universe, is a big pre-printed impression.

I hate these thoughts because they leave the door open for a Printer, a gigantic plate-maker in the sky.

Wolfgang and Wingman make a mighty metaphor

Skim that close to the sun
your wings might just get singed

Apperatchikerachi

This is exactly the sort of thing those (such as myself) with an aversion to scrutiny should NOT be writing. Who reads these things? Am I being monitored by unseen agents? Angelic strangers watching over my shoulder with beatific expressions plastered across their beatific faces, writing comments both supportive and encouraging? Or scuttling functionaries of the Apparatchikerachi? Those creatures whose sole reason for existence is to ensure that no-one really lives, not properly. The servants of the public, the slavish and slaving, the unblinking unthinking minions of the masters. I'm sure they must feel their situation (o so keenly!), but there is nothing to be gained from sentimentality or mawkishness. Therein lie madness, poverty, ostracism, a bullet to the back of the brain, an unmarked grave. Treason. Disgrace and eternal besmirchment of not only their names, but the names of their children and their children's children.

Monitoring a cacophonous sea of unheard voices, all struggling to be heard above the din, these funcionaries aren't even sure what they are prying upon. Occasional words rise up from the white noise, but their meaning is disconnected, always taken out of context. Each thought expressed is an echo of something said earlier, during a better, saner, somehow nicer period in history... any originality or spark of creativity has been subsumed by the universality of the culture of equality. The logical extension of the philosophy of Big Bird ("We are ALL special! We should all SHARE!!") is that we are none of us special, and none of us have a right to anything more than anyone else. Big Bird's manifesto, like Marx's, is admirable in many ways but impossible to live by. Ego-death means death of the species, and our very DNA rails against these mad utopian ideals. When humans live only for society and it's greater good, they cease to be human and become cogs. Wheels of commerce. Cannon fodder. Apparatchikerachi.

Vonnegut would have hated this so much

SO here I am, welcoming myself to the monkeyhouse.