It’s happening again: the recurring nightmare that the world is over and I emerge from the clouds of smoke and hazy glow of toxic gas laughing maniacally like a post-apocalyptic Pollyanna dancing amongst the ruins with a Cheshire cat smile
on my face. Not a soul in sight, not a bird in flight no love to be livin’ for, no sins to be forgiven for, nothing to weep for. Just nothing, nothing, nothing. Waking up to steady streams of light in a warm bed, with children’s laughter reverberating off the walls. And then to the deep anxieties revealed in the liminal space between the conscious and the unconscious mind. Like good friends who get lunch without you and talk shit behind your back, saying, “girl needs to confront her fears. Let’s stage an intervention.” Might as well take the lesson, like a mature student struggling with behavioural regression. Because as we’ve learned, class, dystopian Debbie Downers are only good for making people sad, for draining time and resources. For disturbing the collective conscience in a time where it hurts to think and we’re all too distracted to feel. Don’t use those tiny hands to dust cobwebs off hearts whose ventricles stopped pumping long ago. Don’t inject thrombolytics to loosen the clots. Don’t make surgical incisions in the decaying chest caverns of the dead to see what’s going on. Don’t try to resuscitate a ghost. It’s no use. Because we’re all just machines now anyway. Glitched out, broken, poorly wired machines in anhedonic cages who can’t recall what it’s like to feel alive. So just dance baby.
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