touched out

Photo by luthfi alfarizi on Unsplash

I was touched out before the Epstein stormed gathered a second wind in the media zeitgeist. Now I’m a melted pool of human flesh.

Maybe it’s because my 17-year old conspiratorial self feels vindicated that I cannot help but be absorbed by the commentary of it. Among the twisted co-existence of stimulation and repulsion, there is recognition that the feelings I’ve carried quietly throughout the years about the sickness of society is being reflected back to me at a scale that invites a solitary hint of satisfaction.

If you’ve ever watched “illuminati” documentaries in the early YouTube days and even marginally entertained their veracity, there’s not much new or shocking in the accounts of depravity, sadism and self-preservation among the so-called elites. Still, even for me, the wheels of consumption keep turning and fodder for despair is plentiful.

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What arrests me more recently is the AI-pocalype news cycle and the impending doom it will allegedly impose on the world within the next few years.

Fear of the unknown gives rise to a varied range of imaginings, and I’ve placated the algorithm in giving them all an open ear. You see, I’m drawn to collapse. Awe-struck with wide eyes staring straight at the tidal wave approaching; terrified, but accompanied by something approaching relief. Inviting destruction for the impetus to rebuild something new.

Yet all these sentiments have existed in a hazy field within my psyche — present; heavy even, but formless. It’s much for this reason that I haven’t published anything on here for approaching a year. Carving out words from the thick atmosphere returns a discomfort that encroaches on an already fleeting stock of vitality.

Time feels squeezed between an oscillating pattern of diligent responsibility and escapism. They engage each other in a strange dance. One body glides elegantly towards the other, signalling the importance of awareness in this changing world; the catastrophes and dangers present, not least to prepare and protect. The other retreats instinctively, knowing awareness pressed against the firm body of fear fuels a powerlessness which reinforces its desire to avoid, even if the avoidance is masked by a fanfare of action.

The more voices I hear, the more steps I witness, the less I hear and trust my own.

So today I choose to exercise at least a degree of agency in the impending unknown, by pulling words and sentences from the fog to capture the moment, and if God wills, make enough punctures that some light can penetrate.

With love.