Cyberpunk Baby

What ads I am getting in its place you ask?

My disability is the constant apprehension of having a moment, by which I mean acknowledging, synthesising and documenting something important in the map of my mind while it is happening in the present.

Today while I was on the escalator of the metro station, I saw a father and a son in front of me and the father was very intently explaining something to the son. I couldn't hear them, so I had to imagine what was being said. What should have felt like a sweet picture made me feel something quite the opposite. What are these man's credentials, who has taken on immense responsibility of caring for a whole new individual? What if what he is so intently explaining is hatred and bigotry to this kid? These are not new thoughts by any means, but sometimes it takes a lingering idle minute for a thought to take root. As a woman who is running out of time to bear a child, this moment felt like it was taking the shape of a decision. At this point, almost as an evolutionary instinct, I could feel the camera pan out with appropriate revelatory music framing the moment. I was repulsed and immediately shut down the entire shot, and most importantly, I shut down the original emotional experience along with it too.

This has specifically been brought about by the overuse of reductive montages in movies that perfectly capture all the defining points of life, which has generated this feeling that montages are categorically an exaggeration of real life, which is funny because movies are after all a reflection of real life. So in an attempt to simulate real life, real life itself has ceased to exist.

They feel imaginary and fictitious, impossible to be real.

They are doing things without screaming and yelling in exasperation and having catastrophic breakdowns. How do they have their mental integrity intact in public while being subject to the worst humanity has to offer, with all odds against them and with no respite in sight?

The world has never felt so hopeless.

This is of course not the first time the world has seen adversity at this scale but that should not undercut the unique nature of crisis we are currently in. The post-truth era is reaching its pinnacle and it's dismantling the very nature of being human. The popular argument we use to soothe our fears which is that of our material conditions being better than they have ever been, is senseless because the post-truth climate has the unprecedented power to destroy all the institutions that are necessary to sustain these material conditions.

So fear is completely justified and the lack of fear is just stupid.

The only way forward is action. Passivity is NOT as option. Remaining apolitical is NOT an option.

While I am aware of the right thing to do, the cruel banality of it is that I still must be able to sustain a livelihood to survive and do so with debilitating anxiety. One of the things that help calm my anxious mind in a twisted and dissonant way is watching rural/poor people live their lives.

I am aware that their material conditions are objectively bad, that is not even primarily because of the simplicity they are relegated to, but by how extraordinarily difficult it has become to live a dignified life without the help of the system that is not on their side. It is nearly impossible to live an off-grid life sustainably when all the basic needs are controlled by corporations.

Kaup beach, 2019.

It is around noon in the sweltering summer, but the sun is not proving to be a worthy contender to the big oceanic wind. After a destructive drunken night, we are trying to recover our human selves reluctantly by wolfing down the first meal of the day. There is mostly silence now, afforded by last night's alcohol-bestowed stripping of our inhibitions to bare our vulnerabilities and desires that deepened our friendship in wakefulness, even if temporarily, in a bond of shame. The gorgeous and boisterous wind muted any awkwardness that tried taking root in our company. We were sitting on an extravagantly long table for a group of five, set by the beach in the cool shade of coconut fronds with the trees above swaying precariously to the tune of the wind.

I find this portrayal of it so fun and incisive.