The Day We Took Ourselves Apart
We wanted to become nothing, so that we could become more than nothing. It was only nothingness that could relieve us from the responsibility of being alive.
Boredom leads to either one of two things, invention or potential ruin. On the seventh day that the Lord rested, it might be impossible to truly grasp the cosmic depths of his boredom. When the grandeur of creation was done and all that was left around him was the earth’s silence, he had sat in a green pastureland watching the sun, the shrubs, the sky, in a concert that had, by then, grown bigger than himself. What could he do with himself? With no one to call or visit, there was only his own largeness filling up every crevice of the land. The Lord became a lazy Sunday dreamer lain in the grass, forced by his loneliness to appreciate nature’s beauty as if for the first time.
We, the lesser Gods, had laid on the grass on the seventh day just like him the day we decided to take ourselves apart. On that day, and many days like it, our thoughts often had nowhere to go but towards obliteration. You could find yourself staring at a single hair on your arm as it captured the sunlight until the sunlight turned cold on your skin.
It’s an interesting activity to partake in, until it isn’t. We had had all the conversations there were to be had. And realised that peace wasn’t as peaceful as it seemed. We could feel the obliteration in the sun resting on our faces. We could feel the obliteration in an invisible breeze parting blades of grass open like a young virgin’s thighs. We had come from people renowned for their peaceful ways. Our war songs rang like hymns to our enemies’ ears; “Goood mooorning sir.” , “Are you in gooooood health?” , “Yeeeeees, I am getting on by.” , “Yes, that is greaaaaaat news indeed”, “Yeeeeees, sir”
Slowness is another world unto itself. Docility. Politeness. Respectability. What would it mean to cut through the woollen blankets we’ve wrapped ourselves in to un-muffle our true voices ? The sound of sex—taken from an abstraction scrawled by a ten-year-old in chalk against a school wall—could be born anew to become a person like me or you. Dark eyed and grinning and asking us where the next party is. In this way we could unwind ourselves down to the last piece of wool.
Our bodies, already flimsy inheritances from the barefooted kings who used to walk this land, stood no chance against our self-engineered obliteration. Our desire was to become more than flesh and blood, but ideas instead. Slowness’ pull is stronger than infatuation. Science tells us that the world is held together by orderly patterns that make up matter. It only makes sense that the patterns holding objects together can be undone.
I started by pulling the arm hairs out of my skin one by one. Then I gouged my eyes out, and handed them to the next person who gouged theirs out, until we were left with bleeding pounds of flesh in our hands that we shared among ourselves like bread. I could never forget the sight of my neighbour’s eyeballs pulsating in my palms to a strange, arrhythmic rhythm. Then I took off my clothes, and, peeled off my skin like I was peeling an orange. I made myself forget words, and phrases, and then eventually, the outline of objects, the ones that remain in the darkness of your eyelids when you close them too quickly on a sunny day. Blind, I went to join the procession towards town. There, we learned that the symbols of all institutions, too, weren’t as sturdy as they seemed. So we disbanded the police stations. We disbanded the book clubs. We disbanded the schools. We disbanded the churches. When all that are left are the primal impulses between two or more people, do we call this feeling love or do we call it survival? A scream that was folded inside our throats waiting for the moment we find ourselves alone with no one to call a friend. It will cry for the nearest warm body. It will cry for the sound of another name that sounds like our own.
We wanted to become nothing, so that we could become more than nothing. It was only nothingness that could relieve us from the responsibility of being alive. Even an ant is burdened like Sisyphus to carry a load ten times bigger than its own size. It never asked for this responsibility, so nothingness will be its only salvation. When I finally unmake myself, breaking myself down to my bony core, maybe one day I will meet you in the street laughing. And maybe we will laugh together, even though the joke has long stopped being funny. They will say we have madness inside of us, but there is a secret I am asking you to keep for me. I could write it down here, but then, it would be a secret no longer.