Part V: Assertion

Tell me your story.

 

Just like how a new born child lies beside a blank canvas, waiting to write his - tell me your story. 

 

Tell me how each line is drawn. Or rather why. Tell me the stories of geometrical lines, and how they came to pass. Tell me the legends of the organic lines scribbled on your canvas, and how it had shaped your today.

 

I will listen intently as you tell me the fables of the splashes of dried ink on the white space near the borders, and why they came to be.

 

I will listen.

 

I will listen because I want to paint the perfect picture. Because I want mine to be adored by countless people who will be amazed at the sight of such a masterpiece. At such intricate lines that lead to an eternity of stories that will someday be heard over bonfires and fireplaces.

 

I will listen.

 

I will listen as my canvas sits beside me, my hands clutching my paintbrush in utter anxiety.

 

Because I was always hesitant. Calculating. Unsure. Lost. Yes, from time to time I would be lost. It was like I stood in the midst of nowhere and I couldn’t see through the mist. The silence, in its resounding reverberation, would almost always drive me mad.

 

Tell me your story, I plead. That I may write of countless stories that will shape my being.

 

And I will listen.

 

I will listen as I stare blankly at the empty canvas beside me.

 

 

Part IV: Perseveration

Repetition.

 

My mechanical body just kept going and going, madly driven by two 16 oz Monster cans and 7 cups of coffee. 

 

My mind has gone numb, but my body is fighting it. Constantly in repeat mode I rummage through task lists and forgotten Post-It notes in my shriveled black backpack. In exaggerated obsession my reddened eyes went through each scribble on my 200-page black notebook. Anything for a quick fix. Anything to satisfy the world.

 

I sat at the edge of my bed, and I ponder what’s left of life.

 

Is this life?

 

Is this my calling? My destiny? My fate?

 

I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, body parts aching and nursing a migraine. I scan the ceiling from corner to corner in constant repetition.

 

Constant repetition.

 

Repetition.

 

That had been the summary of the life I had lived. Repetition. It didn’t matter if it was pointless, if it was futile, if it was all in vain.

 

It’s all I have. And repetition seems to be the only feasible answer.

 

I will close my eyes and wake up in 2 hours. I will bid the numbness temporarily and wake up to...

Part III: Submersion

It was cold. Just like death.

 

I could feel the numbing sensation travel through my body until... until I couldn’t feel it anymore. It was as if I suddenly let everything go. My mind. My body. And whatever was left of my soul.

 

It was like a reawakening. Like redemption. Salvation.

 

The clock. The clock had stopped ticking. The cries. The cries have faded.

 

I had been reborn.

 

Credits: Matthieu Dupont

 

Part II: Cognizance

Once I was innocent. 

 

Time had withered Life as I knew it, breaking down and shattering illusions we always thought was real.. we always thought was the truth.

 

And there they lay, lying on the ground as broken pieces that were left unclaimed. Everything that the world was about. Everything we were taught. Everything we knew. Everything that was... to us... absolute truth.

 

I picked them up, piece by piece, clutching them towards my chest. Every little piece on top of each other, like split wooden fractions awaiting to be expunged.

 

The irony was confounding. Contemplation and introversion became requisite.

 

I can now hear them scream. Like children in a state of fear within an inescapable nightmare. They cry out for sympathy, with deceit and lies concealed behind colorful masks.

 

But it was too late. The walls had spoken and my eyes laid bare through the veil of ignorance that had opaquely shrouded the innocence.

 

I hear the seemingly distant cries of the world as if they were right beside me. I feel the pangs of agony and grief. I see the sorrow in their eyes - those glassy eyes that symbolized the suffering, torment and anguish that they had remained in for all their existence. I can almost taste the blood and sweat that the wind carried, brought upon the world by man’s seemingly consummate and insatiable appetite for power and greed.

 

The world had fallen.

Part I: Entrapment

And while the world suffers, from the distortions of humanity and their augmented imaginations fueled by greed and corruption and amplified egocentricity, I lie in my slumber. 
 

Waiting for the next call as a meaningless, minute cog in the machine that fuels this suffering.

 
I awake, only to serve the world and its demand for… me. 

For every bit of my life. For every second of my breath. For every ounce of strength I can supplicate.

And in its proliferation you realize that you have not gained anything… but have lost everything.

You have achieved… and failed.

You have become meaningless. I have become meaningless.

I have become an insignificant element of life.

We bask in the memories that we claim we have had, but altogether have not seen how the world has manipulated us. How it has led us. How it has created us into what we are.

For we have not seen the world in their eyes, nor the case they represent. Blinded by the simulated world we live in we grope aimlessly towards what we call our goals. Towards what we know as real. Towards what we understand to be true. 
 

Time has stopped. 

I return to the world once more.