Baudrillard in the Bathroom

Sitting on the toilet seat in my bathroom smoking weed and cigarettes while reading Baudrillard, as my teenager sits on my bed playing Minecraft on my realm with their friend who is pretending to be a famous British streamer.

 

And writing. Writing this nonsense about nonsense for no reason, while thinking of the hyperreal, as it spreads across all of what once was real, consuming and destroying and replacing everything in its wake. I don’t even know if I care anymore, because what is the point if we are all just being dragged and drugged by inertia and dopamine away from the real, the tangible, and into the hyperreal?

 

This is my horror. This is why the only safety I can imagine is a log cabin deep in the woods, on hundreds of acres, with a good source of fresh water and fish; a river or a large and clean lake. Nowhere else is safe, and even there, buried in the depths of the woods, no doubt I would soon begin to see drones advertising VR, or the Metaverse, or AI, or Elon’s Next Big Savior Tech.

 

Soon after, I’m quite certain, the government, in their great “concern for my welfare,” would forcefully move me to some infested rat hole in an overcrowded digitally run city, and have me prescribed daily doses of VR (under threat of confinement in a psych ward) to cure my delusion that reality has inherent value, simply for being real. Simply for the truth of it. We are all well and truly fucked, my friends, and I’ll toke and smoke to that.

2/11/2022

Thought Control

A needle

pierces my flesh

and contortionist memories

begin to twist

through my

mind.

 

I try to blink,

to open my

eyes,

but am pulled back

to the phantasm display

whirling

behind my lids.

 

Real and unreal

blend,

then separate,

then blend again,

like a kaleidoscope,

and I try to focus

on one single

spot,

like a spinning dancer,

to keep steady.

 

The imagery

swirls before me,

challenging my

past

and taunting

my future.

 

I try to scream,

but my saccharine

coated tongue

rests heavy,

like a sandbag,

damming up

a river of

sound.

 

The world seems

off balance,

tilting,

and I fear I might

roll off  the

edge.

 

I can feel

the other bodies

in this living graveyard,

hear their moans,

and smell

the sour

of their frightened

humanity.

 

I remember

when they brought us

here,

or I think I do,

and I try

to hold on

to their reason–

their lie,

amid our

threatened truths.

 

They said

we were dangerous.

A threat

to order.

Enemy combatants.

 

But that

is absurd,

for the only weapon

I’ve wielded

was a

pen.

 

7-3-19

 

 

 

 

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