Better Than Life
Chapter Two: Abstraction
By: Cornel Kennedy

When I wake, then sleep has been implied. When I take in my surroundings, then lost has been implied. The Primus song, "Welcome to This World", that I had not remembered downloading, repeats on my computer. The computer zones off and ends its hum. I rest on the ground with my back against the floor. "Must be a system malfunction," I speak outloud about the system crash. Speaking to myself? Another system malfunction?

Coming to is never delightful. Everything that had meaning has now been lost. It's better this way, not carrying around what ever burden of my trip. Now I can focus on why I am really here; paying taxes and dying. These things drain me, but I have always found out and then lost another source that tapped into me. It's the drugs. The mind alterating states that keep me from reality. I remember when I once saw 3D art for the first time. I had thought it looked stupid and had nothing but a choas movement. I was told that you had to unfocus your sight to see the hidden message. Well, my mind is as unfocus as they come.

I pull the needle out of my arm. Why do I continually wake up like this? This is the suffering of Samsara. I am reborn back into this cycle of which I do not understand. Shit, I bet that my buddy list is erased, yet again. But I shouldn't think of the people on that list as real people. I don't know them in the real world. So my mind corrects itself on the path of the Way. What is the purpose of the internet? It may be the new way we communicate. Since our minds work by interpreting electronic pulses picked up from our environment, can we exist on a network of electronics and reform everything we think we take for granted in reality?

A loud creeking comes from behind the wall touching my bed. I knee on my bed and turn my head to lean my ears against the wall. I cannot tell if it is the plumbing or two people getting it on in there. I know that no one lives in the apartment in which I am easedropping. There may be another reason why people on the streets stare at me. I have heard people whispering as they have neared me. From the hints of conversation I have picked up, I am convinced they think I am dating some chick who frequently comes into my room and kicks the shit out of me while I laugh in enjoyment. I don't know if I am into that S&M thing. I believe that I don't, but I surely am not experimental about sex. Different sex, same age, is my fetish. I don't know if that is natural of a product of being raised in this society, but I accept it and nothing else. In fact, I have been getting nothing for a while now.

I bounce off my bed and mouth a string of curses, which somewhat seems more sane than talking to myself. I shouldn't be jumping on my bed with these rumours around me. I go and pick up my needle. Though I do not believe that I have injected any drugs in me - I'm an oral pill man - I do believe that I should involve myself in the city's needle exchange program. There is a program near the corner of my street, and it was were I was recommended to seek psychological treatment for my paranoid schizophrenic by the head of pharmacy, Dr. Abercrombie. I call him Mud. For everything about this man that is sharp (his ironed dry cleaned clothes, short pulled back hair cut, round tinted jazzy sunglasses, and black polished shoes as if asking to be kissed), his wit is non-existent. He's a very serious man, who I suspect has something against the human race. I wouldn't blame him. He is dealing with lying junkies, for your own sake be HONEST. They make his job hard and he is prevented from giving people in real pain and problems easy access to what they need. I was one of those junkies who came to him. But I was honest and never bugged him for a hit. He is the first person who I go to after waking up from a night I could not remember and then it is to my psychologist.

I leave my appartment. People stare at me. I reach the pharmacy; the only one opened on Christmas day. It is best I don't dwell on the trap. I mean trip. Sometimes I say a different word than what I mean. Or so I would be lead to believe.

Behind the counter, the pale skinned Dr. Abercrombie stands on his elevated level from the consumers. He oversees everyone and he may be justified to think as us as inferior to him. No smile, no glace from his work, and no hello or Merry Christmas. "Whut up mudt?" I speak like an idiot. I like to play around with people who think they are in power making them think less of who I am than I am. If they miscalculate me, then they have a weakness I can expose. My motions turn awkward to fool him more and I dig my hand into my dirty blue faded demin jacket. "I'm reedy for a new needle, sir."

"Are you going to see your pyschologist after this?" He gives me a new needle in a clear plastic package. Mud's voice is monotone and without feeling. "Dr. Burroughs is worried about you. You see, you have slipped back, back to old habits."

Is this speech pattern even human? Some people speak as if they were relying on a primative software to manufacture that tiresome drone. It is strange that things today are being compared to computers so we may understand them. Love is like a processor, and if you go into too fast, it is like you are overclocking your processor's speed and it will soon burn out. You should carry a notepad were ever you go like how every good computer has a DVD read/write drive. Sexual organs should be treated like your computer mouse; they are both amusing and fill well into the hand, but you shouldn't play with either of them all day long.

It is best that I don't dwell on the trip. I am on a fainting couch with a new lining that doesn't go with the brown leather, but neither does the scum of my clothing I guess. It is a bit unreal now that I think about it.

Dr. Burroughs is the city's top pyschologist. No one makes bullshit smell rosy quite expensively as him. He considers me a rival because I am his only failure. He has told me a few times that I was close to slipping out of this reality. Like most psuedo-intellects, he uses computers as an analogy to life and the mind without understanding either. Life is a bitch, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and computers are the only thing in style today that people use. He is a slim man, and I give him a bit more respect than I do Mud. Burroughs' is a puppet, but Mud is a program. That is interesting that I have given Mr. Abercrombie that name in two respects. In the Primus song, "My Name is Mud", there is a character called Alowishus Devadander Abercrombie, which Mud shares the same last name. The other coincidence in saying that Mud is a program running on the internet also called MUD. MUD is an acronym for Multiple User Dimension. I have played these text based games which have allowed me to create a unique character and I got lost in its personality. I did find out that it is not a real world and disconnected without any worries. My mind is wandering, and Dr. Burroughs has tired to get my attention for a few minutes.

"Come on," he says in disgust, "wake up from your daydreams. This is why you are paranoid and can't function here. You have to accept that this is reality."

He does not have to be rude and interrupt me; I was near some conclusion. I never get to make the conclusion of my wandering mind. The process is wasted in vain because outside distractions. "What is my problem again?"

He shakes his head as he must have tried a few more times to get my attention and I had missed what he said. He has a wooly sweater over his weak torso. "You aren't paying attention to imporant things and dwelling on the insignificant." He flips through his notes. "You have said this about reality..."

A cellphone next to his desk rings and he puts it up to his head. He puts it down and looks at me.

"What did I say about reality." I ask.

"I wasn't talking about what you thought about reality," he lies and starts his bullshit excuse, "you were daydreaming once again. You haven't understood a word I have said. I will say, your obsession with the number three has got to stop."

"Well, tat your fucking three cent, huh?"

Psychology is not a science. Science is not a religion. I am still wondering if psychology is the child of religion as science is the evolution of philosophy. Psychology has changed religious terms like soul and sin to ego and shame but does the ego exist any more than the soul? Have they freed us from the omnipotence of vagueness and given humans a concrete description of what we consist? I do not feel that a branch of science would leave us with all of its answers able to be questioned. Science has taught those who are willing to accept it that life has evolved. If this path to intelligent life has proven to be successful is questionable, but the fact that we have evolved has not. Sure there is going to be a few religious types ladden with every degree imagable except one in a field of science who would preach to me other wise, but so would there be religious types who have not accepted the fact that the earth revolves around the sun and is not on top a limitless end (contradition obvious) of turtles to support the earth. However, I do feel that there is something I am missing that science will allow but cannot explain.

"That's our time for today," Dr. Burroughs shows me his watch and I see the second hand moving back. "That's our time for today."

"That's our time for today," Dr. Burroughs repeats as he frequently must have done in our session. But this time it was strange, time was strange. I swear that time had repeated itself. Rather not wanting to hear the excuse he would provide me, I leave without a questioning him. Something is going on in this world, I know that I can uncover it.

Not to dwell, I am outside in the urban canyons of bricks and fire escapes. Actually, I will dwell on it. Why is it so late outside? I did get lost in the building, but I could not remember where any of the doors lead. That's enough to dwell on, and I will store it in my mind.

So I have found out I am obsessed with the number three. It's the third number in the whole number of series; freaky! No, there must be something deeper than that. He did repeat himself three times. Forty-Two is divisible by three also.

The number three bus pulls up to my bus stop that I will take to return home. I flash the driver my bus pass and head to the back pass three black leather wearing posers in trench coats and black sunglasses. I wonder how some people can walk around in clothes without a speck of dirt on them. Heck, they talk tediously about video games. They surly appear as if they belong in a video game. "The problem he keeps on declining to follow us," he speaks in a deep calm voice, "he is stuck in a loop. It is a most strange program, he is following."

The bus driver falls out of his chair, and I rush to attent to him. The bus swivels and throws me off balance to a dirty puddle on a side seat face first. I wipe the dirt out of my face and look at the head of the bus, where my vision was blurred, but I could see slits of black bouncing off the windows and ceilings. The sound of thunder filled the coach, that rolled over a few times rendering my vision useless. I finally stop with the bus with my head in slush floating with shards of glass from the window. The bus had stopped on its side and I cough out broke pieces of glass and blood. The lights above me flicker and show ahead of me the driver who had a green bolt running across his body.

I stand there listless. People outside the bus yell and scream to the lord. I drool blood and I would not be surprised if my face was brused and cut as well. My body is here, but my mind carries away to the movies. I have seen scenes like this only at the movies and had ragged on the special effects used, but this was real and has given me a new respect for special effects. Video games and movies have been made on computers look closer to reality each year. Sure there was no mistaking the two paddles of Pong for anything else but two people playing ping pong, but today's children are exposed to games that allow them to kill other humans and the whole thing looks real. I am somewhat disturbed by this idea, but the hypocrisy in what I am saying is a thousand times worst than children learning to kill people. They do learn from adults, and the origin should marginally be respondable for its creation. Remember, children are not programming these games. More children aren't playing these game either; it's the adults of this civilization. We should feel the same way about technology. We can't blame a computer for crashing or causing us pain. Technology is our product and we need to take respondability for that product. Oh, the hypocrisy. I forgive myself for the jumpiness of my thought process, because I had been in a major crash. Yes, the hypocrisy. I had said that the other passengers were tediously talking about video games, yet I do as well but only in my mind. I may be no different than them, but we do differ. They are not here, and I am. They must know reality better than me. "Well," I tell my beaten body, "welcome to shock."

It seems to be passed out, my body. I should join it.
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End of Chapter Two:
In a pattern of writing, I am using two things: alcohol and the text of Tao De Ching written by Lao Tzu (Old Master). This is a reflection of his second chapter entitled, "Abstraction". I apologize for the soberness of this chapter. :S It's merely a buzz.