Spring
I'd feed glass shavings to the idiot that named the Infinite Castle. It's anything but.
Babylon City revolves around lack. Lack of personality, lack of culture, lack of answers. The City defines itself by alienating its citizens from what it doesn't want to become. It abhors the grime-faced lower classes and keeps itself crystal clean. It favours structure and order over chaos. It keeps Babylonians mild-mannered and courteous in speech, all the better to remind its citizens that conflict and dissent belong to those struggling below, people worlds apart from us. Culture has always originated from the hard life on the streets, where behaviors are shaped through cooperation, conflict, sorrow, and celebration-- never from the bored spectator society. Instead of allowing it to circulate upwards, however, we shun it. It's a shame.
I live in a man-made utopia whose leaders fears substance in its blind pursuit of perfection. A critic can find fault in substance. But one merely gets lost in simulacra, and fault can only fall back upon the critic for failing to find its elusive meaning. In this false utopia, there is no shortage of basic survival needs. Over the decades, we have found ways of existing outside the mainstream economy. Forgotten by the rest of the world, our citizens do not pay taxes and ignore all social responsibilities outside their perfect bubble. Globalization and imperialism may assimilate masses outside our walls, but it will not touch us. Japan's failing economy, too, will not touch us. Illusions are our currency. The citizens held in highest regard are those that most effectively perpetuate our myth.
In our artificial world, many of us have forgotten what it is we're really living for. We need to watch the world through a lens, to inflict tragedy upon Lower denizens at varying intensities so that we may observe the prioritization of values and human desires. What do people fight for? What is it worth? How hard can they be pushed before they tick? In their empty lives, Babylonians must feel envied to sustain the belief they have something that is coveted, when they in fact have nothing. The more miserable they make the Lower denizens, the more justified their existence. So far, it's working.
Bored eyes turn downward for excitement. But some cannot be satisfied just watching from a distance. Boredom is what physically draws me down to the lower levels on the pretense of pushing some profound agenda. Every so often, I run into the starry-eyed adventurer out to uncrack the Big Secrets of my towering hometown. They never just come out and ask me what goes on up here. After all, why trust me? I'm the enemy that obviously knows something they don't, something they're willing to risk their lives to find out. And the fact that I'm smiling like a fox in a hen yard? It makes them think, "Oh whatever it is, it must be good." If only the irony would stop amusing me so. Then maybe I'd stop, then they'd stop, and go home to their little Gamecubes and quit bothering my perfect self. Let them eat chocobo, I say. Hahahaha.
Gracious me, wrong console.
Summer
I wouldn't say, however, that all Babylonians are unhappy, mindless sheep. My current society is founded upon the ideologies of our resentful elders: the men and women who were abandoned and forgotten within the Infinite Castle by the rest of the world after the war. Life was hard, and they struggled in the metaphorical dirt to the day they finally put their new-found technology to use, gaining autonomy and, along with it, the arrogance to turn their backs to their pasts. The elders finally have their pride, but at what cost. In maintaining their precious ideology, they hide all labour that arrive at their present day glory. They exalt in the illusion of ease to feel truly blessed-- like nobility that was granted first-class living by God, and not like the worker that paid years of blood, sweat, and tears to achieve it. No, of course not. Admitting the latter would mean accepting the reminder that they were once disposable, left to fend for themselves. Running from the truth were these men and women like my mother and father.
Everyone else? We're bored like sociopathic suburban children of rich CEO parents, brats that skin neighbours' cats for entertainment listening to Marilyn Manson CDs. We may have been born with silver spoons in our mouths, with no mundane worries like finding a job or passing college entrance exams, but we're rather jaded of having to live according to our leaders' transparent views. But like most sociopathic suburban children of rich CEO parents, we're comfortable and complacent. We're all healthy and well-educated, raised by a community so driven by perfection. We're also very beautiful due to genetic engineering (though our younger males tend to appear more androgynous for some reason). Babylon City is a great place to pass one's hormonal teenage years. It's like our own Beverly Hills without the plastic surgery and the makeup. It is for these benefits that we'll uphold the myth. We'll act like the polished ambassadors whenever we step outside our sanctuary for the blessed. We'll keep their precious secret-- those few of us that are trusted with them. Besides, if an outsider were to unravel the mystery of Babylon City, that would be quite embarrassing to all of us, I think.
A good number of us are secretly happy that Lower Town became independent. It's forced a lot of those cronies to wake up and realize that they're wasting their lives away doing something meaningless. Maybe now they'll be more lax about, I don't know, at least acknowledging the rest of the world? Perhaps I can finally leave Babylon City for a good measure without being labeled as a deserter-- despite the irony that it was they that educated us so well in the first place, hacking into the worlds' databases and filling our heads with knowledge, all in the name of proving that they could train us as well as any prestigious university can. They keep our minds in the world but our bodies in their ivory tower. To desert is to be forever cast out. It'd be nice to have a home to come back to, after all. Despite its flaws, it is home and a lot less stressful than the alternative. Salarymen work, what, a hundred hours a week, nowadays? Exile would be Hell.
As soon as something better comes along, however, I think the typical member of my generation wouldn't think twice about deserting, exile or not.
Like love, for instance...
Autumn
I must have her. I have decided for a while now.
My observations take me further and further from Babylon City. Nowadays, I go to bed wondering how long it'll take until the elders become suspicious, if they're not already so. I wonder how long I can wallow in the illusion that I am still trusted. Up until now, I have enjoyed the benefits of being one of the favourites. I am the perfect ambassador. My very talents reflect everything that Babylon City stands for. I glitter and mesmerize. I'm an illusionist. I seem ubiquitous in my invisibility. I permeate through spaces, vanishing and reappearing. I choose to dress in white so that multiples of myself would confuse the eye. The elders believed it was a fashion statement for purity, a physical representation of their rigid thinking and obsession for cultural polarity. They smiled approvingly as I passed. How droll. They make me their poster child and tell me things they don't tell others. I imagine it'd be much different if I dressed like a bum, grew stubble, and developed an affinity for the light of truth instead of deceptive mirrors. And a drinking problem.
I was perfect until she hit me for the first time.
My skin after our very first battle was black and blue. I saw the blossoming of imperfection when I rolled up my sleeves and adjusted my collar. My illusions did well to mask the damage from my enemies, but what she left on me was very real and didn't fade for days. She has not faded from my mind. I wonder how long they'll believe I'm stalking her for revenge. For that curse laid upon her. They won't realize the truth until that day arrives and I openly betray them.
For now, I am merely a great annoyance to her, chasing her exotic beauty like some overzealous documentary photographer. Funny. Despite the hype of high technology, no digital camera with the highest picture quality will give me enough pixels of her. I long for every nuance that's escaped me, those miniscule spaces between those rigid dots.
Winter
It is done. I can never go back.
I'd feed glass shavings to the idiot that named the Infinite Castle. It's anything but.
Babylon City revolves around lack. Lack of personality, lack of culture, lack of answers. The City defines itself by alienating its citizens from what it doesn't want to become. It abhors the grime-faced lower classes and keeps itself crystal clean. It favours structure and order over chaos. It keeps Babylonians mild-mannered and courteous in speech, all the better to remind its citizens that conflict and dissent belong to those struggling below, people worlds apart from us. Culture has always originated from the hard life on the streets, where behaviors are shaped through cooperation, conflict, sorrow, and celebration-- never from the bored spectator society. Instead of allowing it to circulate upwards, however, we shun it. It's a shame.
I live in a man-made utopia whose leaders fears substance in its blind pursuit of perfection. A critic can find fault in substance. But one merely gets lost in simulacra, and fault can only fall back upon the critic for failing to find its elusive meaning. In this false utopia, there is no shortage of basic survival needs. Over the decades, we have found ways of existing outside the mainstream economy. Forgotten by the rest of the world, our citizens do not pay taxes and ignore all social responsibilities outside their perfect bubble. Globalization and imperialism may assimilate masses outside our walls, but it will not touch us. Japan's failing economy, too, will not touch us. Illusions are our currency. The citizens held in highest regard are those that most effectively perpetuate our myth.
In our artificial world, many of us have forgotten what it is we're really living for. We need to watch the world through a lens, to inflict tragedy upon Lower denizens at varying intensities so that we may observe the prioritization of values and human desires. What do people fight for? What is it worth? How hard can they be pushed before they tick? In their empty lives, Babylonians must feel envied to sustain the belief they have something that is coveted, when they in fact have nothing. The more miserable they make the Lower denizens, the more justified their existence. So far, it's working.
Bored eyes turn downward for excitement. But some cannot be satisfied just watching from a distance. Boredom is what physically draws me down to the lower levels on the pretense of pushing some profound agenda. Every so often, I run into the starry-eyed adventurer out to uncrack the Big Secrets of my towering hometown. They never just come out and ask me what goes on up here. After all, why trust me? I'm the enemy that obviously knows something they don't, something they're willing to risk their lives to find out. And the fact that I'm smiling like a fox in a hen yard? It makes them think, "Oh whatever it is, it must be good." If only the irony would stop amusing me so. Then maybe I'd stop, then they'd stop, and go home to their little Gamecubes and quit bothering my perfect self. Let them eat chocobo, I say. Hahahaha.
Gracious me, wrong console.
Summer
I wouldn't say, however, that all Babylonians are unhappy, mindless sheep. My current society is founded upon the ideologies of our resentful elders: the men and women who were abandoned and forgotten within the Infinite Castle by the rest of the world after the war. Life was hard, and they struggled in the metaphorical dirt to the day they finally put their new-found technology to use, gaining autonomy and, along with it, the arrogance to turn their backs to their pasts. The elders finally have their pride, but at what cost. In maintaining their precious ideology, they hide all labour that arrive at their present day glory. They exalt in the illusion of ease to feel truly blessed-- like nobility that was granted first-class living by God, and not like the worker that paid years of blood, sweat, and tears to achieve it. No, of course not. Admitting the latter would mean accepting the reminder that they were once disposable, left to fend for themselves. Running from the truth were these men and women like my mother and father.
Everyone else? We're bored like sociopathic suburban children of rich CEO parents, brats that skin neighbours' cats for entertainment listening to Marilyn Manson CDs. We may have been born with silver spoons in our mouths, with no mundane worries like finding a job or passing college entrance exams, but we're rather jaded of having to live according to our leaders' transparent views. But like most sociopathic suburban children of rich CEO parents, we're comfortable and complacent. We're all healthy and well-educated, raised by a community so driven by perfection. We're also very beautiful due to genetic engineering (though our younger males tend to appear more androgynous for some reason). Babylon City is a great place to pass one's hormonal teenage years. It's like our own Beverly Hills without the plastic surgery and the makeup. It is for these benefits that we'll uphold the myth. We'll act like the polished ambassadors whenever we step outside our sanctuary for the blessed. We'll keep their precious secret-- those few of us that are trusted with them. Besides, if an outsider were to unravel the mystery of Babylon City, that would be quite embarrassing to all of us, I think.
A good number of us are secretly happy that Lower Town became independent. It's forced a lot of those cronies to wake up and realize that they're wasting their lives away doing something meaningless. Maybe now they'll be more lax about, I don't know, at least acknowledging the rest of the world? Perhaps I can finally leave Babylon City for a good measure without being labeled as a deserter-- despite the irony that it was they that educated us so well in the first place, hacking into the worlds' databases and filling our heads with knowledge, all in the name of proving that they could train us as well as any prestigious university can. They keep our minds in the world but our bodies in their ivory tower. To desert is to be forever cast out. It'd be nice to have a home to come back to, after all. Despite its flaws, it is home and a lot less stressful than the alternative. Salarymen work, what, a hundred hours a week, nowadays? Exile would be Hell.
As soon as something better comes along, however, I think the typical member of my generation wouldn't think twice about deserting, exile or not.
Like love, for instance...
Autumn
I must have her. I have decided for a while now.
My observations take me further and further from Babylon City. Nowadays, I go to bed wondering how long it'll take until the elders become suspicious, if they're not already so. I wonder how long I can wallow in the illusion that I am still trusted. Up until now, I have enjoyed the benefits of being one of the favourites. I am the perfect ambassador. My very talents reflect everything that Babylon City stands for. I glitter and mesmerize. I'm an illusionist. I seem ubiquitous in my invisibility. I permeate through spaces, vanishing and reappearing. I choose to dress in white so that multiples of myself would confuse the eye. The elders believed it was a fashion statement for purity, a physical representation of their rigid thinking and obsession for cultural polarity. They smiled approvingly as I passed. How droll. They make me their poster child and tell me things they don't tell others. I imagine it'd be much different if I dressed like a bum, grew stubble, and developed an affinity for the light of truth instead of deceptive mirrors. And a drinking problem.
I was perfect until she hit me for the first time.
My skin after our very first battle was black and blue. I saw the blossoming of imperfection when I rolled up my sleeves and adjusted my collar. My illusions did well to mask the damage from my enemies, but what she left on me was very real and didn't fade for days. She has not faded from my mind. I wonder how long they'll believe I'm stalking her for revenge. For that curse laid upon her. They won't realize the truth until that day arrives and I openly betray them.
For now, I am merely a great annoyance to her, chasing her exotic beauty like some overzealous documentary photographer. Funny. Despite the hype of high technology, no digital camera with the highest picture quality will give me enough pixels of her. I long for every nuance that's escaped me, those miniscule spaces between those rigid dots.
Winter
It is done. I can never go back.