For a moment, she thought it natural in a way seeing a plane fall from the sky can seem natural, too. The horror comes later.
Here in Alpha City, we have a common saying: __hat we call __ky_ is merely a figment of our narrative._ The most dreamy-eyed among us seem to adorn themselves and their aspirations in that proverb and you__l see it everywhere: in advertisements on the sides of streetcars and auto-rickshaws, spelled out in studs and rhinestones on designer jackets, emblazoned in the intricate designs of facial tattoos__ven painted on city walls by putrid vandals and inspiring street artists. There is something glorious about kneading out into the doughy firmament the depth and breadth of one__ own universe, in rendering the contours of a sky whose limits are predicated only upon the bounds of one__ own imagination. The fact of the matter is that we cannot see the natural sky at all here. It is something like a theoretical mathematical expression: like the square-root of __egative one___ertainly it could be said to have a purpose for existing, but to cast eyes upon it, in its natural quantity, would be something akin to casting one__ eyes upon the raw elements comprising our everyday sustenance. How many of us have even borne close witness to the minute chemical compounds that react to lend battery power to our portable electronics? The sky is indeed such a concealed fixture now. It is fair to say that we have purged our memories of its true face and so we can only approximate a canvas and project our desires upon it to our heart__ dearest fancy. The most cynical among us would ostensibly declare it an unavoidable tragedy, but perhaps even these hardened individuals could not remember the naked sky well enough to know if what they were missing was something worthwhile. Perhaps, it__ cynical of me to say so! In any case, we have our searchlights pointed upwards and crisscrossing that expanse of heavens as though to make some sensational and profane joke of ourselves to the surrounding universe. We beam already video images of beauty pageants and dancing contests with smiling mannequins who look like buffoons. And so, the face of space cloaks itself behind our light pollution__n this respect, our mirrored sidewalks and lustrous streets do little to help our cause__nd that face remains hidden from us in its jeering ridicule, its mocking laughter at this inexorable farce of human existence.
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Here in Alpha City, we have a common saying: __hat we call __ky_ is merely a figment of our narrative._ The most dreamy-eyed among us seem to adorn themselves and their aspirations in that proverb and you__l see it everywhere: in advertisements on the sides of streetcars and auto-rickshaws, spelled out in studs and rhinestones on designer jackets, emblazoned in the intricate designs of facial tattoos__ven painted on city walls by putrid vandals and inspiring street artists. There is something glorious about kneading out into the doughy firmament the depth and breadth of one__ own universe, in rendering the contours of a sky whose limits are predicated only upon the bounds of one__ own imagination. The fact of the matter is that we cannot see the natural sky at all here. It is something like a theoretical mathematical expression: like the square-root of __egative one___ertainly it could be said to have a purpose for existing, but to cast eyes upon it, in its natural quantity, would be something akin to casting one__ eyes upon the raw elements comprising our everyday sustenance. How many of us have even borne close witness to the minute chemical compounds that react to lend battery power to our portable electronics? The sky is indeed such a concealed fixture now. It is fair to say that we have purged our memories of its true face and so we can only approximate a canvas and project our desires upon it to our heart__ dearest fancy. The most cynical among us would ostensibly declare it an unavoidable tragedy, but perhaps even these hardened individuals could not remember the naked sky well enough to know if what they were missing was something worthwhile. Perhaps, it__ cynical of me to say so! In any case, we have our searchlights pointed upwards and crisscrossing that expanse of heavens as though to make some sensational and profane joke of ourselves to the surrounding universe. We beam already video images of beauty pageants and dancing contests with smiling mannequins who look like buffoons. And so, the face of space cloaks itself behind our light pollution__n this respect, our mirrored sidewalks and lustrous streets do little to help our cause__nd that face remains hidden from us in its jeering ridicule, its mocking laughter at this inexorable farce of human existence.
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Love is the perception of perfection beyond the protection of our projection.
Was it possible to feel nostalgic about something that had never happened to him, possible for nostalgia to be taken in by the body as a free pathogen to infect the consciousness with stray sentiments? Perhaps, in his dreams, he had traveled back in time, or even drifted into another dimension of space-time and inhabited the body, experiences, and nostalgia of another. To even envisage so allowed the trauma of those lost moments, though not his own, to draw from him a certain envy for the entity in whose memories he had basked vicariously. . .Perhaps, nostalgia was a microorganism. . .the bacterium that infected. . . Yes. . .maybe he was sick.
What indeed is the half-life of a mortal consciousness? What is the half-life of a memory of that mortal consciousness? Of course, this is purely an academic question and of no immediate concern to those of us existing in the world of the living, for we possess already a memory, in its stead, which serves as a basis of our perception of the past. Accurate or not, this nature of memory allows us to understand the past according to the positions occupied by the flesh about which we seek to know, but, unfortunately, not in a way relative to the flesh itself__hat flesh stripped of identity and circumstance, that flesh which, in its most rudimentary capacity, had once collided, interacted, fought, competed, negotiated, cooperated, and mated with other flesh: there is no history of this kind, thoroughly naked and telling enough, which is accessible to us, for we are composed of the very same substance, the very same flesh, and sadly incapable of stepping outside of it, even momentarily.
Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering_ since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.
Be the celebrators, celebrate! Already there is too much__he flowers have bloomed, the birds are singing, the sun is there in the sky__elebrate it! You are breathing and you are alive and you have consciousness, celebrate it!