I sit down at the table and sip my morning coffee. The house is still as space, except for that ever-present hum of the refrigerator and the wandering movements of the dust through sunlight. I’m thinking about rapid-cycling madness this morning and how it has transformed my life. It’s nothing serious, mind you, it comes and goes. It’s akin to turning the light switch on and off. One day I could be standing in the grocery store staring at bananas for hours, and the next I’m driving through a town I’ve never been to in an entirely different state. Geographically and in the mind.

I work an at-home job doing customer service for a travel agency. Imagine a bright white call center with hordes of people in cubicles wearing headsets and all talking at the same time. Then picture me doing the same thing but in a small upstairs room of the same bright white. All by myself. I chose the upstairs room because it has a large window. I don’t enjoy feeling like a caged corporate piece of machinery or human capital. But now there are rumblings of dismantling the remote worker program. That’s too much freedom. They can’t beat us down as well. They need physical meat to mistreat.

For now, I’m able to look out onto the large park across the road. There’s worn down tennis courts, but people still swing and sweat. There’s a playground, ancient picnic tables, and tubular trash cans that resemble R2-D2. In the center of the park there is a huge bowl with steep green sides all around. It’s a place used for high school graduations, and it’s where people of the township go sledding and tubing after a good winter snow. I used to go down on a plastic disc with a smooth underside. It may have been green. I sailed untethered. There used to be a small zoo over there, too. But it’s all gone. I imagine the animals were fed to underprivileged schoolchildren. That would be more cost-effective. Humanity will fail to save itself because it just wouldn’t be cost effective. I shake my head at this big, cracked blue marble. Is this the hell spoken of?

I’m off today because it’s a Sunday Funday. I hate the job, but don’t we all. I’m so tired of dealing with absolute morons every day. How did people get so stupid? Brains rotted by technological magma, the commune commercialism, the overdramatic melancholy of the truth-altering media. It’s a nation of idiots. A nation void of meaningful thoughts, decency, justice, honesty, empathy, unselfishness, hope. Pass along the fakeness with thoughts and prayers. Pro-life my ass. Childhood cancer? They don’t care. School shootings? They don’t care. Homelessness, poverty, hunger, sickness, school lunches? They don’t care. Health care CEO gets shot dead. The outrage! A new multi-million-dollar football stadium built over people sleeping on the streets? Absolutely! How can anyone be proud of swimming in this aquarium of hollow hearts and backward minds?

I want to move to Finland or maybe Namibia; to peer down upon the indigo sea from atop a rusty-orange sand dune. Or even Armenia. Half the country couldn’t find these places on a map. Ding dong dumb. A nun at Catholic school used to call us “Dumb bunnies.” All of us. I was offended. I’m pretty sure she’s dead now. She would have to be. She was old back then. She taught art. How dare she judge us! What about freedom of expression! Perhaps I should have duct taped a banana to a wall. Mediocrity is praised. Soulless, hateful men and women are placed on pillars. We need to untangle this oppressive social system. But then again, just look to the heavens for all the answers. Some multi-tasking god looking back down at us fucking and dying.

By

Aaron Echoes August