halo 26, NIN:

I: slow motion stepping with the weight of one’s feet making their imprint in reasonably wet sand along the beach somewhere alone & tranquil where the presence of anything else simply disappears there is of course the sun a mid-day gently washing over you from afar the periphery agreeing upon the likelihood that what the rest of the day will bring is nothing more but the same & the delicate dance you do with the nature around you allows you to want this forever & ever.

II. a buzzing drifts in but it will not cease you look up trying to get behind the sun but the sun so much more powerful than you alone begins to set in & the blind spots in your line of vision begin to get bigger not smaller the buzz it continues your footsteps slow to a snails pace reaching your hands up to your temples the sound will not finish its pangs then you drop to your knees your kneecaps now thumping their weight into the reasonably wet sand as the waves crash in & the water drenches your thighs.

III. you open your sun-demanded squint & no longer on the beautiful silent beach your feet now march to the pace of those around you a factory somewhere everyone is wearing what seems to you to be a gray jumpsuit of sorts a working uniform you look down yourself & see that you are also sporting one you have a number stitched to you but no name the number is long resembling a wide range of numbers amongst you the machines click & bang but they do so with an odd rhythm which you begin to understand when you take a step back, not literally but metaphorically but you had just been on a beach a second ago you want to know what has happened you demand a reason but do not speak out of turn a man comes up behind you and tells you in a low grumble of authority to stop lollygagging & get to work pointing you in the direction of a machine you swear you have never operated.

IV. the mundane routine of the everyday creeps in & all the wonders of the beach alone are now gone your arms & legs move to the beat of those around you switching punching cutting slicing arranging correctly all the pieces that you are working on you begin to sweat it drips down your brow you go to wipe it but your oil grease hands now smudge your face & you look up at the big electronic clock on the wall it reads a time which means nothing to you as you have no idea how long you have been here or how long you will be committed to stay.

V. take your eyes from the clock it will not help you here you try to wander through the backlog of thoughts memories to find some answer as to how you got here but there is absolutely nothing like the inside of your head has been washed clean you think that if you had a skateboard you could coast around inside for hours maybe days riding up the sides of the half-pipe in your head.

VI. the repetition of the machine the clicking in metronome-like quality the voices around you fade in to the background the blurring of your vision makes it harder to pick up the part in question & to manipulated it reconstruct it in the manner of which your job calls for it starts to refocus into thicker solid image a unison of sound & visual which coincides with the mechanical movement of your body you begin to get inside the machine that you are operating the gears the oil the grease all infuse your own veins become the mechanical essence & the mechanical essence of the machine itself becomes you soon through the mundane repetition there is no longer any definition between you & the machine you have become one clicking away into oblivion.

VII. a dancing around you awakens you looking down at your arms you find them to be no longer connected to the machine your machine is gone you wipe your eyes your coworkers are gone the factory is gone the big clock is gone & now the new is coming into focus there is a large bonfire it is pitch black night around you your genitalia hangs n the wind you are naked.

VIII. the marching steps of soldiers moving towards your naked dance those round you begin to drop like flies gunshots ring where they are coming from you can’t quite picture it is the marauding of civilization tearing through your seconds of naked bliss but your body still remembers the machine your body still remembers the rhythm & the end of your own definition as a human the naked dances peels away the fire goes out a faceless soldier throws buckets of water pins you down on your front the ground the sand the sticks push into your skin little pellets of pain & blood seal the deal the baton from this masked murderer begin to slam down upon your back you wince you shout to know who is responsible but already most of those that had been dancing around you are dead.

IX. your eyes open seemingly before the rest of your body is ready to awake, you are laying on a floor in a large hut of some sort & all around you are men laying equidistant from yourself they are laying atop thin blankets and a cloud of smoke lays in the air that you breathe just a few inches from the ground it clouds the whole room.

X. a loud knock at a door somewhere breaks into the clouded smoke room like a whip c cracking it wracks a split through your own mind irking your opium high with acute damage you leap as quickly as your lulled state allows & watch as the rest of the stumbling addicts around you do something of the same all fleeing what seems to be at the very best, a complete interruption of the system of secret exquisite paradiso that has been established here.

XI. out into the street still in a disarray where you are you have no idea the road is not paved it is hard dirt & the sand gets in your eyes the wind must be blowing the other men trying to make their way from the opium den push you aside as they flood from the delta gate & from inside you hear the shouts & screams of women & men being beat shot stabbed by the law enforcement piggies.

XII. gasping for breath you stretch your arms out flapping like a drunken bird underwater your eyes once filled with sand now flush with the moist kiss of the deep blue you quickly snap your mouth shut trying to hold your breath up you look seeing the lighter something above the surface how far away you have no idea how you got under the blue you have no idea the piggies must be gone you think but you have no idea you flap your wings upward with all the life force you have left still out of it from the opium haze.

XIII. using your elbows to crawl along the ground each flailing hit of the baton the cane whatever it is cuts deep into your every corner of reality & the pain outweighs the last of the opium high then the beating ends as the blood trickles down your face you near the edge of a cliff.

XIV. all the most sinister moments of your life pass before your eyes like some kind of crap film from the 20’s in black & white as if you no longer had the ability to see color the breath of those memories fills the tips of your fingers your wrists your forearms your elbows your shoulders weighing down like an anvil something that dropped on the coyote when he was relentlessly chasing that damn roadrunner still clunking.

XV. parting the jungle trees looking out through waiting for the animals to be still to be quite like the captain in apocalypse now waiting for chef to take a piss knowing the whole while almost instinctively that there was a hungry tiger in their midst an alleyway in the city with boxes & debris being smashed pushed over in the attempt to qualm a disastrous upper/downer combination gone so very wrong.

XVI. jazzy with a new delirium you tip-toe on the shore recapturing your regular breathing patterns trying to get it back together now your dancing quickens its pace your head bobbing to the melodies you conjure inside to stop the other ramblings they grow louder they sound as if there was clanging of metal pans on steel drums in an echoing subway tunnel the screams & the little chants of the ceremonial something or others in the dirt & the rats feeding.

XVII. a quiet stroll in the woods with bald headed monks near & around you walk up behind one & tap him on the shoulder to ask about the clanging subway tunnel of only a moment ago it seems & yet you can’t account for time here anyway so in stretching out your arm you see the orange of his robe glistening in the early evening setting sunlight you tap & within a millisecond he turns round to face you nonverbally asking you what it is that you seek & so quickly you remark that there is no journey to speak of.

XVIII. the monk sits down in the office chair across from your desk, in doing so he pulls a deck of cards from who knows where & sets them on the desk surface leaning in as if to say something but nothing comes out a mental stream of thoughts flows in the air from behind his gentle retinas to yours & in this he explains the card trick in reverse order this is how you suddenly know how to do it when he hands you the deck that in itself shows the remarkable ability to transfer these actions of thought deed without word you blink twice the smoke clears the cards fall & so sleepily you stand in the middle of what looks like a broad field quite possibly an airstrip you cup your right ear your better ear like if you were listening to a seashell you try your hardest to hear a plane lowering itself to the strip but all there is dwindling round your earlobe is the wind again flushing away your every impulse to discover this mysterious road.

XIX. scaling the side of a tall building & looking down at the traffic below there is no mention of ever finding a window to fall back into & the voices inside your head concur that walking along the side of a building in the middle of the evening while the wind still continues to blow may not in fact be the most intelligent thing to be doing when you are trying to regain your consciousness.

XX. an excuse for violence huddles itself in the wings waiting for you pondering your every move & the whole while you spend your time deciding the clock continues to tick tock tick tock you make your way to the linen closet & pick from it your favorite aluminum baseball bat walking down the hallway towards that first room & all the rest of the office folk have made their way out to lunch you knock on the first door.

XXI. motivated by nothing but curiosity you wake in a stream looking for your clothes but they can’t be found anywhere not on the shore not up ahead you continue to walk naked as the day that you were born looking up in the sky to see where the sun lies it stares directly down upon you with each toe’s print in the shallow stream sand you feel the wet grains flow up between them a fresh flush of wet dirt then fluctuating almost mechanically over atop the skin covering those many fragile bones in your feet.

XXII. a wild deer comes to the stream bed to take a drink of the water flowing you pause to watch the deer it is unafraid it’s antlers strong pointing from the sides of its head so odd to you but nature is anything but boring you feel remembering when the deer attacked the main character’s car in the ring 2, feeling thirsty now yourself you kneel down in the stream & with cupped hands bring up a handful of the water to your tongue sipping it down.

XXIII. a choppy electric storm begins the rain pelts down slamming atop the surface of the stream it flashed like out of nowhere now each drop of rain slams upon the plane of water like the cover to helmet’s album in the meantime without the dark red or the dark blue tracing each dot of rain bullets now orchestrate themselves in such a way as to surround you & though you yourself want to gain shelter from this cold rain there is nothing your friend the deer runs away & you are left to feel the pellets polka dot your exterior.

XXIV. behind the wheel out of the stream out of the rain now clothed somehow it all makes sense to you maybe because you have stopped asking questions like the driving scenes in lynch’s lost highway & now captivated by the speed & the silence of the motor vehicle at your will now rustling away as quickly as it came.

XXV. a meandering stop a gas station in the middle of nowhere like the one in children of the corn where the kids start their magnificent mayhem but the process has to be an interesting one.

XXVI. something a bit more groovy after you have refueled after you have got your little snack by the side of the road peeling out now & into the sunset jerking your head side to side while driving keeping the beat keeping the beat catching your eyesight straight at the “dun dun” part that has been emphasized much like the “jun jun” part in metallica’s sad but true.

XXVII. a slow trucking hard stepping & focused drive the kind in the winter with the chains over your tires & the mashing of the newly snowed upon roads with the stirring of your rubber & mechanics grinding grinding using no more euphemisms than one can muster.

XXVIII. there is no place to fake anymore but for the writer this is growing tedious not the music but the theme & so we fall away leaving the leftover doors locked & unopened left to the imagination like so very much is to be discovered at your own discretion to be found at your own daily arise the beauty of the process lies not in the conclusion but in the methods of finding life interesting in the moment.