Voice over recommended in a peaceful environment.
“Small-minded critics often point out that such and such a poem, for all its generous rhythms, is saying nothing more profound than: it’s a nice day. But it’s not easy to say it’s a nice day and the nice day itself passes. Our duty, then, is to preserve that nice day in endless, flowering memory and garland with new flowers and new stars the fields and skies of the empty, transient external world.” —The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
Seems a little early, but my memory is fading in a scary hurry. Anything beyond a month ago may as well never happened. Generative AI seems eager to send us to the curb faster than we can screech, “But—but—I heeded warnings and saw it coming—and—and–” No one is in control. Humans thrive corrosive off nature’s wicked-smart bidding. The collective onslaught can only overwhelm and disrupt. This is the positive spin.
When prompting generative AI, at what point is pride due for having done exactly what? When the naive reach of pent-up imagination eagerly shuffles cobbled ideas, what hard-won ingenuity should we acknowledge first? The water here is muddy with invisible danger. The haphazard hues of statistical probability – !? somehow !? – effortlessly disfigure sooner than drown. How many historically-sordid corners of the human force must tint regretful to justify at least a few trepid breathers? Never mind. Understanding can only exist late.
Cool, you run a seven-minute mile at 50-years-old with blown out joints? No matter. You can stomach tough love and the bad news in crude takes? What was that you were saying? You’re swallowing vomit by the hour without anyone noticing? Wild. You took the pill with the latest injection. You read the script while scarfing scrumptious breakfast! You own .45 and 5.56 and 7.62 and a bump stock complete with comically untrained eagerness! Good luck with that. You figured out how to stare at the sun while holding an ace attitude. Righteous #1 move, where the gears simply turn.
Enjoy menacing fights that spare no clever trick. You need a prayer and a magical prompt? Aim for as minimally-violent illness as possible. Everything else is deception disguised as friendly support. Conned beyond compare, this is the good news, swelling horrific! In peace we pave the deadly path.
Human intelligence and ingenuity are best measured in “I meant well”, while exercising just-around-the-corner cruelty. You think existence is ripe for interesting vastness and detailed possibilities shaped by colorful delight for all? Try exposing honesty around the self-interested depths of ironically willful ignorance and invisible crudeness made possible by contortions of perspective, manipulative corrosion, and satirical flattery forever self-justifying creative infliction. Disguised as noble effort, traditional concepts of hell form an improvement over so-called ‘spectacular raw reality’. ‘Be vulnerable’; getting wrecked is fun!
Surrounded by desperate, blood-starved sharks trained on haste, sharpened violent. Turn and lean into the sad, limp, impotent ‘power’ of poetry now! Arid fool. Humanity is not so kind as to sever spines in one swift, gracefully exacting instant. Modernity allows — requires and basks in — concentrated suffering repeated through tedious, regretful, agonized, cockroach-dense, finely-curated slogs. Clever is murdering friendship while pretending to have no idea where inevitability paves way. Ahead of the crowd’s cheerful thrill, this is the good news.
Why venture this far into the detailed grip of ‘d-e-e-p’ darkness? Done. Scraped. Pooled. Emptied. Slurped. Tired, tired. Raked raw beyond jokes. Free of anger’s lust. Every conceivable possibility, disoriented. Confusion left with no more fruit to steal. Free, here! Take what remains of a shell of a joke about less-than-hope. Early death, automated by severed nerves; a zombie’s moldy zombie.
Precise fool. Successful failure. Immovable irony. Dry wind. Invisible dust of predictably laughable tears. Muted advice. Repetitive slog. Irritating assumptions. Pathetic questions. Shuttered intentions. Not-even-rot. Aerated stale. Not even cruel. Not even wild. Not even ‘can’t even’. Not cute. Not salty. No heat. This is the good news! Canceled out.
“Dehumanizing!” Are you yelling? There is no stripping humanity from itself. Everything we do or are unwittingly exposed to, no matter how dark, how four-letter-deep, nor how confusing the pretty pain. Every turn, stumble, fallback, win, or wise cruelty. Humanity can disappear in no manner beyond extinction. Face it. Hurl a fowl howl, if you need, make it foul as delightful horror. This is inspiration!
“Dense fool! Turning clauses into clumsy fragments that stretch, too far, from sensible comprehension. Serve our imagination’s digestible nutrition!” Except through deceptive confusion, the coarse texture of uncomfortable obscurity cannot promise slippery understanding. Tedium follows worse than violence where pristine certainty finds no doubt. Besides, and forgive me either way, I can’t trust you with the simple truth.
Although tomorrow looks good to the naked eye, it's impossible to say after yesterday has had its way. Tomorrow, it's not fair to you that the past weighs on my mind. Tomorrow only hurts and ignores, if we can't let go of yesterday. Today, tomorrow lies. Tomorrow may seem promising, but hasn’t struck this moment. Today, yesterday is formed by dreams that do not last; yesterday prepared me with lies. Tomorrow becomes yesterday too fast.
– Anonymous/Unknown
