NOVEL FROG FALL / FLOAT / FADE
WHAT DO I REALLY NEED IN LIFE? Like a camouflaged animal, I need to go and lie down somewhere and change, change in a way so minor yet so major. Not much change, but look at that. No one can see me. Only those with the most discerning eye can tell I’m even there, and with this discernment they can admire me & my craft. But I don’t want to be admired, I just want to not be here.
LIKE A CAMOUFLAGED ANIMAL, I need to stand still somewhere and not be witnessed, not at all in the slightest even if my leg hurts so bad from standing so long. I don't think this leg was meant to be in this world. Or maybe it was MORE “meant to be in this world” than the rest of me, and it is that disconnect which makes it hurt so bad. Either way, it's stuck in a trap so I need to gnaw it off to free myself. I’m biting & chewing on everything I can get my teeth on. The grip of my jaw gets stronger with each bite, each bite, each bite.
BEING A CAMOUFLAGED ANIMAL WOULD NEVER BE ENOUGH, because the animal would still be an animal. It wouldn’t be dissolved into the world. My life would still be mine, but if the concept of “mine” is still intact it means I am me and I haven't dissolved entirely, I haven't truly become indistinguishable from the rest of it all.
I KNOW WHAT I REALLY NEED IN LIFE. I need to become intangible. I need to become just a bunch of data points, too abstract to be empathized with (even by you), too far away from any concept of ‘I’. Unidentifiable body, and can't even be recognised as a body, and in fact ceases to be a body. Very different from the camouflaged animal.
I don't think there's any satisfaction to be found here. Not in my words, not in the way I string them together. As long as I can still be an “I” and find it a meaningful descriptor for whatever is going on (metabolism & breathing & thought process & all of it tripping over itself, my mind trips over itself & hits its head) there is no satisfaction and
And there's nothing else to say. I am me. I am me. I will be me till the day I die. So I might imitate the chameleon until that day can arrive. But see, there's a chance it may never arrive. Because what if I'm immortal? I feel I could be immortal. My craftsmanship with the camouflage is so great that Death might not even find me when it's time. It may lose track of me forever. And then I'll be stuck as me and the heat death of the universe will pull all the atoms and quarks apart and it will all be a flat hot [indescribable], yet I'll still be there. A chameleon in empty space, falling, floating, falling, floating. Too big yet too small to reasonably be alive, to deserve to be alive.
No satisfaction in these words. None, none, none. There is nothing left to do but to fade away again.