I tried to make a joke but the joke fell flat. My whole life fell flat. Not just once but many times. I tried to live my life but it just didn’t work out. It pancaked. I made a mistake and there was no going back. I got it wrong and I couldn’t make it go right again. No matter what I did I couldn’t make it go right again.

 

I lived a number of mechanical lives and they went by in a flash. I didn’t see them go – they came and went and that was it. They came and went and there was nothing to it. Whatever it was, I missed it. I was looking somewhere else.I wasn’t paying attention. I was snoozing.

 

There was nothing there, there was nothing happening. They were empty lives – there might have been six or seven of them or even more. Who’s counting anyway? You wouldn’t know how many of them there were – each one is indistinguishable from the one that preceded it. Peas in a pod. Knickers on the washing line, blowing in the wind. It’s like reading a trashy novel or watching a movie that’s pure Hollywood at its worst. When isn’t it? You’ve seen it all a thousand times before and it wasn’t any good then either. It was never any good. Formula movies might pass the time but that’s about it. That’s all they’re good for and sometimes they’re not even good for that.

 

“What was that?” you might think, right at the end. What was what? Oh that – that was your life. That was your life boy – weren’t you paying attention?

 

And at the time all the pressure. The pressure to do all the mechanical things and think all the mechanical thoughts. Everyone is telling you how important it is. Everyone is telling you that you have to do this and that you have to do that. How you have to. Have to. Everyone is always telling you how very important it is to do all the mechanical things and think all the mechanical thoughts – they tell you that at every step of the way. They tell you how terrible it will be if you don’t. That’s the big, big message – that you have to do the thing.  How very important it is that you do the thing and how every important it is that you don’t mess it up. They make sure you get that message. They really want you to get that message. Boy do they ever want you to get it…

 

And then when the message is embedded in your brain so that it will never come out again then they lose interest. You don’t matter then. They leave you alone then. They leave you to your own devices then only they aren’t your own devices of course because all you can ever do is keep on doing the mechanical things and thinking the mechanical thoughts. You think the mechanical thoughts over and over again until they drive you mad. Eventually you wind down like the sad clock-work toy you are.

 

They leave you alone when the message gets embedded in your brain because they know what’s going to happen to you after that and it’s not very interesting. It’s the least interesting thing in the whole damn universe. Even you aren’t interested in the tiresome rigmarole of it all. Something in you goes to sleep. Nods off. There’s nothing there to take an interest in.

 

No one cares about you and your mechanical life. Even you don’t really care – you just try to distract yourself as best you can. Pass the time. If you can. And then one day it’s all over and you’re thinking “What was that?”