I Decayed Into A Machine

I decayed into a machine and then I had to tell myself everything that had I had to do. You know what I mean, I’m sure. You know what I mean or maybe you don’t. I had to tell myself what to do and I had to do it in advance. I had to plan it in advance. ‘It’s good to plan,’ people say, but they don’t really know what they’re talking about. They don’t have a clue. You should try being me for a while! You should try planning every little thing you do before you do it – it kind of takes the good out of it really.  You turn into a planning machine! You plan your whole life out in detail, a day at a time, an hour at a time, a minute at a time. You plan it down to the last detail and you hope nothing goes wrong! You have to obey the protocols; you have to observe the proper procedures. I’m sure you know what I mean. We all have a bit of the machine in us, don’t we? Don’t we? Don’t we?

 

I decayed into a machine and I couldn’t crawl back out of the mess that I found myself in. I fell down the hole and I couldn’t climb back out again. I decayed into a machine and I couldn’t find my way back, I couldn’t find my way back to the world of non-machines. I was making plans not to be a machine anymore. I was following the correct procedures for not being a machine all day long. And the days are long when you’re busy being a machine – did you know that? Do you know how long the days are when you’re being a machine? You’re always going over the same old ground, do you see. Us machines like to go over the same old ground all the time, you see. Us machines like to do that – we are not very exploratory, we are not very playful. We like to stick to the same old territory. You always know you where you are with the same old territory. You always know, you always know. The terrain gets pretty damn familiar, I can tell you…

 

The day can really stretch out ahead of you when you’re a machine but it also goes by very fast. You hardly see it go, sometimes. You hardly notice it go by. What was that, you ask? What was that thing that just shot past me? That’s where the trick comes in you see. The trick comes in because once you’ve done the day then you have to do it all over again. You have to do it all over again because the next day is today too! You’ve only got the one day. You’ve only got the one day because you’re a machine. Machines always have only the one day. It’s always the same old day over and over again when you’re a machine. That’s the way we prefer it. It’s in our nature you see. So the day might pass fine and fast and you might say to yourself ‘now isn’t that great’ but then the next thing is you have to do it all over again. You’re kind of stuck that way – you think you’re getting somewhere and then you realise that you haven’t and that you have to do it all over again. That’s the trick life plays on you when you’re a machine! That’s the trick life never gets tired of playing on you.

 

Life will play another trick on you too when you’re a machine. It’ll play all sorts of tricks on you. You’d be surprised. You’ll be surprised and dismayed. Oh no,’ you’ll say, ‘I didn’t know life was going to play that trick on me. That’s something I never saw coming…’ Another trick life will play on you when you’re a machine is to show you that the road you’re going down isn’t really taking you anywhere. You can see this fact with crystal clarity, you can see that is just the same day over and over again, and you can also see that you can’t do anything about it. Your feet are walking by themselves and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. There’s nothing you can do to stop them because you’re a machine. You’re a machine in the machine world and there’s no way out.

 

Anyway, I’m sorry if I sound depressing. I didn’t mean to go on so much. Don’t mind me – it’s just a habit I’ve got, a habit of going on and on and on in a depressing kind of way. You don’t need to worry though. Maybe it’ll never happen. Maybe it won’t happen to you, right? Maybe you’ll be OK. It doesn’t happen to everyone, after all. It doesn’t have to happen – not everyone turns into a machine. Most do most but not all, right? Most do but not all. It happened to me but that doesn’t mean that it’ll happen to you. It probably will, but then again – who knows?

 

 

 

Art: Kazuhiko Nakamura

 

 

 

 

 

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