Your system is infected!

These commutes seem to be becoming more unbearable with each passing day. For around an hour each way, I am left alone, unstimulated, unoccupied. It is now that my mind is left to its own devices. It is now that my mind runs its viral scan. A great process to have. Problematically, I only have the detection module installed. The other half, the cleaning module, seems not to have been included in the installation package. I blame the manufacturer but the warranty expired long ago and I don’t think any manufacturer will really take a look at this chunk of coal anymore.

So, we have this normally useful process picking all these viruses. To be honest, I’ve seen the detection screen countless times. I could probably recite both the directory as well as the time of infection for each individual instance verbatim.

Another flaw in the installation package is that I cannot control the calendar option. It just seems to run automatically whenever the system load falls below a minimum threshold. A good option that would maximize efficiency in a normal setting. But this is not by any means a normal setting and I am forced to recall every infected instance far too often, with no reprieve other than to increase workload on my aging (though still relatively superior) processor.

I should get a refund...

Discontinuity

Why do the days seems so ... disjointed? They just seem filled with one thing after another but these things are all independent, separate, they lack cohesion. The days pass by, I see them pass with my very eyes, they pass before me as a river flows onwards unrelentingly. And, like water, they flow around me, pass me, even though I try to capture "it" (a futile maneuver), they evade my grasp. And, so, after everything, I am left with nothing.

Nothing but these cloudy images that linger. Remnants of whatever had transpired. Bits and pieces, but never even a semblance of an overarching narrative. Stuck with my... machinations... vapid, arbitrary associations between arbitrary points that would have no qualms with having nothing to do with one another. And, all I can do with these amorphous things I hold onto is to force them into these meaningless combinations of lines and dots.

Why I try to convey these "ideas", I have no idea. Arbitrary fates for arbitrary entities, seems fair to me...

Reckoning

Captain's log, supplemental:

It seems I've sat in this same area for an eternity, albeit discontinuously. The people come and the people go, their faces never staying the same for long. Here, mingling and earnest studying seems to blend seamlessly. All these people, from different walks of life, from different programs of study, they indeed seem a disparate, heterogeneous group of people. But there is one thing that binds them all these different people together, one critical aspect that no one is probably aware of: they are destined to remain strangers, to me at least. They will continue on with their lives without ever knowing me, the snowflake-man.

Curses be to fate! Why do they not shower me with their attentions and their affections? I would so gladly do it for them and yet they seem content to allow me (the snowflake-man) to wither away in obscurity. Oh, the casual cruelty; oh, the humanity.

Surely, they will rue this day. They will, won't they? Their destined omission is surely justification for their eventual torment, right? Yes, and I will be the instrument of their demise. Every last one of them will fall before me. They will look back, at the very end, and wonder, "What did I do to deserve this?", and they will know nothing, because they had shielded their eyes, their minds, for far too long.

Blessed will be the day that justice will be reaped for (and by) the snowflake-man (me).

Excision

By now, the parasites had become legion. He could see them squirming around his chest cavity on the ultrasound and he would swear he felt them too, as if that were possible. Infection had become a common phenomenon since the water supply had become tainted all those years ago. But, people smartened up quickly and infection could easily be avoided if one simply took the time to boil one's water and cook fully one's food.

But he had become sloppy, haphazard in his day-to-day dealings with what he consumed. He found himself retracing his steps and regretting his inattention, his lack of insight previously. But now it was too late, the parasites had seeded themselves into his viscera, with particular liking to his cardiac muscle. Slowly eating away at him.

The only thing the doctors could do now was to excise his unsalvageable tissue and replace his heart with a mechanical prosthesis, a contraption that experienced quite a boom in the past decade.

And now, as he lay there on the operating table, he waited with bated breath. The doctor was clearly in no rush as she nonchalantly joked around with the assistants and nurses. He just lay there, eyeing the surgical chainsaw that the doctor would need to gain proper access into his chest. He wished he could just reach for those serrated blades, push them straight into his own sternum, and tear it open with his own bare hands so that he could rip out his diseased heart, with parasites and regrets in tow, by himself. He wanted to be rid of all those evils he had accumulated over the years. He couldn't wait for the day that he could start anew, with a clean slate, never to make those obvious mistakes ever again.

But, alas, this was all but fancy. The local left his whole body paralyzed and all he could do was lie there ...like the poor sap he was.

vaka

It's a quiet night. I'm sitting in my room, illuminated only by the glow of my two monitors, listening to some calming indie pop ("Hounds" by The Antlers, if you're so inclined). How many nights have I sat here in this exact same spot mildly dreading tomorrow's arrival? How many nights have I tried to stave it off by steadfastly refusing to go to bed? It's an all too familiar situation, unfortunately. (just look at the last post)

Back when I used to play Diablo 3, I would often hear my monk say, "Break beneath the endless tide". Well, I'm not breaking and I don't see myself doing so anytime soon but it really does feel like that, an endless, meaningless, joyless tide that washes over me in an oh-so-casual and effortless manner. 

It's a shame I don't know how to swim. Maybe if I had learned earlier, I would be better able to maneuver myself. And so, as I struggle, I ask myself, "Why am I even in the ocean?", "How long have I been here?", "Was I going somewhere?", "Where did I even come from?". 

And I can't seem to answer any of those. It seems that it isn't only my body that has been washed away but also my ...

My what? My memories, my motivations, my intentions ... what do all those constitute anyway ...

I wish I could leave this room. But where would I go? I don't think any physical location could placate me right now. It's not my body that I'm concerned with.

Where was I going with this post anyway? I look up and see ... a degeneration.

brb...