A Hopeless Journal for A Helpless Man

Chapter 10: The Village

My body is perceiving through only one channel (effectively): touch. I'm blindfolded. My extremities are Siamese to their twin. My nose only smells humidity, persperating human bodies, and engine fumes. My ears only hear crackling shrubs, the whistling trees, the communication of animals, and overpowering the latter is the creaky and rusty harmony that is the components of a working vehicle. In this case, a truck. The truck has, on its trailer, two rows of benches parallel to the windows of the driver seats in the cockpit. A tent-like top engulfs and serves as a roof to the two benches. I know this because the sun has been absent in my skin for 20 minutes now. I'm also aware of this fact because the wind is making the top flap on to itself creating a distinguishable noise I characterized as 'tent-like'. My body shifts forward, violently. Sharp right turn. Falling was eminent if it weren't for my strong grip on the bench. I shift backwards. I relax and lean on the bench rail and part of the tent top. Adequate left turn. I'm sitting on the right bench. The road was harsh and plotted with uneven soil. My ass never kept complete contact with the bench for more than 2 seconds.

Physical contact with the other captives was also shut down due to our anxiousness, our miserable conditions, and our fear of Ros learning about us. Information was crucial, at least for us. It really wasn't though. It's the paranoia that made it as such. We worried that Ros might overhear about our families, our fears, our dreams. I say we as an assumption, but it could've easily just been me. However, that was not the case. Silence proved me right. Everyone kept who they were to themselves. No one had to know how to hurt them. All that mattered now was being a slave, an object of monetary value, a thing, an 'it'. My jungle back home, as I've stated, was somehow alike in this aspect. It made you feel like a slave by making you work desperately under the pressure of debt. My home made you feel like an object of monetary value because you were being used to make money. You were worth your production. You were a thing because you became a machine, repeating tasks by the day. You became an it when this ambiance changed you. Luckily I don't think I made it there yet. My point is that this is what you became to avoid loopholes and weak points in your daily process of living. The more time I spend here the more coinciding properties I compare to my home. That doesn't do it justice. I've grown to be quite a pessimist. At least back home I wasn't being sold as a slave or as a negotiating piece.

I slouch to the right. Suddenly, the slouch becomes a fall. Someone slammed the brakes. I hear the clanging of a fence. We're right where we're supposed to be.

I find curious the fact that I've gone, what? 2, 3 days? A week? Without thinking about that one person whom I unconsciously thank for my minor beneficial circumstances day in and day out. That one person I enter a poorly cleaned building full of poorly cleaned people preaching about poorly cleansed "history" for. I could take out those quotation marks if I wanted to. I write the word as such because, although I'm catholic, I find logic in between the big book's lines. It ain't too hard. Going inside whales and splitting oceans apart. For all I care I can say my belief is fact and save myself some thoughts. And that's why I have the freedom to quotation marks. Holy fuck thank you for this distraction. This man. THE man. My lord. Has been as absent in my situation as in my mind, I think. It's muscle memory after a while. I should pray. I prayed. I'm a poor catholic, but for as long as I can remember this man has been there for me. I don't wear a cross though. It's just not my style. My neck is particularly short. This subject comes through now because it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I'd find closure in figuring out that all of this had meaning or purpose. I start to think about it and I'd be more willing to go on if I knew that eventually there would be a bridge to cross, because, as for now, all that's keeping me going is my fear of figuring out what happens if the lights go out. Forever. Will it hurt? Will I get my 72 virgins? Will there be an afterlife? I've been taught to believe and I have been. But is it more fear than belief? Is that immaterial core going to die to? This terrifies me because trillions of years have passed and death is unperceivable and human capabilities are limited to an organ filled with neurons controlling an entire body. I've always found that so horrifying. Electrical shots by a semi automated organ controls you. It can cause you to pass out or spasm uncontrollably or stop functioning and give you Lou Gherig's. What the fuck? I'd like to be in charge for a while. It's an organ that makes you fucking think and speak in your head and scream and imagine things out of thin air when all that bitch is doing is shooting shocks as messages to transmit signals to tell our perception to mold observational qualities, color spectrums, audible cualities, and life form characteristics into what we specify and then show it to us inside our own skull, while we don't even have to perceive with our senses. We just take what they've recorded and use it to fabricate anything. Let's say a dog. Our brain searches for the meaning. Then, it uses our memory of vision to remember it's physical characteristics, colors, etc. After we've chosen from the visionary variety of dogs we shape it with electrical shocks as transmitters. We see without eyes. Then our auditive perception reminds us dogs make noises. We have named this noise a bark. Our mind searches for the meaning, our auditive perception gives us it's records, and, BAM, an imaginary dog inside our skull that took no matter whatsoever to make. Thank God for distractions.