2019

Toby woke up in a fowl mood. The night before had been New Years fucking eve and at the stroke of midnight, his American Express was charged an annual fee for his exercise app.

“Can’t have one second in a year where I’m not a consumer, first and foremost.” he muttered incredulously, suddenly going through the math and realizing he was paying fifty cents a day for the use of the stupid thing.

Briefly he traveled back to his childhood when fifty cents was two candy bars. It was almost the cost of a pack of cigarettes. It was an ice cream. Almost four bus rides to school. And then back to the present world where a coffee costs five dollars.

He was wondering how he got here. Was it the insidious Saturday morning consumerism he was raised with (parental efforts to the contrary notwithstanding) or was instant gratification a human norm that was just being catered to, the age old quest for ease of life? He told ALex to turn off the living room light. “Ha”.

As he went through the house, he started adding up each thing he consumed, touched. He imagined a future where the bank owned everything and the display on your Apple Watch ™ was constantly running total of what you consumed and therefore owed. The wear and tear on that underwear alone was a countdown to throwing it away, leading up to a new loan to buy a new pair. And so on, and so on.

Disgusted, he sat in the room, wanting to be naked, wanting to never go near anything again, and realized just as the meter was still ticking (heat went on, cat ate its food, etc…), the body was doing the same thing in calories. Birds and Squirrels ate, moved and shat.

Life as it turns out, is just input and output, on a certain level.

And people in Arizona and California are attacking driverless vehicles in protest of “Robots taking their jobs” all the meantime, it’s just another part of this input/output loop. Everything is.

Nothing matters unless you are gaining an experience from it. It is both the joy and the sadness in the system. It’s the journey - there are no destinations, no state of permanence, not even in death. And enjoying the ride also meant needing varied states of satisfaction, times when things were not enjoyable, in order for the enjoyment to mean anything.

He stopped over and hugged one of the dogs. One of the moments of satisfaction. Toes pressing in sand. Cold water hitting the palate. And it was OK again. Equilibrium achieved, at least enough to move on, into the New Year.

Copyright 2019, Tobias Y. Venar