– Over by the Holiday Inn at the western edge of town, about halfway down toward the river, there’s a corpse lying on the ground. I’m not sure whose corpse it is, but it’s rotting, the rats have gotten to it; a real mess. I was out for a run in the morning. I hate running. I wasn’t really feeling it this morning, especially, so I decided to go sit and chill by the river and prematurely take a few puffs on the joint I rolled for the end of the run. I wanted to find a secluded spot, so I climbed down along this concrete thing that seemed to lead to a sort of cove area where there was a tunnel that had a few trees up behind it. It was a pain in the ass because of the storms yesterday. I got mud on my new pair of Adidas. That’s the worst part of this, actually. I couldn’t give two shits about the dead guy.
– So, what are you going to do?
– I don’t really want to do anything. I don’t want to get involved. It’s not my fucking problem this asshole got himself killed. I’d have to talk to the pigs. I hate the pigs.
– Bring me to it.
– Okay
They got in the car and drove toward the edge of town, in the direction of the setting sun, and the Holiday Inn, and the corpse.
– You got your vape?
– Yeah. Hold on. (reaches in the glove compartment). It’s fresh. I only hit it once.
The rain was starting up again, but only enough of a drizzle to turn the wipers on about once a minute. The sky, a chemical orange peeling away at the last remaining blue skin of the sky’s daytime face. Night would take over soon – black, foreboding, hazy. The stars don’t show up around here. They never show up. Not anymore.
– It’s over there.
They pull over, get out and walk toward the body. It was starting to rain harder.
– Holy fuck. What the fuck?
– Yeah.
– That’s disgusting.
– I know.
– Seriously, let’s just get out of here. It’s raining anyway.
– Okay.
As the car traveled eastward, they could only see half way up the city’s taller buildings, which are not extremely tall, their tops embraced by fog.
– So what do you think happened?
– Gangs, maybe a drug addict. I don’t know.
They kept driving towards nothing. Away from death; towards death. A broken headlight here, a boarded up fast food restaurant there. They were flying towards the certain uncertainty of their own mortality.
– What is the nature of consciousness?
– There is an essential chaos that underlies all of existence, and our desire to control and be controlled stems from the evolutionary arrival of consciousness, which has brought us to great heights but must now be seen as a pure detriment to our future as a species.
– So, consciousness influences us to desire something that can not be controlled, namely the chaos that is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be?
– Basically, yeah. The forces of control are a manifestation of the stranglehold consciousness has placed upon our ability to experience something we call reality, and as such we barely experience the superficial veneer that covers over it all. Consciousness is a great tool that has brought us this far, but it is fundamentally unable to bring us much further, because it is a control system, and as such, is anathema to any chance of being able to experience the truth, which is chaos.
At this point a light turned green. All the lights turned green, and red, and yellow, at the same time. They could not go any further. They were stuck. Their ability to perceive the directions being given them by control were dissolving. They were seeing the beautiful chaos that resides at the center of this entire this.
– How will we know when to move?
– We don’t have to move. We are always moving and not moving. Don’t pay attention to it. Just let go.
It’s time to let go. Let go. Let go.