The Plains

This is your beacon. An emptiness in the midst of this burdened chaos. Secluded plain surrounded by polluted minds, by denials and extremes. You drew the curtains, so you couldn't see. But you can still hear the unbearable noise and screams out there, disturbing your senses, penetrating your very being. You let out screams too, silently, deep inside. And yet, no one but your pancreatic cancer hears your howl. He is your closest friend who understands every thread that makes you, every pain, all the panic attacks, all the psychoses, every twitch or uncontrollable and obscene grimace on your face, all your anxieties, all the anticipations. Your screams are local. They are intended exclusively for you. And around you, the plain grows larger. Emptier. You would expect the barbaric sounds in the distance to die down. But that’s only for a few moments, long enough to take a deep breath and start all over again.

Now and then you recall all the dirt you’ve been imposed to. You could sense it so vividly. Ugly, disgusting people, walking around in hordes. All dirty, corrupted, self-absorbed, celebrating the climax of their own futility. Yes, your hands are dirty too. It is impossible to stay clean between these high walls that many before you have made so grotesquely. And inside the walls, an endless crowd of deformed faces, laughing horribly, screaming at you, all deep in the mud, many can barely be seen. They are very, very angry with you. Because you are not painted in their colors, you do not wear their uniforms, you are apolitical, asocial, impartial. You don't play by the book. You reject all the ideologies and superstitions, all unwritten laws and social constructs. They cannot label you, place you, call you by name. To them, you are deviant, a mysterious unknown, social defect, a great danger. You don't speak out, and everyone expects you to. Who are you?

You don’t behave! You refuse to obey political narratives based on the events occurred fifty, a hundred, or five hundreds years ago in a place and time with which you share no intellectual or cultural references. You hate politics. It does nothing but cause hatred and division. You’re not a traditionalist. To you, tradition and folklore are for museums, not for public use. For a simple reason that excessively enjoyed tradition becomes patriotism, which further evolves into nationalism, practically a threshold of fascism. All constructs. Such environment is by default so limited, so subjective, intolerant, abusive, violent. This is so obvious to you. You never divide people sexually or ethnically. You are nothing like expected! Likewise, you don’t compete with others. You detest trendy and forced individualism hyped by popular science only to confirm your self-importance. Introverted, extroverted, emotionally intelligent, autistic in fucking spectrum, bipolar or OCD, this generation, that generation... all oversimplified, misinterpreted and potentially danger. On the grand scale, no one is so special. Everyone is a VIP of excessively disturbed in the profoundly sick society. You are not an exception.

Your presence is merely an insignificant dot in this brutal social structure. It is almost unbelievable that someone would even try to defy it. It’s not pragmatic. Going against the established valuation is going against the scheme. Against the majority that takes things for granted, never questions them, for whom it is easier to blend into the group. Against your self. I understand, leaving the grid was your choice, the only one that's somewhat rational. But it's hard, it's damn hard to stand behind these lines you drew a long time ago. And for some of you drifters, there's no going back. You look back and see all that chaos, all the dirt and mud you crawled through. The stench is still there. How could you even think you could go back. Oh no, no. It’s safe here. Far enough from all primitive drives, vanity and arrogance, hypocrisy and prejudice, indoctrination, mediocracy.

Ironically, all this madness you’re trying to escape from is precisely what shaped your fragile existence. It did to everyone else. Ultimately, it makes you nothing but one of many in the rowdy crowd behind the curtains. Both those in the crowd, and those who have wandered into some invisible corners just like you have, are part of the same conditioned pattern. Everyone is linked. Forsaken and expendable. It’s the mechanism. That’s how it works. You’re now a hidden juncture of the framework, still heavily conditioned, still attached to it. Quite contradictory, isn’t it? It's as if all the existence and purpose has been reduced to one sick cosmic joke. And you are not laughing.

Then this horrible notion pops out. An idea that scares you more than any sociological perversion. Something obnoxious, something unacceptable. That the greatest triumph of the human species is the survival of the fittest.

And if you by any chance ever get old, all strange and mysterious, with numbed senses and unconscious tics, and when they ask where your life went, you'll hold your breath for a moment, look around, and whisper — right here. On the plains.

August, 2025.

author lvan Bjørn