the underwrite

There was a time, during the folly of youth, the halcyon days of my studies in the humanities, where I became a ruthless social determinist. I believed I could be reduced completely to my circumstances – to my history, my culture, my language. These beliefs gave me comfort and satisfied a certain masochism within me. But, for a reason I would not understand until far too late, they also inspired anxiety and ungovernable rage. My journals at this time read: When I look in the mirror I do not see anything worth seeing. I do not see a kind man. I do not see a brave man. I do not see a joyful or happy or good man. I do not even see a human. When I look in the mirror I see another mirror. I see a collection of points bound together by physics and history. Aleatory fluke. By a process that is not in my control. I see flotsam in the flow of time. A particle dancing on the shafts of light. I drift unwilled to the ground. I see a man determined by his circumstances. The flow...

A group of sexless, androgynous individuals, featureless, white-skinned, in white cloth, bathed in selenian light, huddle together under the cover of night. They murmur, they mumble, their words a muted minimalist music, an arthritic cello in a broken church, a violin bowed on the moon, they shift, undulating, dust on a moonbeam. There is a mood of worship. They pray to lonely gods. You come across this group on the empty streets of your city. An inexplicable mass of people. At night, silent. A sight unseen in the metropolis. A crowd of uncertain purpose, unstimulated, quiet, directionless. In a sense, free. A mass not under the cover of protest or money or entertainment. A kind of white terror rises in your chest. None of them turn to look at you. A rustling of their clothes, mass-produced in a South Asian factory. They are dressed like ideas and dreamed into being. You approach the group, fascinated and fixated, despite your anxiety. You feel nausea, vertigo, inertia, motion and moti...