Chuck Perrin

I woke up to find myself driving fast down a winding mountain road. It must be dawn, or close to it; a half light hovers, glowing fluorescent thru green neon-ish haze. What kind of car is this? It doesn’t have a gas pedal. O o o o o h, I’m taking these turns way too fast. Shit . . . it doesn’t have a brake pedal either . . . what’s goin on? . . . I’m fucked!
Isn’t that what it’s like, waking up each morning slapped with the same strange unsettling feeling, a stinging sense of dread at the prospect of having to face another day battling the relentless double-barrel barrage of marketing and media mind control that are so characteristic of life in 2011. At every turn, someone is either trying to convince you of something or sell you something – or both. It’s a fight to just find undistracted time to formulate your own thoughts and feelings. Our so-called evolving society prances around out of control. On one hand we find ourselves longing for connection, the warmth of human contact. On the other we flinch from the aggressiveness of agendas – it seems everyone’s got one, pushing and shoving to carve their own piece of life’s pie.
Maybe it’s just the time of year getting to me, the grinding prospect of the same predictable slog thru the last gasp onslaught of holiday marketing. Or the impending election year political haranguing darkening the horizon.
No matter, each morning we must open our sleepy eyes and gaze into the whirling abyss of a new day.
And you know what Nietzsche said, if you stare into the abyss, the only thing you can be certain of is that it is staring right back at you.