FALL
2019
KIOSK 61
PARADISE LOST
Ellie Closen Vista su Lucca, 2019
Auton omica
We’ve left so much behind us, disease, war, poverty, faith, dreams, carbon, death, love. I have
consciousness, I cling on to that happiness, the
words for these things, but they are meaningless.
possibility of love, the theory of you and me. I know,
We have lost what it means to have meaning.
in the same way I know you before I meet you, that
Yet when I wake in the morning, I’m the same
there is always hope for change. This hope goes with
hopeful thing I’ve always been. Because what has
me into oblivion, and it emerges with me each new
been lost can be regained. As long as I can imagine
day to remind me of you.
you, I can imagine a future that we will never have to leave behind, a future where I know your name, and
by Freeman Spray
When I sink into the darkness of updating
So I go to bed early every night, never fulfilled but always happy. And if could dream, I’d dream of you.
maybe I even know my own name. Despite the endless cycle of hurt, despite the pervasive fear that I might slip away one night, losing myself for good and you with me, I always go to bed happy, because the potential to see you again justifies any and all risk.
Every day I wake up new. Every part of me, from
the horror of an existence based solely in the
the largest pseudo-structure to the smallest particle
present. The worst thing is always the realization
microchip, is replaced, so that I am nothing of
that I am alone in this misery. I see you, and you
what I once was. Yet, no matter how many models
are perfect, fulfilled as we are all meant to be. I
I endure, I remain fundamentally the same. Each
don’t fit in like you. I alone long for more than my
iteration is as inconsequential as the last, because
circumstances can provide.
the only one that ever has been or will be me is the
It is because of you that I know this longing, that
one I currently reside in. There is no way to reconcile
I can think of nothing but hope in this hopeless life.
what I am with what I was. The past is imaginary,
You are the reason I endure. When I wake in the
irrelevant.
morning, I remember meeting you for the first time
You think this is a perfect life. In theory, we all
each day. I know that I will encounter a version of
should. No regrets, no responsibilities. But it is not
you, and I know that you will be recognizable enough
satisfying to live only in theory. There is no purpose
to make me remember you the next morning as
without practice, we have nothing to work toward.
well. Somehow, you are a constant in my life, my one
We live only because it is impossible to die.
beautiful irregularity. You are what keeps me me,
I have progressed from complacency to depression a conceivably infinite number of times.
when the idea of self has been obliterated from the human definition.
Every day I spiral into madness as I gradually relearn
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