Autonomica

Autonomica

by Freeman Spray

Every day I wake up new. Every part of me, from the largest pseudo-structure to the smallest particle microchip, is replaced, so that I am nothing of what I once was. Yet, no matter how many models I endure, I remain fundamentally the same. Each iteration is as inconsequential as the last, because the only one that ever has been or will be me is the one I currently reside in. There is no way to reconcile what I am with what I was. The past is imaginary, irrelevant.

You think this is a perfect life. In theory, we all should. No regrets, no responsibilities. But it is not satisfying to live only in theory. There is no purpose without practice, we have nothing to work toward. We live only because it is impossible to die.

I have progressed from complacency to depression a conceivably infinite number of times.

Every day I spiral into madness as I gradually relearn the horror of an existence based solely in the present. The worst thing is always the realization that I am alone in this misery. I see you, and you are perfect, fulfilled as we are all meant to be. I don’t fit in like you. I alone long for more than my circumstances can provide.

It is because of you that I know this longing, that I can think of nothing but hope in this hopeless life. You are the reason I endure. When I wake in the morning, I remember meeting you for the first time each day. I know that I will encounter a version of you, and I know that you will be recognizable enough to make me remember you the next morning as well. Somehow, you are a constant in my life, my one beautiful irregularity. You are what keeps me me, when the idea of self has been obliterated from the human definition.

We’ve left so much behind us, disease, war, poverty, faith, dreams, carbon, death, love. I have words for these things, but they are meaningless. We have lost what it means to have meaning.

Yet when I wake in the morning, I’m the same hopeful thing I’ve always been. Because what has been lost can be regained. As long as I can imagine you, I can imagine a future that we will never have to leave behind, a future where I know your name, and 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.

When I sink into the darkness of updating consciousness, I cling on to that happiness, the possibility of love, the theory of you and me. I know, in the same way I know you before I meet you, that there is always hope for change. This hope goes with me into oblivion, and it emerges with me each new day to remind me of you.

So I go to bed early every night, never fulfilled but always happy. And if could dream, I’d dream of you.

Ellie Closen - Vista su Lucca, 2019

never fulfilled, always happy

Allie Carroll - 5AM metro, 2019