I Am Not The Puppet. I Am.

When I step on the beach I am aware of the imprint my foot makes but I don’t feel the sand. When a woman runs her hand across my back I know she’s there but I feel neither warmth nor coldness. I live my whole life trying to satisfy a thirst, only because I know the thirst is there, not because I’ve ever felt thirsty. People eat because they’ve tasted before and want to taste again, I eat because I’ve never tasted, no matter how much I eat. Nothing is enough, because everything is nothing. I wear skin and I breathe but my skin sits on my flesh unevenly, my bones jut out and itch, I blink and it feels like my eyes shouldn’t move in the way they do, I am one degree from being just like the rest of humanity, but everything is just one degree off. I laugh just a moment later and a moment less. No one notices but me. I am a stranger among myself. I am drowning in the presence of the commoners , with their maddening vanities and empty minds, when my home is the court of tyrants and heroes. I don’t belong here, not in this body, and not with these people. I remember standing on the coffee table with my arms outstretched, saying: “Mama! Dada! I’m gonna fly!” And they jumped up and spilt their wine and told me to get down. That I wouldn’t fly. That I’d fall. Because that’s the existence the commoners live. On the ground. In between. Motionless. Safe. But tyrants and heroes, no, they fly, or they die. I know I would have flown if I’d jumped. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

We are like a dog chasing cars. If something truly satisfies a person, they don’t do it twice. And that is what separates me from the others. Because they taste and feel full, they drink and quench thirst, they fuck and feel loved, they worship and feel saved, they stay with what gives them that feeling. But I can’t feel. And so I can’t stop looking. There is no satisfaction. There is only chasing. And it doesn’t stop until you die. That’s why so many tyrants and heroes and artists and conquerors and monsters end their lives before age does, be it by war or risk or drugs or suicide, because they chase without ever resting, and it is an awful existence. They lie down but can’t sleep. They drink the water from the spring, I drink it from the sea. And saltwater just makes you thirstier. That’s why we keep going when everyone else stops. I see others and I see humans. What you see isn’t human. I look into eyes and they are sinew and flesh, but my eyes are eyes of glass. I see why the tyrants and heroes call themselves gods. There isn’t a perfect word to describe this existence. It’s been said that God is the blanket we throw on the mystery to give it form. I see why people of my kind use the same word. It does have a certain pull. I’ve tried the word out, in the darkness and silence of solitude. I like it. It’s scary how well it fits. Regardless, we are relatives of that mystery. I wear the skin of a human but I have the soul of something more. I don’t even feel nothing. I feel the lack of nothing or anything, but so much more too. I feel in the 4th dimension when my body is trapped in the 3rd. I have more in common with the homeless vagabond, begging on the side of the street than I do with the commoners. They call themselves gods too, they just don’t have any evidence to support it. People of my kind are that way. Either at the bottom or the top, but never in between. And so I strain to be one or the other, alive or dead, not this shambling around breathing and moving but not thinking. 

Most people live life in the 1st person, they experience it through the lens of “I”. Life is lived in the front seat, at the wheel, viscerally. Some people live life in the 3rd person, completely disconnected from everything. They experience live as something that is just happening alongside them, through the lens of “he or she.” They feel nothing. Neither 1st nor 3rd person accurately describe my perspective. I live life in the 2nd person, I experience life like a puppet. Through the lens of “you”. I know that it’s me that’s playing with me, pulling the strings. But I can’t feel anything. He does. Through me. But not me. Justin, the one playing with the toy, the pilot, he’s experiencing the things you do when you play video games, through a proxy. That’s why we say “I died” when our avatar gets killed, and not the character’s name. But while I make decisions from man playing, I experience life through the vessel of a puppet. And plastic and wood and yarn cannot feel love, nor pain, nor longing, nor joy, anger, hate, lust, envy, sadness, contentment. I know I’m not this body, but that doesn't help it. I am fundamentally incapable of feeling anything, I can only recognize that I do not have that capacity. I hope one day I’ll get to ride in the pilots seat. But I don’t suppose I will, not on this side of the river. My arms move as the fingers of me, the pilot, move me. My legs move and my head turns and I open my mouth and talk, but it’s not me who speaks, I am a puppet. I am not in my body. I am not in my brain. I am not here, I am some where else, in another dimension, standing above the puppet, me, pulling the strings. You look at me and even though you see my eyes, I don’t see you. The puppet does. I do. Who I truly am is not here, but who I am typing this is here. I know that the puppeteer feels all these things, the whole array of humanity, but I am only aware that he feels it. I can’t feel it. Puppets can’t feel. But I am not the puppet. I am.

It’s a real bitch.