Sometimes I arrive but not now. Sometimes now is mostly reckoning. Often, I do neither. The machine takes more. I want to hear music. I can’t hear it over these droning gears, the constant engine, the alarms. An announcement loops, Look! We are getting somewhere now! I don’t want to look at whatever it is highlighting for display. I miss song, and safety. Yesterday I read a word denoting longing for a state never experienced, useless and vivid. I did not write it down. I could not stop to write the word for the longing to be away from the machine. I know machine learning makes it possible to look up the words we forget. I could do this now. But what I want is not to use the machine to find what I have lost. I want instead to be returned to a state––not of wholeness (I am not entirely unreasonable), but less rapid losing, less accumulated loss. I am wholly aware of the uselessness of such longing. It is mine.
Not Making It
Against progress.