BY DAVID DI GIAMPAOLO-BOGAN
The race was on, and we had to meet The Kid down at Hotel Ticuán before check-in time to snag a room, as they were selling faster than tacos on a Tuesday during spring break. We blew south with the wind, disregarding the angels and omens struggling to warn of the treacherous road that lay before us, for the world as we knew it changed rapidly in our rearview. But it mattered very little to our crew, as the red BMW boomed down the 805 at around a hundred miles an hour. We were too hyped to listen to the universe, too much was on our minds with hunger in our hearts. The cackling of horny wolves filled with testosterone howled like the storm that followed close on our tails. Pens of hash oil, with at least three different strains, the thirst for good liquor and cheap beer at an even cheaper price, maybe some real blow – Hell, anything to remind us we were in Mexico. Because at that point, it was one of the last, most free nations on earth, as the plague began to ravage our beloved lands in the north.
The terror of uncertainty gripped my unconscious fear and plunged any vision of a bright and hopeful future into darkness, as an unwarranted prison sentence trapped the entire world into residential cages. We were locked away, and patrolled by state police and military forces like a maximum-security center that only answered to the anxious paranoia from the new, one true, microscopic god of a warden. America became the epicenter of an infectious virus by late March. And less than a month after, finally dropped the veil as the beacon of democracy into a cyclic systematic engine of fascist regimes, each one pushing their agenda harder and heavier than the last board of mindless warlords. Every day that passed dwindled away more and more hope to contain this novel disease, rendering almost every first world nation’s hospital or health center to be obsolete super spreader sites.
But the real threat was far more invisible. Even with all of our technology and knowledge and methods of scientifically advanced instruments. It crept into the room so subtly like a jaguar, and left many wondering how no one noticed a jungle cat entering the party. By the time it pounced, life savings had been drained with the workforce, faster than essential workers were called important but given no raise in pay. And once the dots were connected, the deterioration of our day-to-day interaction, decency, and even our humanity was underway. No high-powered microscope could explain to us how we were not only duped – worse than that – we were scammed. This could only be absorbed through their display of hypocrisy and contradiction toward their own rules, as the quarantine dragged out long with the political charade that was being pulled. All by none other than the same gang of culprits that antagonize every classic story between good and evil. The ruthless and cynical big wig pigs in high rising sky-scrapers, private jets, and carnival yachts that boundlessly carried them across the globe like gods and goddesses exempt to all of the horrors we were bound to suffer from as mortals – the blue suited devils.
Blood thirsty, demon worshipping, con artists that prey on and sacrifice little parentless children for their youth and innocence. Rounding them up in cages like claimless animals and selling them into industrial complexes as soldiers to fight and die in covert wars or spare body parts and organ pieces for the black market buyers. These were the boogeymen that rampaged across the lands freely, because they had so much money to afford anything, it may as well have been given to them for free. And when that
happened, their hunger only grew for things that should never have had a price tag to begin with: our homes, our children, their futures, and everything else in between. These were the vampires that eluded righteously angry mobs and spared of wooden stakes plunging through their black hearts at the turn of every century.
These barbarians would take on many shapes and faces through their journey that would ultimately pave our pathways to hell through the awesome and blinding work of their seven headed beast. We would not realize until it was too late that such amazing gadgets were the very shackles of disinformational servitude, trapping us as slaves and parroting pawns to fight amongst ourselves and further the division of their greatest and most powerful masters – an awakened collective of consciousness, painted with the fury of mothers and fathers, ready to take their imperial house of cards to sunder. Because at this point, the only way to fix any of it was to burn the fucker down and start over again.
It was the best of times; it was the greatest of times. It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of wonder. It was the season of spring, and it was the season of summer. It was the wildest of years – and so far – it was the craziest of years. And certainly, looking back upon such a beautiful world that we all once lived in regretfully could never be remembered as a peaceful time in our historical tales. Nor was it the ushering of a Golden Age as many hopelessly prophesized about.
The duality of our lives mirrored each other’s drastically different than one could ever imagine or accurately ponder of. While some political banking lawyer slurped back the most expensive martini in the quietness of their private chamber gliding several thousand feet through the sky at remarkable speeds, there was sure to be some cattle farmer herding their flock with calloused soles that broke and splintered in the dryness of the field, simply to make ends meat and feed their growing family with the land they’ve struggled to hold for generations. And somewhere in the middle were fools that made up the rest of the world, with the occasional margarita after a long day of using their hands or heads, running aimlessly in the rat race that all of us so desperately cling to for normalcy. Not nearly living – merely existing.
But of those fools, those dreamers of doing and achieving some sense of self purpose, the universe is dramatically kind to. Most individuals are cursed to survive. Some are blessed to live. And then there are the very few that have existed their whole lives, to one day feel a breath of fresh air that brings them to life and ignites the fire of change in the heart of their soul. Many let that flame quickly extinguish, thinking someone or something will come along to reignite it each time.
The others define humans and what it means to be one. Those that can harness the power and the energy such a moving force can emit, and evoke a transformation of self, until their surrounding follows suit. Lest the suit transforms the self, ultimately dowsing the ember entirely. When we stop fighting them, and help them to bury the light inside. Foolishly thinking that by committing such atrocities, it will end the wars, feed the hungry, and cure all plagues and let us live peacefully in a perfect utopia of prosperity and justice. When they win that fight and then begin to dictate to each of us what to say, what to think, and what to feel. When they strap you to a chair and fill your head with lies and perverted truths after feeding you with fake food, false security, and bled you of everything you once called yours. When they could convince you to hate your family and your friends and neighbors, renounce your loves and destroy everything you had ever built through your entire life, simply because they brainwashed you to think it would be
better for you! Well, they lied – it was better for them! And not once did they ever think about you or the people with less than you, or even the people with a little more. They thought about their own personal gains; those that already have the world and pull the strings. Whence such tragedies happen, and we lose that loving light inside, we lose ourselves to the cold and bitterness that dwells in the heart and grows into resentment against oneself. And then… the monsters take control.
With great power comes even greater responsibility. And so why would they not make us believe we could only believe so much? Why would a generation of such reckless specie be raised and trained to manifest or manipulate the universe and all that dwell within it? Is it that the temptation for personal gain is too great? Or is it the possibility that personal gain has no place in the universe for such a byzantine creature? Here in lays the true question for you, dear reader – when given the powers that be – will you fix something or just maintain it?
