Metal Regression

Dual twin guitar attacks blast out of my stereo as I politely turn my blinker on to slowly switch lanes on the 405. “Today is a good night!”, I yell loudly at myself as I barrel down the highway at 5 miles per hour. The passenger in the front seat thinks I was talking to them, so be it.

“Dude, what are you on about”, they say.

I answer and tell them I can taste the adventure in the air is all. It’s a lie though because all I taste is the salty, wheaty remnants of the sesame sticks I was snacking on. I greedily thrust my fingers into small container that held them, finding none. As my fingers flail deeper into the container, they hit pay dirt. The accumulated loose grains of salt have all collected together forming a concentrated package of pure saltstruction that my mouth is ready to receive. An amateur would try to pinch the grains together but I, an intellectual, lick my fingers to make sure the moistness covers the maximum surface area for optimal salt delivery. I slide my fingers into my mouth and the familiar feeling of my tongue dehydrating is there to meet me.

“Awwww YEAAAAH”, I burst out like a salt shaker kool-aid man.

My passenger looks at me oddly never knowing the sheer ecstasy radiating from body.

My voice cracks as I say “So what did you do this summer?” As they start explaining the ins and outs of their job, I take a mental sigh of relief. Good I have them talking for a while, I immediately stop paying attention and let my social verbal cues manage the conversation. My mind has business to attend to.

I need to merge right now but the speed differential between the lanes is drastic. The cars to the right blend together into one color as they warp through the highway at unfathomable speeds. I do the mental calculations in my head, not only do I have to make sure I don’t get rammed by a car, but I need enough time to accelerate to their speed so the car behind doesn’t slam into me. I do some quick finger math and decide I’ll need approximately 2 years to perform the maneuver. It’s those 105 bastards with their dedicated lanes that have put me in this position. They think they’re above us for traveling through the parts of LA no one likes. We 405ers never catch a break, but I’ll have the last laugh yet. They’ll rue the day they underestimated the tenacity and patience of the 405er. The time for politeness is over, I don’t turn my blinker on because I’ve never met a 105er that would actually slow down to give me the chance needed to get over, I’m on to those conniving jerks, I see through their plans to speed up instead of giving me a shot. I stalk my side view mirror for the perfect gap as the cars zoom by. Like a predator cat I slow to a crawl, waiting…biding my time. I try to stop the larger trucks and trailers, they are slower and less quick to react leaving me ample time to cut in.  I spot a huge long distance bus and a smile curls around my face, I smell the kill. The gap in cars is approaching like an unsuspecting deer, and my hands on the steering wheel tense up ready to strike. Before the metallic taste of victory washes over me, I am rudely reminded of the laws of this concrete jungle. Another car somewhere behind me goes in for the kill and succeeds.

The gap is closed, the prey is lost and I silently mutter to myself the rule I forgot, “There’s always another car ready to merge”.

“What?” says my passenger.

“Never mind, uh, sounds rough”, I tell them hoping that the general feeling of struggle my subconscious picked up from the out of focus conversation was right.

“Yeah”, they say and continue.

Time is running out, if I don’t merge now I’ll be cast into the fiery pits of staying on the 405. I watch the lane I need to get on with renewed focus when I see another chance. I quickly turn on my blinker as a legal formality, never actually expecting that it would give anyone notice. My arms spin the steering wheel until I’m met with the haptic feedback of hitting the maximum turn radius and as I grit my teeth I push down on the accelerator. The leap forward startles me for a second, but I quickly have to negotiate settling into my lane so I don’t cut across the highway like a redirected missile. I let the wheel spin from under my hands as my car corrects it’s own course. Finally I’m reaching the dizzying speeds of the dedicated 105 lane. I watch my odometer climb to new heights…10 mph, 15 mph, and settling on 20 mph, the cars in the 405 lanes are now dashes of color. As I climb up the 105 ramp I look back at the 405ers. Bottom dwellers, the lot of them, tax them I say. Those 405ers think they’re better than us because they have the worst commute at any time of day. Weak. Deplorable. If I ever meet one in person I’ll have some choice words.

The conversation bubbles back up to my consciousnesses “…and that’s why you can’t feed dogs chocolate”, they finish saying.

“Yeah…CLASSIC DOGS”, I sputter.

“Yeah, I guess”, they say.

“So what about cats?” I say trying to incite a tangent. They take the bait just as I notice something.

There’s a truck next to me I thought I had left behind ages ago. How is this possible, I zoomed past it miles back and here it is again, in spite of me. I thought I made the smart choices, zigged when I had to, zagged when it was right. Even in traffic the gap between me and this god damned truck should have been ever widened. Did it take another route I didn’t know about? Has google betrayed me. Imagine having the entirety of Los Angeles ask you for directions, hinging on your every word for guidance. The freeways are the veins of the city and Google maps literally has power over the flow of the blood. Who’s to say they don’t keep the nice and empty routes hidden from the masses. Maybe they set them apart for their VIPs, persons in power, people with money, the government? With a push of a button they can misdirect thousands of vehicles to make a side street empty for Jeff Bezos to get McDonalds coffee. Is this truck evidence of that? Maybe, because if not what am I to believe. The choices I’ve made don’t matter? Every smart decision I thought I made driving on this highway, every driver I’ve cut off, every time I switched lanes only to notice that it got slower and immediately switched back, every motorcyclist I spooked….did it all not matter? All the split second decisions shaving off minutes of my life in stress. I’ve literally given my life to get ahead and here this truck is nonchalantly caught up, taunting me with it’s hideous message of consumption. EAT FRESH. The tortoise to my hare, a sign that in the end everything I’ve done is meaningless, the universe doesn’t care about me or the risks I’ve taken, the decisions I’ve made or even my morality because it will just let this giant, lumbering beast of a truck catch up to me…..this fucking truck…..this MOTHERFUCKING TRUCK! I grunt audibly.

“That truck is the WORST, fuck Subway!”, I interrupt my passenger.

“Damn, I didn’t know you hated them like that?”, they say.

“Yeah man, they have trash sandwiches. Never eating there again.”, I say.

My passenger pauses reflectively, almost as if to question whether Subway is even worth defending then lets it go.

“Are we almost there?”, they ask.

I look up into the sky while the blast beats thump out of my speakers. Still even now, faced by the indifference of the universe, I feel a sense of defiance, my spirit won’t roll over and accept death, It will die a warrior’s death traveling a low speeds on the 105.

“No”, I say, “We’re not. Give me like 10 minutes”. I turn my blinkers on.

It’s 8 a.m. and you wake up. You grab your phone and pause for a second before turning off the alarm. You thought about snoozing it but you know that traffic will only get worse. You’re committed now, no turning back, if you fall asleep again you won’t wake up.

You lift yourself up, breaking free from the remaining strands of sleep. Your bones protest the sudden movement, and the gelatinous mass of flesh that hangs onto your frame pulls you down. Fuck, you’re out of shape for 27. Time to get ready for work.

You make the mistake of turning your computer on. The horrors of the world proceed to walk through, filtered through the opinions of morons. There is a small window of seconds where you begin to react before the kill switch in your mind numbs you to the news. Another mass shooting, a hero’s death, the betrayal of a species, the doomsday clock strikes 11:59:59, the confederacy of dunces meets, fires engulf the world. Which one will be your first talking point of the day?

It’s 11 a.m. and your work is piling up. The system works against you, challenging you to be productive in the face of bureaucratic sloth. Still, you toil against the machinations of the corporate agenda if only to prove even in uncertain odds you can still get shit done.

It’s noon and you give up. You position yourself next to trays of food. You know that if you open your mouth at just the right angle, and activate your black hole generator 5000 you can consume the maximum amount of matter in the shortest amount of time. Did you get all the nutrition you needed? It’s in there somewhere I suppose. You take a brisk walk around the parking lot to make sure the meal is packed into the bottom of your stomach as densely as possible, there will be more to come. You bring up the mass shooting.

It’s 6 p.m. and where has the day gone. You quipped, bantered, and sauntered it away with your co-workers. In the process, somewhere in the muck of the day, work got done. You’re not really sure how or why. Forces conspired in your favor, but only now at the tail-end of the day does a spark of real inspiration strike. Now, your real masterpiece comes forth, unfettered by the system – the beast sleeps at 5 – you can breathe life into your creation.

It’s 8 p.m. and you’re dead. There is but a thread of life left and its only function is to make sure your corpse alternates between pushing the gas and the brake pedals. It strives to reach the promised land, the home it was promised after the day has ended. The voices coming from the radio remind you that perhaps you are not as deceased as you thought, or perhaps they are the only thing keeping you from doing so.

It’s 10 p.m. and you’re exhausted. Still there’s time for one last tv show. You try to guess at the relevancy of the episode. What part of society will it deconstruct, and will you have seen it before? Perhaps it will be a character study, or an educative romp. You’ll watch it and let your dreams digest it. It shall become part of your ethos in due time. After it is done, you take one last breath as you prepare for tomorrow’s marathon of existence.

12 a.m. and your eyes dart open. There sitting in the darkness of the room, there is complete silence, and yet… you hear it. The call. The beckoning song of the night. Your body extends out into the domain of the moon. There is a pull, gentle at first, chaotic at best. You start to hear the frenzy build in you head, a manic saxophone, and bearing it no longer you leap out of bed. You gather your nocturnal instruments and depart into the realm of shadow. The air is cold and you need a drink. You walk down the block and all you hear is the shuffling of your boots on the cracked asphalt. Sometimes you skip a beat to dodge a root bursting forth through the concrete in defiance of the masters who have asked it to remain low. Slowly you approach life. The city is alive at this hour and the dim thumping of the bass guides you, sandworms in the night.

You order your favorite drink, who cares what it is, do you even know? As the tentacles of the alcohol creep into the edges of your vision you start to ruminate. What do the words that come to you even mean: horrible, tragedy, worst, history, terrible, despicable, disgusting, fascist. The words are worn hammers, and we’ve been using them too long. If you throw a piece of shit into a cesspool you just have a bigger cesspool. Have you ever tried to yell into a hurricane? Your words get ripped out of your throat, flung to the far reaches of the universe, drowned out forever by the cries of the infinite and after you’re done your voice is gone.

Your melancholy thoughts don’t stop you from hearing the music. It’s not your style though, so you walk out. You’re on the hunt for the self-expression you desperately crave, expressed by another. You cut through the darkness, pausing at the entrances of temples to hear the oracles produce their visions. The musicians tap into the collective consciousness of the city and produce an interpretation of the impossible. A trumpet here, an electric guitar there, drums, synth, beats. The music scores your movement, are you the puppet or the puppet master? Whoever you are it feels great. The people around you seem to enjoy it too, and perhaps you feel a sense of kinship but it’s false. Your muse is a reflection of your soul and they have different ones.

The whole world around you is vibrating on the same frequency. You try stand perfectly still so as to not get caught up in the motion. You didn’t sign up for this, so you finish your drink and slip back into the nothing. Still feeling the need to escape deeper, you do, down into the earth past the fossilized remains of the city that was. A man at the piano is explaining humanity in 88 keys or less. You exhale deeply and sacrifice a bit of yourself to this night.

As the notes on the piano fade away, so too do the last vestiges of the call. The moon’s fingers retreat across the sky, signaling the beginning of the end. Thoughts start creeping into your head that you’d rather not have. The dread sinks in, did you stay up too long? You look at your watch and it’s almost 4 a.m…4 hours of sleep will do you suppose.

It’s the 5th of November and as is pretty much tradition now everyone who’s seen V for Vendetta or read the graphic novel is imploring social media to remember the date. The ironic thing here is that we only remember the 5th of November on….the 5th of November.

Whereas the original intention of the poem/rhyme was to celebrate the failure of Guy Fawkes and co-conspirators to blow up parliament and effigies of him are burned yearly on this date. The people rejoiced that the plot was foiled, the king was saved, and parliament remained intact. What V does in the story is take this idea and embodies Guy Fawkes to take up his original mission of destroying parliament but really by extension toppling the government. It’s a perversion of the rhyme: he says “remember, remember because I’m going to finish what he started” and now because of the cultural impact of V for Vendetta we parrot this rhyme (which I’m totally guilty of too no judgement here) on this date too.

So now we live in this strange world where we are simultaneously celebrating the real world defeat of Guy Fawkes but also the fictional anarchistic success of V both of which are tied to the 5th of November. Let’s remove the historical implications of the 5th of November though and focus on the use the gunpowder treason plot in V for Vendetta. V weaponizes this simple rhyme by creating real world stakes around the usage of it. He says “In one year I will blow up parliament on this date”. In context he wants people to remember the date as it will be the last spark in the coming revolution that he will engineer. Seen through a more figurative lens though it’s used in a cautionary way: “Remember, Remember the 5th of November because if you don’t we’re going to end up here again with our civil liberties removed and a government in place that runs the country via fear”. So I think we need to “remember, remember” constantly lest we end up where Britain does in the late 2020s. Perhaps a good time to remember will be this November 8th…