Chapter - 1

You will reach for the remote. You will pull out your cell-phone. You will surf the Internet. You will try to change the channel but you realize that there's only one program on. And it's on every channel. You will click your mouse. You will turn up your music. You will listen to the soft and desperate hum of the fluorescent lights above you.

Cut.

Fade to black. Pan to stills of the crime scene; blood on the floor, white chalk outlines, blue and red police siren sunset. Voice-over says, "Family of four slain in their home." Tragedy, sadness, despair. Then suddenly a kaleidoscope of images are spinning, diving and screaming at you. This is why I can't watch TV. Every moment of reality the camera accidentally captures is interrupted by;

TOSHIBA! IBM. COCA-COLA. WAS JFK A FRAUD? MICROSOFT. KRAFT FOODS. TUNE IN AT SIX WHEN WE TELL YOU THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.

You will begin to notice a slight sensation of disconnect. Outside the window the world is raw; colors bleeding into each other, clouds bursting, over saturated hues burning in high definition. The dull roar of the ventilation system, the buzz of the empty radio, the flickering of a computer screen, prevents you from thinking clearly. It's a strange world; dirtied by sterile plastics and clean blinking neon lights. I'm beginning to wonder just where we belong in this. How can I float between the electric waves that the city lives on?

I wake up in the morning and look outside. The whole city is moving crazy fast, like one of those 24 hour time lapses right? You know, like a bunch of pictures taken over a whole day and sped up into just a few seconds. Well that's what every second looks like, a whole day moving so fast it gets pushed into just a few seconds and I'm stuck in a picture moving at the speed of sound. Cars run like electricity down the roads as a cluster of acidheads in tie-dye and blood-shot stand on the overpass watching the ripple of traffic lights from green to red to gold and finally back to red.

These lights go on for miles and miles. They probably never stop.

Electric pulses, vibrations, shockwaves emanating from the city’s core. I live on this. It wakes me up better than coffee and it's free.

I yawned, stretched my legs and stumbled over to get the paper. I check the classifieds every morning looking for a new job. I jump around a bit, finding work anywhere I can.

Last week I managed to find pretty good work at this kind of modeling gig They took pictures of me then sold them to a plastic surgery company. They're going to chop the pictures down and put them into this database. So someone in Orange County is going to be walking around with my nose. Not a nose that looks like mine, but a nose designed specifically to be my nose. Or my eyebrows, or lips, or anything else.

Since I was paid to give away appearance, does it mean that I don't own myself anymore? At some crazy legal level, could it be argued that a company in California owns my face now and I have no right to how I look?

It's a weird feeling; selling yourself. I've already sold everything I've ever owned. My time, my labour, my heart, my body, my art, my creations and now finally, my appearance. What's left to sell now?

I stumbled out the door and trampled on the grass growing desperately through the cracks in the sidewalk.

I started thinking about happiness, specifically how to get there.  Because, I mean, I used to be happy I think. Back before I grew up at least. During that interlude between childhood and adulthood. There is this brief period of time, when you are young, when you began to realize that you are an individual. You are a person. You are unique perhaps. This individuality gives you power, gives you strength.

You will realize this and as a result your personality will begin to take place. But you haven't yet realized the world. This is a strange time where you understand your own power but you do not understand the strength of nature. So for a few brief years, you get to live like Superman, invincible and ready for anything. But we weren't ready for anything. We were told to plan for the future and then one day the future started happening and none of us had a plan.

This is where I find myself. On an intersection, at the train station, on a street corner waiting for the light to turn green, waiting for the train to come, thinking "What the f**k are we all waiting for?" What's stopping me from reaching out, from going?