I was probably done with the lemming herd long before the corona bug hit, but still captive to the mandatory American myth of communal technological bliss, even as a seditious wild current coursed within me. That dark current bided its time, feeding a wellspring of dissent, rebellion, as I dogpaddled with other techno zombies in the swamp of instant gratification and alternative realities. Human protozoa in a cosmic petri dish corralled and zapped into line by the cattle prod of conformity.
But a molecule of realization somehow leaked through the vomit of “progress”: The moment arrived one evening when utility power – the control juice of “civilization” – lost authority for a few hours, perhaps defeated by a squirrel atop a utility pole, and I was left with candlelight, the stars, and my innate imagination disconnected from the herd, from the electronic feedbag of conformity.
Suddenly, there was no electric hum (the hiss of control) anywhere. No digital readouts from devices. I could hear myself breathe. I felt the pressure in my veins and arteries slowing, a river of blood no longer needing to rush wildly, madly. It was so quiet and calm that a scampering mouse’s paws might reverberate across a room. Privacy was temporarily restored. Sanity cautiously raised its head out of its foxhole for a skeptical peek.
That molecule of epiphany squirted out and tugged at my ear while the gates of conformity were down, flaccid. It whispered that I couldn’t pinpoint when I hadn’t slithered in the fetid muck of Facebook, leaf blowers, hedge trimmers, cable TV, Internet speed, fake news, smartphones, cancel culture, text messaging, GPS, Instagram, 24/7 porn, Trump tweets, Bollywood movies, apps for this and apps for that, celebrity worship, reality TV, podcasts, Naked Survivor, Skype, Zoom, rap “music,” and Fox “News.”
In the semi-darkness, time was banished, and the candle’s cinnamon scent hung in the air. I could see brilliantly, could grasp how I had sagged under the saturating weight of an America fueled by a tsunami of narcissistic self-promotion, disinformation, and outright lies. My soul had been torn and frayed, privacy and dignity hacked to bits, even my ability to read and learn eroded by Google. Then a prick of a virus resembling a naval mine showed up, nurtured by a prick of a comb-over president who painted his face orange, and I knew I had to find the exit out of the swamp or drown in it with all the other lemmings.
So, I gave it all the old heave-ho. Well, not all, and not all at once—it takes time to drop out of society, even with the aid of a pandemic quarantine. Dropping out requires an exit in stages. A strategy. I didn’t even know where the exit led to at first. I had to find the door. I wasn’t even sure where to look. Would I recognize it? Should I just Google revolution first?
I made my “getaway” slowly, cautiously. First, I got stoned (baked like a cake), drank a few beers (okay – a bunch), and stayed geeked for days listening especially to The Beatles — “Revolution” — and the Rolling Stones snarling “Street-Fighting Man.” Over and over – why not? It was legendary music from before my time, but from better times I’d always wished were mine. I longed for a time machine transporting me back to 1969. Before the world had gone to hell in a technology handbasket. A line from Neil Young resonated and became my mantra, my battle cry: “This much madness is too much sorrow.”
I grew bold and quit my job as a pharmacist at Walgreen’s after more than fifteen years of legally sedating much of Weedtown. A prince of palliatives. But knowing which little white or blue pill goes in which bottle isn’t exactly a balls-to-the-walls lifestyle that sets people’s hair on fire. For centuries I had dutifully appeared and slipped on a white coat each day and stood cheek by jowl with other lemmings in the same white coats, filling bottles with the same little white pills, taking the same short breaks behind Walgreen’s next to a smelly dumpster. Beyond the smudged plexiglass, customers lined up for their daily salvation. Assembly line medicine. Legal drug dealing. Lethal boredom.
My supervisor didn’t take my resignation seriously right up to the day I walked out the door for the last time and gave him the finger– halfheartedly, I admit, but still the correct digit even if not fully erect. I thought to sell a goodly amount of accumulated Walgreen’s stock, too. Rejecting rampant capitalism requires some cash. Seed money, in addition to what I’d saved. Revolutions need not ignore practicality, though I suspect most do.
I can still see the stone faces (but specks of fear teeming in the corners of their eyes) of my co-lemmings, ensconced (imprisoned) in their white coats and shiny militaristic nametags, as they watched me toss my coat over a chair, rip off my tie, and wrap it around my head with a flourish, like some hippie from the 60s, the narrow part of the red tie dangling down my neck and back like a tail. The uniform of capitalist “democracy” discarded, dismantled — converted. Perverted, perhaps, in the eyes of some from my former tribe. Conformity hates independent thinking, independent action.
I nodded curtly (okay—a touch of arrogance, too) at the faces scanning me, and after a pause for effect, I strolled leisurely toward the exit, taking one last look at shelves of pharmaceutical achievement. The altar Americans worshipped at. I was the lemming that had escaped the thundering pack and the others looked at each other curiously, fearfully, depending on how far along their assimilation into the system had progressed.
My supervisor said I was rash, impetuous — I’d be sorry; but it was liberation I felt and not sorrow or regret. The anvil had fallen from my shoulders and I could stand fully erect again. The air seemed sweeter.
“Olin Gallagher,” he said sternly, fatherly, “you’ll beg us to come back. Mark my words.”
I tossed him a crisp salute, but I did later feel bad about flipping him the bird. Perhaps that was beneath me. I was caught up in my “heroic” moment. Feeling the burn of action. The poor guy had lived in the system far too long to ever imagine freedom. His assimilation was complete right down to the cellular level. Sort of like The Borg in Star Trek. The Borg had a uniform of conformity and so did Walgreen’s.
Without thinking to, I embraced social distancing (a byproduct, really) by moving out of my apartment into a cabin on the outskirts of Weedtown, just a stone’s throw from Weed Creek. There was nothing Martha Stewart about the place at all. Not even Skip and Joanna from Fixer Upper could do much for the poster cabin for rustic. Too spartan even for Spartans.
But it was clean and had indoor plumbing and a fireplace for if I was still there come winter. I wasn’t allowing myself to look past the corona’s summer rampage. The orange emperor’s offensive.
I sold my car, a Subaru wagon, to a former co-worker/lemming at Walgreen’s who still spoke to me, but who still believed in slaving away as a cog in the system. A true believer. It was in his DNA. He was a Republican zealot certain the stable genius president would come through for everyone and so I gave him a good price on the car out of sympathy for his unfortunate detachment from reality.
He was the first one in Weedtown to die from the corona.
- The Herd In The Swamp - March 19, 2024