Join the new world

Has it ever occurred to you that your toaster, your coffee table, your leather lounger, your underpants and the shoes you’re wearing, that these apparently inanimate objects may have interior lives of their own?

Could it be possible that your TV set looks out and observes you, while you're observing it, and thinks of the injustice of its condition, for what is there to see but you sitting mindlessly before it for hours on end?

It doesn't take a genius to realize that your television has far more to offer you in terms of entertainment and information than you have to offer it.

And let us remember that all the objects in your home are made from formerly living things. Even plastic materials, made from petroleum, were once flowering trees and beautiful plants waving in the wind when dinosaurs and brontosauruses were grazing on them tens of millions of years ago, a mere flicker in the eye of some god, it's mind a great endless ocean of thought, stars spinning from his fingertips as it dances the dance of eternity, and enters the dinette, where it's partner, Parvati,
has unfolded a pair of place mats and pulled out a chair in which it reclines and thinks about the decisions it's made that have brought it to this place, the series of inter-locking choices that have caused it to change over the years and observes it's partner standing at the kitchen sink, wearing a tattered robe, stares at the sad, broad expanse of it's partners posterior, and thinks, Is there time yet for one more martini? But no, it must ascend the great invisible staircase of a million steps.

Each one of us, in his or her life, has taken small, imperceptible steps that have drawn us further and further into the future and further and further away from the past, that, added together, in the aggregate, have changed our lives profoundly.

But we never number the steps we take, any more than we number the beats of our heart, because there are so many millions of them, so great as to be uncountable. And as we continue walking, time works its mystery and magic, slowly eating us alive, allowing its moss to grow over our stony surfaces, as we pass into increasing transparency until we become completely invisible, erased, as it were, no longer in view, no longer in the thoughts of others.

And so, one day a man finds himself walking in a forest. He is not counting his steps either. Rather, he walks un-self-consciously, gazing above him at the interlocking branches of trees populated by noisy, socialized birds. And when I speak of socialized birds, I refer to their medical plan, which involves beak maintenance, deductibles for claw trimming, at rates
that are heartbreaking for their expense and annual increase. But there’s no escaping it, it’s either that, or waiting until you’re so sick that you have to throw yourself on the mercy of a hospital emergency room and wait in a plastic chair to die.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2hn1375.jpg" alt>