Healing Machine for Seth
For the shame of focusing more on your own needs or desires than what benefits others
You can see the Empire State Building from your window, but you never go. This morning, you wake up wondering if you’d be able to see your apartment building from there - if your own home could be the landmark glimpsed from a distance. So you go into the city, amble through the steel and concrete giants, pay your forty-two dollars at the ticket counter. You step into the elevator, surprised to be alone all the way up. The observation deck is blissfully empty, too, but a shroud of low clouds hangs over the city, and you can’t see a damn thing. You look out in the direction your house would be if it hadn’t disappeared, wondering if you can get your money back. You make your way back to the elevators, but you can’t find them. The fog has entered your mind, too. You circle the observation deck, the white sky all around you, nothing but white sky.
You try to clear your head, but the sea of white has filled it completely. The elevators are nowhere in sight. Your heart racing, you get the idea to climb your way out of the fog on a ladder of words. “White,” you think, and for a moment all you can think of is “white.” Then: white noise, white noise machine. Machine shop, shop till you drop. Drop the ball, ball boy, boy band, band stand, stand out. Out to sea, sea salt, salt flat, flat white, white noise machine - now how’d you get back there again?
White noise machine, shop till you drop the ball boy band, stand out to sea salt flat white noise machine - back where you started, but now the fog has cleared enough to reveal the tops of the lesser skyscrapers.
White noise machine, shop till you drop the ball boy band stand, out to sea salt flat white noise machine - the fog clearing more and more with every word, revealing trees and taxis and houses.
You try again - white noise machine shop till you drop the ball boy band stand out to sea flat white noise machine - and the fog lifts completely, revealing the city as an enormous map.
You squint your eyes in the direction of home, looking for a piece of yourself out there. Nothing. Even with the sky clear, you realize how indistinguishable your building is from all other buildings. You’ll never be able to pick it out.
A feeling of peace comes over you. For a moment, you see things with perfect clarity - your home all homes, your heart all hearts, your life all life.