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     | |      c   o   m   m   u   n   i   c   a   t   i   o   n   s     | |
     | |________________________________________________________________| |
     |____________________________________________________________________|

  ...presents...                    Sickness
                                                         by Franken Gibe

                      >>> a cDc publication.......1993 <<<
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
  ____       _     ____       _       ____       _     ____       _       ____
 |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|

     Thinking is the most painful thing I know.  Thoughts can metastasize,
spreading anxiety like a cancer; thoughts can be tumors, their black tendrils
creeping into every sense and sensation, making life a kind of death.  When I'm
sick with thinking, it's usually because I've run barefoot through the snake
bed of That Issue - my mortality.  I try - I SWEAR I try not to let capital-
letter issues like Existence and Mortality paralyze me.  It's just that in the
fever of thought it's all I can do to look out into the wide world and not see
a grotesque masquerade.  A thousand thousand masks turn toward me with their
hideous frozen grins and hollow eyes.  And I know that behind the masks are
death faces.

     I'm sick with obsession.  I don't want to die, but the world dies around
me, and I gasp and choke on last exhalations and the sweet stench of decay.  I
feel myself dying and I wonder why, WHY.  I stare at the clouds in the
nighttime sky, glowing orange with the city's street lights, and I scream for
answers, I beg for secrets, I whine for special dispensations.  The clouds roll
silently on, and I know they're just fucking clouds, physical phenomenon as far
from having any transcendent consequence as I have.

     JUST BIOLOGICAL?  Is this it?  I can hear the distant echo of some distant
classroom voice droning on about the conservation of matter and energy.  Is
this all science has to offer us, the immortality of our essence, but not our
consciousness?  The eternity of everything that isn't WHO WE ARE as self-aware
beings?

     I'm feverish with self-consciousness.  I'm sick on the notion that I am
the only source of my own transcendence.  I'm the captain and crew of a sinking
ship who boasts to the wind and waves of my marvelous destination: that island
of dreams that I've never seen, but whose existence keeps me from plunging
overboard.

     Culture?  Culture is a mat of brittle twigs and dried leaves that covers a
depthless hole.  I can feel myself slipping, falling through the rickety mesh.

     I NEED transcendence.  I'm dying of the pressure.  The universe looms
immense around me, and crushes my lungs.  I can barely breathe.  I'm so sick. 
I want to vomit up the venom.  I want to RAGE AT THE WORLD, I want to fucking
kick a hole in the eternal and climb through.  I want to curl up in a ball
beneath some table and hide from Death.
 _______  __________________________________________________________________
/ _   _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842|
 ((___)) |Cool Beans!..........510/THE-COOL|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362|
 [ x x ] |The Alcazar..........401/782-6721|Moody Loners w/Guns.415/221-8608|
  \   /  |The Works............617/861-8976|Finitopia...........916/673-8412|
  (' ')  |ftp - zero.cypher.com in pub/cdc |ftp - ftp.eff.org in pub/cud/cdc|
   (U)   |==================================================================|
  .ooM   |Copr. 1993 cDc communications by Franken Gibe        04/01/93-#221|
\_______/|All Rights Drooled Away.                 SIX GLORIOUS YEARS of cDc|

