My Name Is Daniel

My name is Daniel.
I am a statistic. A demographic. I eat what I am told to eat, because I am told it is good for me. I purchase what I am told to purchase because I am told it will make me feel better. When I pick up my game controller I willingly lose myself in a distraction that will take me away from myself. When I switch on a movie, I am saying ‘entertain me’, extract me from the humdrum, fool me with the lights and virtual meanderings and the things I’ll never have with the people I’ll never meet in the situations I am coming to increasingly accept as the reality I don’t experience, and never will. I am a non-person that reacts to color, light and sound, because it’s impossible that I should react any other way. I jump when I’m told to jump, at surprises that are as predictable as the rising sun. I fall in love when I’m told to because of the interaction I’m allowed with other non-persons, against stimuli I barely understand. My eyes flick from left to right, drawn continually, perpetually away from the organic, affection, love and towards sugar, violence and sex. I consume, and excrete, untold quantities of plastics, alloys, fumes, chemicals. And I eat, oh, do I eat, the recipes of laboratory technicians that kill me, save me, kill me, save me, kill me, save me.

My name is Daniel.
I am a living thing. I absorb light, energy, love, pain and exude it in equal quantities. My eyes collect wavelengths for future reference in a web of previous, present and future memories. I am an observer, a voyeur, of nature’s seasonal striptease, and I can touch this bursting vibrant life in the flesh of leaves, animals, insects. I create, words flow from my mouth, my fingers, through simple tools I can conjure planets, people, lives, death, a breeze through the branches in the early evening dusk. I know others, of equal power who strike me down with mirth and giggles and pick me up with pain and melancholy. I can love these souls, hate them, disregard them or absorb them. I feel, continually, totally, throughout, within. I am at the center of the universe, and at the edge, the most important, and the most inconsequential. I can adore, manipulate, crunch my fingers, allow existence… and sometimes pinch it out. I exist now, I existed then, and I will exist in the future, and yet, I cannot prove any of it. I observe those burning bowls of cosmic brilliance and realize with overwhelming humility that I am a part of everyone, and at the same time totally and utterly separate from them.

My name is Daniel.