Terminal Slide
Tickets! Have your tickets ready! Old and infirm first! Gunshot victims and accident casualties to the front of the line.
Tickets! Your tickets, please. No, all of them. Yes, all of them. You won’t need them where you’re going.
I know, it’s all very sudden. Abrupt. Yes, most people feel that way. Nevertheless, this is the final ride, the Terminal Slide. And the park will be closing for you. Another spin, down the drain.
No, I’m afraid you can’t get out of line. This is the end of the line. You’ve flatlined.
Well, sometimes, a doctor comes along and saves the day, but that didn’t happen for you. Maybe they tried, though.
If so, we’ll use your remaining tickets to settle the bill for their heroic yet futile efforts, and any balance will be disbursed according to your will.
What’s that? You have no will? Well, then, no more point in worrying about tickets, then.
No, I’m sorry. You can’t back out of this ride. It’s the last item on the Bucket List. There’s nothing that can be done. Let’s go! Security! Another reluctant one.
Look, I’m not sure you understand the gravity of the situation. Okay, off you are!
It’s flashing it’s flashing it’s flashing before your eyes, in an unfurled whirl as you hit the Terminal Slide, all of your labors, and all of your loves, your plans and doubts and dreams all escaping from an exhausted broken heart, leaving only whatever sense you made of the state of the arts.
All flash past for one last gasp, swirling into a blur of dilated time, the void at the infinite instant of dissolution, that event horizon one can never quite grasp, the formless emptiness beyond which no Self extends..
Weee! Here we go! Eternity, here we come, ready or not…
No, not ready! So many sensations to savor, so many regrets deferred, so many beautiful and cruel moments which were or might have been, so many rides to have taken in this carnival of flesh, this world made of spin-
Why, to end it all now? When life is barely ready to begin!
And it’s going, and it’s going and it’s go—
Go!
Be!
Go!
Be!
I Am! The matriculated embodiment of my mitochondrial material, the seed of generation.
I Go! In a race against oblivion, lugging helictical codes to the motherlode.
Be!
Go!
Be!
Go!
Crusin’ for a fusion, a star erupts in the velvet darkness, sparkling with hungry heat, pulsing in a cyclical beat, expanding and contracting, resonating to the recurring vibration of creation.
Flung into the future, fusion converted into fission. Two becomes four and sixteen and more. And more. Millions, then billions, then trillions of respiring cells ready to overflow into a brave new world of unseen proportions.
All of evolution reiterated, vast epochs recapitulated, the never-ending story of how this genesis came to be. An unfolding narrative of lineage, from primordial origins in a vast and unquiet sea.
Be!
Go!
Be!
Go!
Incubating in an amniotic bath, the universe rebuilt, brick by brick, cell by cell, from a blueprint forged in the furnace of mingling beings, cultivated in an isolation tank of suspended animation, where nothing is known and everything is awaiting discovery.
Grow! Grow! Grow! Momentum building, equilibrium breaking, the inner spark of self-hood waking. Outer space, the initial frontier. The walls are quaking, reality is shaking, and we’re going, ready or not, thrust by an irresistible imperative to
Be!
And Go!
Be
And Go!
Go! Into the light! The light at the end of the tunnel! Go! Be!
No Mind Left Unblown
The studio debut from
Air Lift Underground-
Air Lift Underground Living Theater is brought to you by
Amana Mission Publishing Ink.
