Have you ever seen a rebel?
No, not Che on a t-shirt. Not Che on a wikipedia article. Che is a fashion statement. Nothing more.
A true rebel, well, I saw him, or it, when I was eight years old.
His name, was 'Plastik Man'. No, not Plastic Man the DC comics character. Plastik Man.
He roamed the Kuantan bus stations, wearing only plastic products. He had these plastic shades on, and his shirt were all kinds of transparent plastic bags. His pants as well. He carried with him a large plastic bag with all kinds of plastic things. Ornaments. Knick-knacks. Junk.
If you think about it, this is the ultimate rebel. A real one.
Rambling to himself all day long, he defied the human inventions of speech and conversation. He absented himself from the workforce. He even gave a big fuck you to human clothing and human decency.
That, my friends, is a true rebel. Rebellious to the core. Disobedient in an uncivil manner.
I was eight years old and I knew that if I wanted to be a rebel, in its purest form, I will one day have to don the mantle of the Plastik Man. I would have to be rambling mad.
In the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, it is postulated that ultimate freedom can be, well, boring. Consider if we had a real choice in the matter. We would be floating in space, as one-dimensional creatures.
Then, a line exists and we suddenly have a perspective of space. We become two-dimensional. Add gravity, and we are soon walking on that line, like a comics strip.
Add depth and we are soon in 3D. Infuse the small simulation with the passage of time, motion, and change - which is basically the only indication we have that time is happening - and we are almost complete in our own world.
Some people, having achieved this state, wants to find ways to escape it. We take psychedelic drugs, imbibe alcoholic drinks or knock our heads on the wall.
Why?
Because we have discovered hints that what makes the universe is merely perception. Take away our perception of time and depth and gravity and the line, and we are left in our basic spiritual state.
Perception lies in the brain. A trillion billion complex electro-chemical responses. Communication. Natural binary in Cyrillic.
The Secret says all the world is energy.
Bollocks.
All the universe ever is, is information. Data.
And those who can see the strings, the information, and can control it, manipulate it on a whim, are free.
There is no spoon.
We call it magic. And as I have said before, all that magic is, is language.
I see people trying to get free, and all they do is just do whatever other people before them has done. They follow echoes of distant pasts and distant paths.
One psychologist confided in me, amidst glasses of whisky - his - that there are only eight different personalities in the world. And they are recycled time and again. And that one day, he met all eight at a bar in Sao Paulo. Apparently, I was one of them. I was both Harlequin and Pulcinello. Hey, I'm Mr Punch!
In that sense, all you ever meet are eight people. That's depressing. Six - or is it eight now? - billion humans, and only eight people to meet. Only eight people to fuck or to get angry with.
And even that is a Jungian echo. His archetypes.
Everyone follows a kata, the Japanese kata, not a Malay kata.
Patterns. Personas. Recreated and regurgitated because everyone wants to be somebody, inside their heads. Everyone wants to be ideas of the perfect being.
So I get all these women telling me to 'be myself', and if they knew that 'being myself' involved dressing up in plastiks and insulting them cause they all suck, I think they'll stop saying that to me. In fact, I can hazard a guess that some of them will stop talking entirely.
They say they want the truth, but do they?
Everyone wants to be special, just like everyone else. We are not special, and in that, we are special.
Chasing after something means it will be out of grasp. Try and reach for an apple - forbidden or carnal knowledge, who the fuck cares about symbolism nowadays - and you strain against it.
Instead, let the apple come to you. Fold the universe so that the fucking fruit gets in your hands. Different approach, same outcome. Less drama. Trust me. You've trusted worse things in your life. And worse people.
Yes, yes, been reading The Invisibles again. I don't need alcohol to be a rambling, gambling man.
One of these days, they will catch me. And they will put me where they've taken Plastik Man. And we can all talk about conspiracy theories then.
