The Existential Papaya

I am plagued by paper. I don't know why clerical tasks bring out the existentialist in me, but there you go, existential mocking popping into my brain like a jack in a box, except even more obnoxious (if such a thing were possible). I feel as if I'm being punished, which I acknowledge is juvenile at best, hopelessly self-pitying at worst. What a jumping off point! What joy-inspired words!

In order to perform the tasks at hand I surprise myself with the wish to drain myself, like a bottle, of all vestiges of humanity or primordial spark and to become. the machine. that I am. supposed to be. I imagine my speech changing to flawless monotone . . . like the rhythm of a roll call: paper here typing here killing here with a here noose here arsenic here soul mutilation here vivisection here

In some places the heart, the mind is only a disease, something sickly to be gauged out with a surgical tool and placed in a biohazard bin. And if only I didn't have it to begin with, I wouldn't miss it when it's gone. But I do and I did.

Okay, so maybe this is my blue period. The worst kind, so that if you glance at it, instead of the word "blue" you see the word "bored". It is not blue, but beigey grey. The color of milky vomit mixed with mercury. In contrast, I appreciate the verdant: the drippy dewy green of close up photos of grass blades, the rich, crumbly chocolate of garden beds and the provocative pink moistness of strawberry papaya flesh cupping little eggy black beaded seeds. You see? This is proof that I've lost it.