The Shared Room
I finally reach that place.
Even temporarily, I have full access and full control.
It is more immediate and more intimate than my hand.
Here, I have total freedom, total privacy.
I want to get to know this place.
Will I be able to live here without slapping myself?
I am closing my eyes.
Where am I?
I am not in the world.
I am not with other people.
What do I have?
I don’t have the movements of my hands, my body, my mouth, my eyes.
I can’t reach my apartment, my internet, my toys, my money.
I don’t have a job here.
I don’t have family or friends.
I don’t see any moral, social, religious, or rational rulers.
What can I do here?
I cannot have achievements, titles, retirement, hobbies.
It is nowhere.
There is no one.
There is nothing.
It is empty.
I am bored.
This is boring.
I am free.
There is no one and nothing.
Pehh.
I have total control, but over what?
I have total access, but to what?
I cannot even take a walk, where would I go?
I have access to thought. I can think about anything.
I have access to imagination. I can imagine anything.
I have access to memory. I can pull out anything.
I have some options to decorate this space.
I am free to do whatever I want; nobody has any power here.
I go to the future, I go to the past. I fantasize, I plan.
I even do nasty things to other people.
The empty space is boring.
I bring the world in.
I exercise my full freedom in thinking.
My fun doesn’t last forever.
I am constantly interrupted.
The switch takes it away from me and hands it to the dark.
I am part-time fully free.
The dark has its own freedom.
I have no control over him, no access to him.
That is not a problem.
That is only fair.
When his movie is over, I still remember his movie.
It is similar to when the light goes off, I still remember the room.
My freedom is compromised.
I do not have privacy.
It is like we are sharing a room, one at a time.
The problem appears when I am back in the room.
It is not empty. He did not clean it.
He leaves the room exactly as it was at the moment the switch kicked him out.
I start to see some issues with thinking.
I am thinking about a sunny beach.
The next moment I am trying to survive a tsunami.
I am thinking about my family.
The next moment I am surviving their death.
The switch shares the room between me and the dark.
I recognize the smell of being slapped again.
Who is slapping me?
Thinking is like a shared room.
I got myself back into the same situation.
Thinking becomes a second case in the three slaps.
I do not want to slap myself.
But I slap myself by reaching for thinking.
I let go of another thief.
I am not going to share a room.
Nobody other than me can make me move.
I am opening my eyes again.