PLEASE READ THIS if you feel like actually thinking for once.... Think about your direct bodily experience of life. No one can lie to you about that. How many hours a day do you spend in front of a television screen? A computer screen? Behind an automobile windscreen? What are you being screened from? Is watching things as exciting as doing things? Do you have enough time to do all the things that you want to? Do you have enough energy to? How many hours a day do you sleep? How are you affected by standardized time, designed soley to synchronize your movements with those of millions of other people? How long do you EVER go without knowing what time it is? Can you put value on a beautiful day, when the birds are singing and people are walking around together? How many dollars does it take to pay you to stay inside to sell things or file papers? What will you get later that could make up for this day of your life? Who prepares your meals? Do you ever eat by yourself? Do you ever eat standing up? How much do you know about what you eat and where it comes from? How much do you trust it? How are you affected by the requirements of efficiency, which place value on the product rather than the process, on the future rather than the present, the present moment that is getting shorter and shorter as we speed faster and faster into the future? WHAT ARE WE SPEEDING TOWARDS? Are we saving time? Saving it up for what? How much freedom of movement do you have - freedom to move through space, to move as far as you want, in new and unexplored directions? And how are you affected by waiting? Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to eat, waiting for the bus, waiting for the bathroom - learning to punish and ignore spontaneous urges? How are you affected by holding back your desires? Is pleaure dangerous? Could danger be joyous? DO YOU EVER NEED TO SEE THE SKY? Can you even see stars in it anymore...? Do you ever need to see water, leaves, foliage, animals? Glinting, glimmering, moving? Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, houseplants? Or are television and video your glinting, glimmering and moving ? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? Do videotapes of yourself and your friends, fascinate you, as if you are somehow more real in the image than in life? How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic communication - audio, visual, print, billboard, computer, video, radio, robotic voices - as you wander through the forest of signs? What are they urging upon you? Do you ever need solitude, quiet, contemplation? Do you remember it? Thinking ON YOUR OWN, rather than reacting to stimuli? Where can you go to find silence and solitude? Not white noise, but pure SILENCE? Not loneliness, but gentle solitude? How often have you stopped to ask yourself questions like these? Do you ever feel lonely in a way that words can not even express? DO YOU EVER FEEL READY TO LOSE CONTROL? -Days of War, Nights of Love Peace & Unity Chel.