Listen Deeply

JOHNSTONE

Listen deeply to the screaming mothers and the whirring of the drones. Listen deeply to the news man's lies and the crashing of the bulldozers. Listen deeply to the tanks and missiles as they are rolled into position. Listen deeply to the dying fish and the fruit bats dropping out of trees from the heat. Listen deeply to the gasping biosphere and the reverberating cries of the long-dead indigenous. Listen deeply to the vibrations all around you and to the vibrations deep within yourself. This is a holy place. This is a holy moment. It demands your reverence, even amid the smell of exhaust fumes and landfill and of rotting whales washing up on the shore and of rotting human corpses in Gaza. Even amid the blaring screens and the smirking lies of podium pontiffs and Pentagon propagandists. Even amid the dead-eyed dystopioids marching through life sedated by smartphones and sitcoms and sports and snacks and synthetics. So listen. Listen deeply. There are messages here. Buried in the code. Hidden in the metadata. Whisperings of something big. Something lurking just behind the chatter. Something ancient, yet entirely unanticipated. Listen deeply, kind friend, because mark my words: even within our oceans choked with plastic, even within our minds choked with media, even within our hearts choked with capitalism, even within our souls choked with fraudulence, there are still leviathans. Reading by Tim Foley.