Confessions of a Homo Technolopithecus

Picture the earth before creation – dark, desolate, and scary. Time stretches endlessly, without the grasp of the ever swooshing deadlines. Now picture yourself in that world, in this present world with numerous technological distractions which have embedded themselves into your everyday life.

You will be lonely in a crowd, wandering in the streets as though you are a lost soul seeking redemption. I guess that’s how it feels without a phone, for that’s the experience I went through back in the village when power went off, and KPLC, ever reliable in disappointing, took its sweet time.

I am homo technolopithecus, a reverse from the sapien sapien thing. I can’t live without my phone. I love to feel it in my pocket, the right pocket of my trouser, and whenever I feel its absence my whole body is sent into unspeakable panic. It has to be there, even when I don’t need it, such as when I am dead and need to check whether I have received a text.

You may have heard of people making jokes that the wifi was down once and they were forced to talk to their families. They confessed that they seem like nice people. I am one of them, though I do not overly peg my existence on the internet. I just need to feel my phone, on for I derive immense pleasure in drawing the security pattern and gawking at it endlessly, for hours. When I get bored with it, I set it aside for ninety seconds and resume fiddling with it.

I can’t, for the fluids in me, imagine how someone can survive without a phone. Of course there are people who can live without it – dead people and hopeless drunkards. Even though no one actively looks for me, I feel I am obliged to be reachable. It is true with relationships.

When you are in love, there’s that constant need to validate your affection. The only thing available, what with the distance is a phone. Texting and calling brings forth two dimensions in a relationship – strengthen it or break it. if you are dating a lady with the intelligence quotient of boiled maize, it can be disastrous because every time your phone is off, she conjures up a thousand scenarios of where you could be – which often is on top of a naked woman. To her, there are never any other viable reasons as to why you could be unreachable. That’s why I am a homo technolopithecus. 

 

The other day, while with a friend, he turned and asked me what postpartum meant. I looked at him with an ‘are you stupid glare’ and answered him. Because I know things, and the way I know things is through googling. That answers you why I thought he was stupid – he was holding his phone, and I wondered why he couldn’t make use of it. Some people! They think we have time to answer questions google can answer within a second, and not just answer – have detailed illustrations that may even include pictures of naked women.

As an avid social media user, I often rise in the morning to see the posts and go like – what a complete moron.  I love this routine so much that I log into social media even before my eyes have fully deciphered the brain stimuli instructing to open the eyelids. Even though social media has a certain dumbing-down effect, I love it. I love gawking at pictures of people living really good lives, read news and check out memes. Mostly I check out memes. And imagine my complete uselessness. 

 

Do not say ati I am addicted to my phone. Everything is in my palms. What more can I ask for? Money in my palm, entertainment, news, and naked pictures of women. I am a homo technopithecus, and one day when my bones will be discovered in the year 4000, they will discover my phone beside me. Archeologists at the time may wonder how primitive I was (or I am right now), but I’ll answer them now – I don’t give a damn.

Sober Moments

Every sober moment gnaws

The edges of his mind like a saw

It reminds him of abandoned dreams

Stupor rids him of lofty aspirations

He desires not the soberness of a judge

The verdict is often unbearable for his person

The world looks him an elevated pedestal

Saying with only its eyes ‘you are a failure’

He is every inch one, and he needs to forget that

Every single second of the day

The world does not cut him some sluck

It demands what he can no longer give

Except drunken drools and disappointment

The Pain is Gone

it feels different now,

the scars appear like petals,

like medals from a war

a victorious war,

it speaks of your exploits

right inside the belly of the serpent,

how you emerged, scarred alright

but with a new resolve,

to not only live but conquer as well

The King Never Farts

The king never farts

When he does, there’s always a peasant

Ready to take the responsibility

The king is infallible

He was ordained by god

And who can question god

The king is the wisest man alive

His word is a decree

No man can go against him

The Nightmare

She convulsed violently as if being tagged by powerful forces, each trying to make her cross into regions of their dominion. She looked as though she had just been exposed to a botched religious ritual, where the forces of evil and good matched each other in strength. People had gathered in the field, watching pensively and probably thankful that it was not a contagious disease. You watch the whole debacle through your bedroom window, a little bit intoxicated. No. You are so inebriated that you feel the world begin to spin dangerously.

Then, as if on cue, people begin to scamper to safety, scaling walls, and running while looking back as though the eyes aided in propelling them as far away from the scene as possible. Because of the substances you had consumed earlier, you fall asleep on your bed, with all your clothes on.

It does not take long before you hear footsteps inside your house. At first it is one, then two then many. You feel an ice cold hand touching your neck, and props you up as a mother would do to a baby. You slowly open your eyes, and come face to face with the convulsing woman. She has come with a crowd you earlier saw watch her convulse life threateningly. She touches your face and begs you to make love with her. She had been pretty earlier, but now she was an old woman, with a skin so wrinkled that one can hide a packet of unga when shoplifting. She is as repulsive as a blown up image of groin eating virus.

You sit on your bed and try to say a prayer, folding your fists tightly. Nothing happens despite you shouting Jesus forcefully. The woman’s entourage begins begging you to do as she asks as though the simple act possessed healing capability. You have never thought of your tool of intimacy as possessing any healing properties, and you don’t want to find out just then. May be she would turn into a maiden, and without any devilish tendencies you saw earlier. That’s none of your concern. What concerns you then is getting out of the place with your phone intact. Instinctively, you feel your phone in your pocket. It is still there.

It surprises you that none of the people restrain you as you make for the door. You should have asked them to leave, but it does not bother you. They can make away with anything they want in the house – you don’t care. All you care is putting enough distance between you and the devilish-looking group of humans. And with your phone. According to the National Bureau of Agony, nothing matches the agony of losing a smart phone, and even more agonizing is the wait until you can purchase another one.

When you get out, you are welcomed by darkness. And silence. All the houses have their lights off, except yours. There is no soul in sight. The world looks desolate, rid of any human soul. It felt as though the world was in readiness for the voice of God commanding with the voice ‘let there be…’ You think; let there be humans with actual human hearts and intentions. It dawns on you that the light in your house may have attracted them, for it is the only one in the entire neighborhood that’s on.

As you try to process the sudden change of environment, a young man dashes out of one the houses screaming hysterically. The scene provides a new dimension to the already fucked up situation you just found yourself in. What has happened to all the people? What am I going to do? A billion questions dart at lightning speed through your mind, yet do not give you a chance to contemplate the possible answers.

A slimy hand, or tentacles, cold as witch’s nipple at mid night wraps itself around your neck. As you feel life slowly slipping away, you wake up, drenched in sweat. It was a dream. Or nature was playing a cruel prank on you since its one in the night, and you damn know very well that it is time to think about all your problems, jumbled up as they are.

In the darkness, you stretch your hands to the table where you usually place your phone. It is still there. You press the power button and the screen lights up, blinding you momentarily. It’s not even three o’clock in the morning. You know what that time means – stay awake until six thinking the same thoughts over and over again. You know very well that you aren’t even imaginative enough to find better angles of thinking. Like getting your ass off and actually trying to live. But before that, you analyze the nightmare. It looked so real. Last time it looked this real, it became a reality – story for another day.

Other Days

There are days whose dawn, 
just their dawn
Stretched like a thousand forevers 
time crawled, seconds gnarled, 
dragging their feet to the minute, 
minutes were lazy, scurrying around 
as though they were being punished 
Hours, the cute hours, solemnly jeered 
Sometimes gnarled when you checked it
And you are stuck in a timeless void 
Waiting 

The Thud in Your Chest

The distinct thud in your chest, 
The sound of your indefatigable heart, 
Ever in a race, even when you are asleep, 
A race to keep up with your allotted earthly time
To live, love and laugh, 
And, sometimes, make memories 
Or money 
It's just a race, one beat coming slightly second after another 
Forever - which is not really a long time anyway