Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Let Go. By John Doe

I'm sitting here in a dark room listening to music. I've emailed everyone I know, even people I don't know but saw their names on forwards received by people who think that I'd enjoy them...even though I hate them. I'm sitting here sweating, like I always do in this room. I've had ten thousand glasses of water and the quench is still there. I would try drinking something else but I know I would get the same results. So what do I do? Do I stay up all night asking myself hypothetical questions? Questions I ask but don't really want an answer? Why don't I want the answer? Is it something that I know I want to hear? Is it something I don't want to hear? Six questions into it and I'm still at the same place. I still haven't passed go to collect the two hundred dollars I need to get out of this jail that I'm in right now. That's all I need, but it seems that when you need it the most, it's always the hardest to get. I don't get that. I guess if it was easy, everyone would be doing it and then it wouldn't be that special. If we all did the same thing where would the innocence be? I'm sure it would be sitting in the jail cell next to me, but the only thing is, it's blind and deaf and I don't have the patience to teach it to speak. So I’ll sit here and wait. Waiting for someone, anyone to bail me out of jail, marking the days on the cold, concrete wall with a broken piece of metal.

4 comments:

qhunt said...

what the heck was that all about?

m said...

I'll bail you out, buddy.

Anonymous said...

You have to bail him out of the confusion and his mind.

I especially liked the reference to emailing the forward's common addressees.

Punishment for continuing the cycle inflicted on those whom are guilty by association.

You can come escape with me.

Anonymous said...

The six questions are the path to escape...to bail. While the voice has no faith in the questions or the path, he realizes underneath them, they are the answers to his imprisonment. The poem alludes to this fact. That the path to freedom is to continue aswering each question as it comes, even though each answer is a question in itself building what seems to be an insermountable cage. Therefore he has abondoned all hope and complains not only about the imprisonment, but the thirst that comes with it, not realizing that the imprisonment and the thirst are the same, and that the quench for such thirst is not water, or any other drink, (which is acknowledged), but is the pursuit of the final answer to all of his internal questions, which is unrealized.

The voice, however, finally fails because it decides to wait for bail instead of pursuing what it deems to be worthless questions not realizing that the answers to those questions are in fact the bail to his mental anguish that he desires.


An additional note. I don't think that I agree with the innocence argument. This disagreement is what allows the reader to unlock to poem and find its deeper meaning and message. The innocense of man kind is conformity. God requested Adam and Eve to conform, but allowed them to make their own decisions. They did not conform, and all of man kind must suffer the consequences. Each person acts in his own way on his own decisions destroying the innocence. If all of man kind conformed to the original and subsequent commands, then everyone would be innocent. Conformity is innocence. While everyone would be innocent if everyone conformed, or if Adam and Eve had originally conformed, but then arguably we would all be imprisoned by God's will. God knew this, and therefore gave man the option of acting outside the conformity he commanded. He gave Man his own will and Man set himself free in an Earthly sense, but imprisoned his spirit. Has John Doe touched this subject? Has he confused the true nature of man's innocence and guilt? Is the jail cell Hell? Is it merely the thought and fear of Hell? To answer these two questions one must determine if John Doe is dead or alive. From where is John Doe speaking? Does he have hope in redemption, or has he abandoned that hope as I stated earlier? No, there is hope, there is hope that freedom is still attainable, but the hope fails in his wait. When he decides to wait, he abandons his hope, failing to quench his thirst for freedom which is not attainable by earthly water, but by an internal examination of faith, truth, and justice.

That is what I think.