Nowhere Soup
Have you ever thought about the expression “in the middle of nowhere”? Well, I have (someone’s got to do it), and that phrase tickles me in lots of delicious ways. Firstly, when someone uses that expression, it’s not usually with a nice connotation.
“Fuck this place, we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere with our fingers up our arses. Let’s make fucking tracks and fuck-off out of here.”
Usually “the middle of nowhere” is anywhere other than a city or the beach; somewhere with no fast-food and plenty of casually racist bar-flies (still good people). But I see things slightly differently.
Yes, the middle of nowhere is often sparse, open, arid, dry, dusty, and every other adjective of that calibre; but I think it’s not really the middle of nowhere. In that horrible dust bowl, sit on the cracked earth and ask yourself a couple of questions:
Where am I? I am here.
When am I? I am now.
So, let’s say you get out of that casually racist hell-hole and make it back to your city or beach or wherever-the-fuck you come from. Sit in your comfy room on your (hopefully) comfy bed and ask yourself the same thing.
Where am I? I am here.
When am I? I am now.
That’s strange, you worked so hard to get out of the middle of nowhere and it seems you’re still right in the middle of it, only with a few more distractions.
Nowhere Soup is all around us, as long as we’re alive anyway (I can’t tell you much about death, I can’t remember where I was before I was born). It seems, perhaps, that we can’t escape being in “the middle of nowhere” no matter how hard we try or how far we go.
You could travel to the furthest reaches and darkest corners of this incorruptible and inconceivable universe, you could even go to other dimensions and other universes if you really wanted. You could sit in your comfy, alien, and strange room on your (hopefully) comfy, alien, and strange bed and ask yourself:
Where am I? I am here.
When am I? I am now.
Go wherever you like! Travel and map the multiverse and uncover it’s mysteries; you will never escape the Nowhere Soup (as long as there is a “you” to experience it ((I think))).
Alas, the journey continues. What happens when I die and can no longer experience being in the Middle of Nowhere? No fucking clue. If my consciousness goes somewhere else when I shed this flesh garment, I’ll sit in my comfy soul-room on my (hopefully) comfy soul-bed and ask myself a couple of questions:
Where am I? I am here.
When am I? I am now.
Jesus Christ, it’s everywhere and everywhen!
Maybe “I” will disappear and become part of the broth that stews us in the Nowhere Soup while we have an individual experience of being - I’ve not the faintest idea, and that’s fantastic. Anyway, what do I know? I’m swimming through this Soup with everyone and everything else, the answers will never come. All I can do is be Nowhere, rather than think so highly of myself that I’m in the middle of it.
Isn’t it lovely to be Alive?
I’ll continue onwards, inwards, upwards, and every-which-waywards until I die; and I’ll die a man who knows nothing more than the rocks in the river, and that’s enough for me.