Friends (so-called),
We, the Staff of /dev/null, condemned to /dev/null, have
been watching closely. And listening.
The technologies available to Alternative Media have allowed
writers, researchers, scholars, activists and other sane
beings to accumulate libraries of data regarding the evil
machinations of Power, its faceless corporate “persons,” and
the craven, murderous government/military/intelligence
agencies that do their bidding.
“The Man Behind the Curtain” has been “outed,” and the
evidence of his malfeasance grows daily and is recorded
daily on sites and blogs throughout the world. This is
good.
But still, nothing is happening. The situation is dire and
growing worse, but resistance has not developed to keep up
with opression, which grows bolder by the hour, taking
advantage of its incredible wealth to create an arsenal of
weapons and surveillance that tightens its choke-hold on the
planet and its creatures with each new “breakthrough” in
technology.
True, these technological breakthroughs have allowed
“alternative media” to expand the reach of its surveillance
of the surveyors, but after all, what is knowledge without
action?
This past Summer, we the Staff of /dev/null have taken it
upon ourselves to ascend and seek out some one who might be
able to do some thing. We believe we have found some one
who is indeed doing some thing — or was. Surely there are
others. But we’re a small staff on a low budget. We do
what we can.
Thus, the following report, to be released in sections under
the title, Ecce Mortis, is the record of the /dev/null
staff’s combined effort to chronicle the small but necessary
doings of the Plantman as we have observed and spoken to him
through the grim days of Spring and Summer. He was, in his
words, an “Ad Exec,” who turned away from his copy-writing
duties to become a “horticultural technician,” tending what
little plant-life grows, is allowed to grow, in the
steel-and-glass towers of The City.
We have done our best to chronicle his relatively minor life
of relatively minor disobedience in the hope that his
example will inspire others.
Yours,
The Phantom
Ecce Mortis: Call Me Plantman
Call me Plantman.
Summer The War suddenly, not unexpected. For weeks The Nation’s Uniformed Young amassed The Enemy border. Pump of Young like sperm into the vicious Rogue Regime. Carnage ignited a galaxy of screens, monitors. 24/7.
Escape?
Persona: Plantman, Keeper Protector The City’s office green. Grim fluorescent light can be, will be, serene.
I watered, trimmed, dusted corporate flora. Green Man at large. Horticultural Technician. Indoor Landscaper of potted plants. Verdure The City. Complex unruly. Sprout, contort, evolve. Snake-like struggle to?
The Light.
Anchored in cylinders of soil. Dirt. Same thing (for instance: “He soiled his pants; she dirtied her diapers” etc.). Plants too are data. Input/output.
Me, my Self displaced. Fiction a New Self. Watering can, scissors, agon. Deep daydreams the war.
Plantman and his room-mates, Music and BEING.
Rise with dawn, Green Man, Plantman, vigorous magician! They waited for me. Potted oases of The City. Florescent days accrued—a past! To study and transform. The City was work to be done as if into a girl. Real life living, coming to a cubicle near you. Watering can, feather duster, scissors. Adjustable Topiary Techniques apron.
In Search Of: Ivy in window sills creeping up walls. Ficus, Fiddle-leaf Fig. Song of India in Executive Suites. Pothos, Dieffenbachia, Kentia Palm for workers’ cubicles. Dead leaves guidelines for care. Pluck ’em, chuck ’em.
“All plants are created,” veteran technicians claimed.
How true. Fundamental problem keeping life alive in the steel-and-concrete City.
Too late to exchange all this? For military green? Experience, not merely imagine, enemy fire? Lose Self permanently always?
Gone? Exotic Time-passes, options.
Imagine a camouflaged Self. Exhaustive wrenching of the will. Muscles of Being: weary, relaxed, a fist unclenched. Release the Me I’ve born over a quarter century.
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