with deep, long breathing

Life, like jubilant song
from the mouth
of some Loving God,
cracks through the darkness.
We watch with sighs
and smiles,
with deep, long breathing.
The borders of our plastic days
wish it were not so.
They raise
an advertising hand
against its relentless advance.
Often it makes me feel
nothing,
which is the worst kind of god.
The tragedy of it,
those life-blockades, these soul boxes
are invisible and spring-loaded.
I watch the life
and if I blink,
imprisoned I become behind insecurity,
behind video games, behind my own
wandering eyes.

But Life,
like wind from the ocean
through the dancing pine branches,
reaches me.
We get rescued
from the siren (the need to be respected)
and rescued from ourselves. The progressive
bright life will be there when we look,
driving us mad, driving us
color blind. For this Life
is worth more than any kind
of real estate investment.
It crashes through my addictions
as if they were paper currency
or electronic love.
It echoes to us
from heaven of a great,
more florescent hope.

Life after the Surrogate Crisis...

Spoiler Alert! If you are interested in being surprised by this movie, read no further!

Jen and I saw the new Bruce Willis movie, Surrogates, tonight. It was an interesting concept about a world where humans use robots, called Surrogates, that they control with their brain and through whom they experience everyday life. Through the movie it becomes clear that humans are now dependent on the invulnerability and anonymity that comes with Surrogate use (by the way, this is a fascinating metaphor for modern day internet use! But that is another post). A rogue group who religiously oppose the use of Surrogates, known as Dreads or Meat Bags, resist the trend and create "humans only" reservations in order to escape God's wrath upon the machines and their users. Eventually, Bruce Willis, super-agent, becomes increasingly disillusioned with the benefits of Surrogates and unplugs himself in order to experience the outside world through his own senses. In the end, he is able to permanently shut down all active Surrogates without harming any of their users. The final scene is people walking outside in their bath robes to a city full of crashed cars and dead robots.

Jen and I both thought this was a slightly entertaining movie that could have done with some better writing. They took a few shortcuts in the plot for the sake of expediency which sacrifices some tension in the overall mood. However, what was even more disappointing was that we both felt like the movie ended at the start of a potentially very good movie. We wanted to know what the world would be like after the Surrogate Crisis was over. Do the Surrogate Corporate overlords relaunch a new wave of robots and draw people back into their addictions? Did people adjust to the new vulnerability of life without Surrogates? How could one even drive a car knowing that a crash could be fatal, after the immortality provided by Surrogates? Do the Dreads seize power and dominate the now weaker Surrogate-dependent humans just as they were once discriminated against? All these are questions we felt should have been answered in a completely different movie.

You don't even need Bruce Willis in it. There should be a sequel to this movie that would for me become the far more interesting plot than robots who look like humans jumping around like spiderman!

Come on Bruce, recognize what a real story is...