The Fall of Man

Part I chapter 9

Chapter 9

I have decided that it is time to leave this place. There is nothing left for us here – the prospect of returning to our daily routine ties my stomach in knots and fills me with dread.

Often, I think back on the utterly tedious consistency with which I have squandered my waking hours over the course of the last decade. Now, it seems like the behaviour of a lunatic. Every day, I would sit in the solitary confinement of my car for the hour and a half drive to work, and then later repeat the same journey home. Hunched over my steering wheel for three hours each day, like a goldfish in a bowl I watched the world outside pass me by. I must have stored all of that information in my brain somewhere because I would notice if anything differed from the norm; graffiti on a road sign, a basket in a shop window, a sequence of lights. I would curse if it rained without ever getting wet, and I would scowl through the glare of the sun without even feeling its warmth on my skin. Then, for eight or nine hours each day, I would sit at my desk and watch numbers form patterns on a computer screen in front of me. Each number would in some way represent another human’s actions – perhaps a birth, an arrest, a wedding, or maybe a death. But all that I ever witnessed was the number - a coded record - to record that the event had actually happened.

While a good number of my ‘best years’ have already been lost, ground up by the machine that sustains developed civilisation, Noah’s quality of life can - I hope - still be salvaged. However, for the moment his behaviour continues to deteriorate…

Joanna always struggled to keep Noah in bed much past dawn; he would wake as soon as the first rays of sunlight squeezed between his flimsy bedroom curtains, full of excitement for the day ahead. He now soundlessly lies prone on the sofa until I switch on the overhead light. Still, he doesn’t speak. I don’t think he really sleeps. He certainly doesn’t eat. Most children are naturally lean, but Noah’s quietly listless body combines with his sallow skin and sunken eye sockets to give the impression of nothing so much as the ghost of a ten years old boy.

I think back on that boy’s relationship with his mother – and on the stimulation he received from Joanna that I am failing to provide. Certainly, theirs was a more physical relationship. I think that I probably benefited vicariously from their intimacy, from the hugs and kisses, and from all of the physical contact that they shared. They also talked of course, about many things. Often, the triviality of their conversations - and particularly of Noah’s incessant questions - would irritate me, and I would breathe a sigh of relief whenever I felt the airtight clunk of my car door close behind me as I prepared for the drive to work each day.

Often, days would pass when I wouldn’t see Noah at all. On these days we would be like two alternate realities, occupying the same space but never overlapping. All that I would encounter would be the evidence of his passing -  muscled action figures and multicoloured Lego bricks strewn around the living room, plastic forks and spoons left in the sink, painstakingly intricate drawings and paintings posted on the fridge… Unquestionably I have been a poor father.

My hope now is that by taking Noah somewhere unspoilt, somewhere that shelter and food don’t come pre-packaged on a plate, he will be shaken out of his silent descent, and be forced to start living again. I also have in the back of my mind the notion that by making this sacrifice for Noah - for both of us - I might myself become a better parent and find some sort of salvation.

I have spent the past few weeks thumbing through our modest library of books and scouring the Internet. The World Wide Web offers both hope and respite. It provides a conduit for communication and for entertainment, for the distribution of music, film, art, literature... Most importantly, in a world saturated by our Moorish hunger for the accumulation of physical possessions, it provides an unlimited supply of information, often without payment and all without the fabrication of anything material. It almost sounds like a cure...

However, in spite of days of laborious browsing, I have yet to find the right destination for our relocation. It isn’t clear to me whether I should be avoiding people or places, cars or commerce.  I am struggling with the notion that the whole of the developed world is an unnecessary evil, flagellating its occupants with a fundamentally flawed existence. There are surely aspects of our society that are worth preserving, improvements on nature that sustain life and bring benefit, but I don’t see a way to separate them from the melee of modern life.

I cannot afford to repeat the cyclic behaviour of my parents, oscillating from fad to fad. I must think beyond the short term choices of what we will eat and where we will sleep. The key criteria are:

We must live in a clean, unpolluted environment.

We must have an abundance of natural resources at our disposal.

We must not be reliant on transportation, or other people, for our survival.

We must be together.