These freakish, non-organic cherries are your cells on modern living. I’m not speaking just metaphorically, either. Make no mistake: there is no difference between the havoc that modern living wreaks on your cells and the cellular degeneration of these cherries. Only the limitations of the naked eye keep us from witnessing this cellular holocaust in real time.
On our current course, however, we will increasingly see this mutation of cells in our degenerated offspring. This bowlful of cherries is a very real manifestation, on the micro- and macrocosmic levels, of our cultural choices. Shall we all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya” with our eyes closed and pretend it’s not really happening?
My associate, Ana, was recently among the many women who never think they are thin enough, who are disappointed in their diets for not making them look emaciated, who are products of a certain Upper East Side social class who spend their days in plastic surgeons’ chairs when they are not purchasing thousand-dollar frocks and clinking vodka tonics at lunchtime on Madison Avenue. They would rather be skinny with cancer than clean-celled and glowing from head to toe like our lovely Ana is today.
Not thin enough, eh? The next time you think this, consider: Would it appease you if you were twenty pounds lighter on a diet of saccharine, cigarettes, and caffeine, with maybe a little “blow” now and then? Would it ease your conscience if the dresses you were buying were for philanthropic galas? Let’s not carry on this lineage of thinking that deteriorates our world from the top down. This mindset would be almost comical if it didn’t lead to birth defects, suicide, and oil spills.
Modern life is just this bowl of cherries, ain’t it? Well, in this bowl is where the blind, programmed marionettes of civilization and their children will wind up. This is the endgame. Are you benching it, or are you going to get in the game and fight for your cells, your future, and the fate of humankind?
Let’s hussle, team!
Natalia
