The First Reality Is What One Can Swallow

...the infant wants to put [things] into its mouth. It was hunger, repeatedly disturbing the peacefulness of sleep, which compelled the recognition of the outside world. The experience of satiation, which first banished this tension, then became the model for the mastery of external stimuli in general.

The first reality is what one can swallow. Recognizing reality originally means to judge whether something helps to gain satisfaction or whether it raises tensions, whether one should swallow or spit it out. Taking-into-the-mouth or spitting-out is the basis for all perception, and in conditions of regression one can observe that in the unconscious all sense organs are conceived as mouth-like.

-- Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1945)



Our eyes eat the world. Everything we see is chewed up and digested. It goes inside of us, becomes a part of us. And what is seen cannot be unseen, cannot be thrown up, undigested.

We don't get to choose what we eat. We're not in control. We'd like to think we're in control. Everyone wants to think they choose the menu. That's not how it works. What we perceive is what we eat. Everything goes inside of us. Everything.

We fill up. We bloat, ready to burst, fill up with all that we see, and we're still not satisfied. We're never warm and full and comforted. We eat more, and more.

Eyes are mouths. Ears are mouths. Hands. The nose. Every sense organ is constantly chewing and sucking at the world, taking it in. Making it a part of us.

You can't fight it. There's no fighting it. You were born a mouth. You suck on the world, trying to find some kind of comfort, some kind of satiation. It never happens. You will chew and suck and devour until the day you die, and you will never, ever be happy and full.

There's always more world to eat. Something else waits for us around the corner. We can't help but explore. We're curious mouths.

Sharp, stabbing, ripping teeth. Lips seeking out nipples and morsels of food. Think hyena mouths, with no hyena. We eat each other, digest each other, we're all cannibals. But no one dies. We can eat each other anew every day. Worse than vampires, worse than zombies. Worse than blowjobs and cunnilingus. Everyone is a mindless breast-feeding baby, instinctively rooting for some sort of nurturing, some kind of caring.

"You will feed me, whether you like it or not. I will drain all the fluid from you, until you're dry and dead."

There's no reason to feel guilty. They're doing the same thing to you. We feed off of each other like incestuous leeches.

Nothing can be done about it. We were born this way. Monstrous mouths and teeth and tongues, horrible pacmen roaming the earth, devouring everything. It's evolution. It's being an animal. Genetics. A biological curse.

Pretend you're cruelty free by being a vegetarian -- that won't help. Be careful not to step on ants -- so what? You can tear out all the teeth from all your mouths, and it won't do you any good. If you can see or smell or taste, you're eating the world.

When you move through space, you eat the air, the light. The sound of your steps eats the silence. Your eyes eat colour. You are a violent, stupid animal, with a cherry of consciousness on top. Just enough self-awareness to be horrified at your own existence. Just enough understanding to know what you are, unable to do anything about it.

The best we can hope for is enough sanity to eat smaller portions. No more cruelty than necessary. Swallow it down. Hold it in the belly. Keep it there, still, your stomach clenched like a fist. Call that momentarily held meal "my soul". See if that helps. I doubt it will.

If you have teeth, you need to chew. If you don't have teeth, you can still swallow. You could always swallow. From birth, onwards. You could always conquer the world, by swallowing it.

And then, eventually, the world swallows you.