The Red Hand stops flashing as a few take a chance and run across the street. The members of the Rush Hour Gang are everywhere. Some are behind their steering wheels, talking on their phones separated by glass and metal from the sounds and smells of the frantic hour. Others are waiting on the corners, waiting for the Red Hand to turn to the White Walking Person. The members of the Rush Hour Gang obey the rules by habit, automatic mindless reactions along the interconnecting floor of the city.

The multi-story commercial buildings adjoining apartment blocks that touch warehouses create a maze, surrounding the ordered human chaos. The mighty tall walls of this maze stretch up to the sky and cast great shadows on the gang members below. These walls create outside rooms, large narrow rooms with windows looking into smaller rooms where others exist in spaces that are not touched by the Rush Hour Gangs. In an obtuse way, a city is like a large Chinese box with smaller boxes that hold smaller boxes, realities within realities – all coexisting in time.

Behind one of these windows is Rebecca. Rebecca is a computer programmer for an elitist corporation. She has talent and because of this she has always suffered.

Rebecca loses herself in thousands of lines of code. It is in this virtual space that she can find a modicum of peace. She chose her profession wisely for socializing comes in bytes – her language is syntax and environment is integrated. She talks to her computer and to her it talks back in a non-human, unemotional way. It is simple.

After her hours of coding, when her brain needs a rest, she breaks away and becomes more human. Rebecca kept a diary of thoughts that helped with maintaining a balance in her life. Her writings would wax and wane with the moon. Her writings were never consistent but would come back to her during times of trouble.

Today Rebecca’s fingers fly and a sort of Zen takes over when her flow of consciousness spills onto the keyboard. Today was a day of resolution.

Rebecca writes...

The dilemma continues. The life experiences draw energy out of me as the clock ticks away the moments of life like a facet with a leak. My mind rebels through its instinctual search for freedom, for the freedom that comes through creative expression. In thirty-nine years, I have learned to manage the beast that is contained within my cranium. The pulsating beast that is never satisfied, that feeds upon the emotional state of its host.

The goblins of the mind haunt my being with the continual onslaught of ideas – idea after idea that do not simply exist in the ether of the mind, but rather demand attention and further development. The life experiences of being a wife, a mother, having a career, simply being a human animal – all draw energy out of me as the clock continues to tick. When I lose the focus of the task at hand, I am overwhelmed with the anxiety of mediocrity.

I thought with age and accomplishment, peace would come. My accomplishments drive me even further. I thought with success one could rest. There is no rest in life.

It is 5:00 pm I still have another two hours of work. I crank in the hours in order to complete the 10-hour workday and free myself for the three days of freedom. I am driven to endure so the three-day weekend can be spent upstate in the mountains. It helps to escape the concrete jungle and find solitude in the forests of New England. I love the contrast of my week; I love the contradiction in my life.

I was challenged with the hunt of a new career opportunity and the increased money. I have developed a taste for the salty beads of sweat that form on my upper lip through the stress of challenge. The tasks demand focus and this quiets the beast until the focus is lost. Though the breast is quieted for the focused hours, it only rests, drawing strength from its quietude. As I turn off my system and rub my bleary eyes, the breast springs upon me causing a rush of cognitive sensation – ideas and more ideas that have gone without realization for yet another day.

Today I will surrender to the beast. Let it have its expression. Let it’s energy flow through my finger tips and across the keys as the caret, the blinking vertical bar, moves from left to right.

It is all a matter of habit. Today I start this document with the sole purpose to open it daily and purge myself of my inner torment. I do not have a planned outline for my words. I do not know what will flow from day to day. What I do know is I will face my internal beast and suck its energy thereby rejuvenating my soul.

I continually push myself into physical and mental realms that stress my consciousness…

I continually lose the mental thread that sows continuity into my life…

I want to express the moments of existence…

I want to understand…

The membrane that covers my eyes is drawn taut.
I am walking and talking in-between wakefulness and deep slumber

Rebecca can just go so far on the page as her flow of consciousness starts to peter out. Before going back to code, she opens her browser to search on the phrase “internal beast”, just out of curiosity. To Rebecca’s surprise she falls upon a link to a site, in fact something called a hub.

Rebecca reads and clicks and reads some more within this space of hubs, page after page. Out of her silent space of bytes – she begins to realize that she is not alone. There is a community out there that understands.

Her beast can rest as it finds its freedom.