Self-Consciousness

I flex my hands eagerly in the gloom. A crying baby boy falls rapidly through chaos into my itching palms. I raise my hands into the faint light and his innocent gaze meets mine with amazed horror. What is this before you baby boy? What is it that grasps you so eagerly with hand and eye? I am the eyes and hands of the world. You are now my prisoner. Forever.

I drop down into the endless embrace of fertile nothingness. I plant the baby in the hungry soil. The rippling earth flows over his budding consciousness and germinates his mind. The blank horizon lights up before him like an exploding rainbow. I people the world with many colours, beautiful, normal and ugly. They all blow together in the breeze. The wind tells them where to go and what to think. What will they think of you wide eyed little baby?
My hands play with the contours of his body. He notices the looks of others for the first time. He struggles to read the expressions that form on their faces. They look like him. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. He recognises himself as a part of the world. He giggles with joy at his newfound sense of belonging. Suddenly his gaze is drawn upwards, as I form a large pair of hands. I gently tickle his laughing features and smooth his flushed face. I shape him slowly but persistently. The vagaries of infantile youth slowly melt away into the harsher tones of singularity. I see with a thousand eyes the mould of an crude boy. I reach out with my shaping hands and press into the soft clay.

Reality’s tears wet the clay that runs into the ugly form of a boy. He stumbles into the Earth with a blind hope. Wide eyed wonderment envelops him. The cold world hurts his eyes with bright, hard edges. A million sculptors assess his form. They move swiftly to reinforce the natural ugly contours. The many hands do not stop grabbing, pawing, shaping, scraping, punching, slapping. He is a rough clay that is moulded by the tireless hands of the world. He is formed by the ceaseless staring eyes of the world. He is defined by the endless laughter of the world. He is hardened by fear of the world.