The original sin of our existence. That we were at all.
We should never have been: that’s our Original Sin. We should never have been born! But we were born! We’re here … Here – where we should not be. On the face of the earth! We’re here – sinning at every moment. Spoiling every moment!
And sin’s worse when there’s no God. When there’s no one to absolve your sin. When there’s no way to be forgiven.
Our original sin. Our original fault. A debt we can’t settle. That we carry with us, every day.
Isn’t the solution just to kill ourselves at once? But how can we erase who we will have been?
How to erase our birth certificates – to tear them up? How to expunge ourselves from every record? How to disappear ourselves from every photograph? From every online archive? How to memory-hole ourselves so thoroughly that even our friends can’t recall us? That our own parents will forget our names?
Impossible, impossible! Our slug’s trail, through the world. The trail of our existence, through the past, into the present.
How, then, to solve the problem? To solve our problem – the problem that we are? How to undo everything that we’ve done? The terrible mess that we’ve made?
And what about the mess we’d leave, if we did away with ourselves? Who would have to clear up our bodies? Who would need to tidy up our affairs?
Throw ourselves on the Tyne, and we’d wash up somewhere. Throw ourselves in the North Sea, and we’d end up rotting on this beach or that. Hurl ourselves from Claremont tower, and someone would have to find our battered bodies. Gas ourselves in our own flats, and someone would have to cart us off for cremation. Electrocute ourselves – same problem. There’d have to be an autopsy.
Always something left over. Always something. Our lifeless bodies. Our suicided bodies. If only there was a way just to be vaporised. Just to be blasted out of existence. Isn’t that possible? To be exploded. Every molecule dispersed. Every atom. An entire – eradication. A complete – wipeout.
Better to rewind the whole universe to the time before we were born. Before we had a chance to make trouble. Before our parodic existence, before our parody. Before our mockery. Before our absurdity – the absurdity of our existence.
Better to destroy the universe as such, because of the chance that beings like us could appear. Better to wipe out everything that exists, because things can go so terribly wrong. Which means our original sin is also the original sin of existence as such and in general. The original sin that there is anything at all …
Work in Progress 