Dialog, or rather two monologs, by a wall and some occupants.
Wall: I contain my occupants in an all-embracing way, putting ground under their feet, and giving a surface for their live’s events to occur on. They exist in interstices, but they chafe and make the surfaces raw. I was altruistic, but my energy and resources are running low. Some of the occupants are consuming too much, exceeding their space allocation and running into difficulties. They can be perverse. They do not like to talk about shit, actual waste; it is a taboo from a young age. Perhaps the damage starts right there.
Occupants: We exist in abundant space, we can stretch out, and look toward the horizon. We can move wherever we want along the surface, sometimes digging in a little. We make a mess as we go, though. Those who come after don’t always like this, and we tend to eliminate other animals in the way. Cockroaches do well, and some bacteria too, but prions are a new problem.
Wall: They think I am inanimate.
Occupants: It was a lovely place at first, but we cannot see around ourselves, we are too many. We must make holes in the surface so we can expand, living on the boundaries of the holes we make.
Wall: I am developing a stomach ache. I am not sure where my stomach is, being a wall. It is somewhere in the center, and goes along the whole surface. The occupants have stomachs, so I assume I do too. The occupants are like tapeworms anchored to my insides and sucking all the goodness out.
Occupants: We want more space. We want more insurance against uncertainty, more food, more privacy. More walls.
Wall: I have no more wall to give, my expanse is only so much! I notice my occupants are making me thinner so as to extrude my form. I don’t like being thinned. They also cut holes to move bits of me about and make divisions. I begin to dislike them. They are putting up defenses that have no material substance; they watch small screens and talk to each other as if from behind walls, they think about how different people are but do not actually meet them. They are enmeshed in metaphorical walls.
Occupants: We realize that if we were less private, less territorial and concerned with our security, we could see into everyone else’s lives. We could eat their food, and nobody would mind. If we wore no clothes, clothing being a wall of sorts, and had less concern for moral niceties, things would be easier. Of course, do as you would be done by needs to apply, but we should mind less about what is done. If we learned to love an existence in which each person takes up minimal space, has no possessions, preferences, personal boundaries, has no voice, eats insufficient food, and lives a virtual existence, we might be safe. We might have room for our bodies, and our minds would have no separation at all. We might not mind our physical condition.
Wall: The occupants have made me as thin as possible. So thin, I am see through. I do not function well and cannot give them a space. I am in pain. If I don’t kill them, they will destroy me. I am not inanimate, and they take me for granted. They will lose their shelter eventually when my walls break, and chaos is loosed. The occupants will die, but I can start over. I might like that.
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