Right now, I need something to knock me back down. A Walmart parking lot is just the thing.

We’re sleeping in a Walmart parking lot this evening. Final answer. Said and done. It’ll make the next motel feel even more worth it, even more stunningly amazing.

• • •

Today is more chicken immersion, but the academic kind. That thing I was saying last night about how we have the power to change the structure of our brain, owing to the fact that different uses of the brain bring different chemicals…. I’m sure you remember. I’m pretty sure, because it’s the only thing that’s really happened. That, and everything else. More specifically, going for a hike at Tugaloo State Park. Just a little one. Doing some investigative work. It never hurt anybody. Except for journalists who have been killed in war or something. Whatever.

After the hike was a trip to the library, where I looked up the word “chicken” on the computer.

I’m dripping with sweat right now. And I’m getting a little tachycardic.

I’m probably dehydrated today. Yesterday, I was nothing of the sort. Not even close. And it was all thanks to the coconut water I bought, which is naturally hydrating, so it says on the container.

But now, after learning about chickens at the library, and about the acronizing thing, where they would dunk the chickens into a pool of antibiotics after they’d been slaughtered....

I’m going to cut myself off right there.

• • •

Sorry.... Is that not fucking insane? And that was the third truck I’ve seen like that in a few hours. So that’s at least three thousand chickens that I’ve witnessed pass me by on the highway as I sit here in my car in the back of a Walmart parking lot.

It’s pretty damn loud out there. There was what sounds like a truck—or maybe it’s just that it was a man, and I’m assuming it’s a truck, because I’m so confident that it was a man behind the wheel, because HE was blasting music while stopped at a stoplight, and HE would probably drive a truck, and.... I’m parked right next to a stoplight, behind some bushes and a couple trees, and it is in this moment that I find my transcendence of the day. This is the moment that makes me realize why it was all worth it, why I did this at all.

I’m learning the rules of the road in real time. I taught myself some of them earlier this year, but this is the real deal. That was all practice. Now this is the main fucking event. I’m out here, sleeping in my car in a Walmart parking lot in Georgia, and maybe I should have pepper spray, but shit, I wouldn’t wanna hurt someone. That would just make things worse for me, woluldn’t it? Or would it give me enough time to get behind the wheel and turn the car on and escape? I’m sure the latter is true, but… I don’t know. I would rather rely on my wits to get me out of any unlikely trouble that comes my way. Because let’s face it: I wouldn’t have parked in this lot if I hadn’t done my research to make sure it’s safe. And I get that we’re never safe, and we can never know when death is coming for us, but I do feel like I might have……… errr……. This next thing is a joke, universe. Please, take it as a joke, and prepare yourself to maybe have your temper flare up at me at what I’m about to say, and I’m not saying this truthfully, not trying to open up any doors for you to try to teach me a lesson when I say this, but I feel like I have plot armor. Like… I could never die, not in this moment. Errr……. This moment….. But isn’t this moment eternal? The same moment? So, then…. I will die in this moment…… but like…. in terms of time, I won’t die on this, er…… yeah. I think I’ll just let the joke stand. I think you’ve heard enough. I’ll let it go.

employee Isn’t it funny how I have my B▒▒▒▒ employee sticker still on my window, and how it has abslolutely no meaning in a place like this? It’s a perfectly acceptable form of currency at B▒▒▒▒ (if they even care or check there…), but here in the Walmart parking lot outside of Athens, Georgia, it has no meaning. Like, none. The hypothetical intruder who approaches my car is not going to check the sticker and say, “Oh, this person is or was once an employee at a place called B▒▒▒▒ Medical Center, which means they’re a healthcare hero, so I should probably go carjack the next car.” The sticker registers as meaningless even to me as I look at it now, with all of my memories of B▒▒▒▒. It’s nothing to no one. Not here, at least.

That reminds me: I should lock my car.

• • •

I looked up from my phone and saw another truckload of chickens passing me by. Is this just routine? Did I really just see over four thousand chickens, and maybe even more than that, depending on how many trucks I didn’t see, and how much of an undersestimation my math is? Because I am pretty sure that if anything, it’s an underestimation.

It’s insane to me. One Health….. One Health. It’s nondualism, but applied to the world around us and accepted by the greater scientific community. We are so close to becoming an enlightened society, but the people in charge don’t abide by One Health, and frankly have probably never heard of it. If they were to hear of it, I can imagine their disdain, their scoffs. You really think Trump gives a fuck about ecosystems and animal life? I doubt it. What’s his take on animals, anyway? Does he even talk about animals? Do we know if he has a take? Or is he just… strictly human affairs?

nondual I think America is so anthropocentric that of course the president wouldn’t have a take on animals. What are you talking about? He doesn’t give a fuck. There’s no statement that he’s made about animals, I don’t think. Unless I’m wrong, and he really does like animals… but no, the closest I can imagine him getting is appreciating livestock. And that just being a way to get farmers to like him.

47 I feel like we are really on the cusp of the end times. Our polite society, with its rules and regulations, is hanging by a thread.

I’m here in a Walmart parking lot at the end of the world. It’s good to be suspended in air, among the trees and what I think are cicadas, and the lights of the, uhhh, whatever that place is across the street—looks like a gas station—and the little car with tinted windows (or is it just that it’s dark out?), and the Walmart behind me, and the chickens passing by every now and then in front of me.

I was starting to give up hope earlier. I think it was the streak of living in civilization that might’ve done it.

• • •

It’s not funny anymore. And it’s not interesting on a math level anymore. It’s fucking horrifying. Those chickens in there are unmoving, except for when they’re moving. They have this whole life, this one, big, wild, wondrous life that has been bestowed upon them by people who want them dead. But they are alive. I really do feel that everyone involved in this process, including me, the consumer, will be held liable at some time or another. I think we all are complicit in this chicken shit.

It’s horrifying, bro. That was the fifth truck I’ve seen since parking here.

Perfect conversation starter is “What do you think about those trucks that carry a thousand chickens at a time? Or more? The ones in little cubbies smushed into place, and there’s no room for them to move or do anything, and there’s no time for them to experience life after that event, and no trauma haunting them for the rest of their lives, because I think they’re just going to be butchered pretty shortly after they get to where they’re going?”

Am I bluffing to myself through my bleeding liberal heart, or are those chickens going straight to slaughterhouses?

Nope, they’re going straight to slaughterhouses.

spinning What did they do to deserve that kind of life? I’m genuinely asking. Because if karma is real, then they must have done something horrible in a past life or over many past lives. Maybe horrible is the wrong word. Maybe they had this rebirth thrust upon them. Maybe this is a wheel. This is a wheel that is spinning through muck right now. And all these chickens just keep getting reborn as chickens—as broilers, specifically.

That’s the more interesting story. That’s the real story. The chicken rebirth of it all.

This is what immersion feels like. Right down to the feeling of melting into my duvet cover, and the little bar on the middle of the car cutting into my ass and probably leaving a dent in my skeleton somehow.

This is not a dry heat. This is a wet heat. This is a wet ass heat. A WAH.

I’m traveling across the United States on a budget talking to boys on Grindr about chickens. The opportunity for a cock joke is right there. I had to put my phone on do not disturb, because someone named “daddy” sent me a dick pic and a message saying “chickens are also called cocks. and i have one.”

Right now, even typing is expending too much energy. It’s making me sweaty. Or mabye it’s not. Maybe I just need an excuse to stop talking to you. Well, I’m still going to use it. We’re done here, for now.

This is the last thing I will write on June Twenty-Second: chicken butt.

sentience Sorry. Not cool, in light of the over five thousand chickens, living beings, fucking sentient creatures with consciousnesses and lives and families and evolution-honed instincts and thoughts……………

I need to end with a moment of silence and reverence and sadness for the loss of life, the actual waste of life that humans are forcing on other lifeforms. It’s terrifying. It’s sad. It’s terrifyingly sad. Terrible, too. A lot of adjectives, but none of them can touch the actual suffering. None of them will ever explain it. We will never know, presumably, how it feels to be one of those chickens packed like a chicken into those cubes.

I wonder if any of them are sick or will die of heat. I think they might. If I were packed in with dozens of my fellow species in a little cube, I would probably be one of the ones to die. Not to mention all the piss and shit going on in there, presumably. And who knows what else.

it's our fault My god. The lived reality of the world is actually far more gruesome than I ever could’ve anticipated.