giving a crap

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-Arthur C. Clarke

That’s the quote that was running through my head as I flushed. This porcelain portal that whisks away the poop. I can’t think of a single gadget that mankind has come up with that smacks of sorcery more than the toilet. Touching a single lever removes our foulest secretions and hurls them to some unseen facility miles away from our five senses.

Whenever I hear a door creak as its opened I think that the sound is its way of protesting. Same when I push down the plunger on the toilet. Like I’m forcing it to accept another load of my feces, the swirling water just a way for the toilet to brace itself until its ready to swallow. To further anthropomorphize it the following suddenly pops into my mind;

I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.

The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning.

I keep on swallowing.

-C.S. Lewis

And don’t pretend you know where the crap is going or how it gets there. I can throw out the usual terms like sewage drains and treatment facilities but the truth is I have no idea what my poop is in store for and neither do you. The only difference between us is this lack of wisdom bothers me and no amount of research seems to help. I simply don’t believe the explanations. It all seems so dubious. If you look at a large apartment building you are looking at hundreds upon hundreds of toilets, each used numerous times a day. How many pounds of waste are we talking about? Then imagine that large apartment building being one of hundreds in a large city and the mind boggles. Tons and tons of smelly crap going where? We’re not talking some rustic compost set-up where bacteria and insects can slowly absorb it into the surrounding ecosystems and people are dumb enough to buy the road stand tomatoes that were raised entirely on some yokels excrement, I’m talking about an endless flow of crap that would choke the life out of any futuristic septic system that either Arthur or C.S. could imagine.

If we are to believe the EPA, simple charts fully explain how through a series of filters our avalanche of crap is somehow cheerfully fed back into our idyllic streams and rivers as clean water. I don’t want to seem cynical but there’s no way that a few blasts of chlorine could handle what I churn out after Taco Night at the Lion’s Club. It all seems too perfect to be believed.

And I can find nobody to accompany me to one of these so-called ‘treatment plants’ to see for myself nor will any literary magazine return my calls regarding my availability to do an in-depth piece on the topic.

As soon as you sit down to write about something you are pressing

your nose deeper into the sewer of facts.

-Theo Van Gogh

They want to turn a blind nose to the subject just because I’m the person asking for their money? Whom better to write about crap than someone whose writing is universally acknowledged as being crappy?

So now instead of spending my time on the commode reading other people’s crappy writing as I once did, I am now consumed with the fact that my exposed anus is sitting over an aquatic gateway to the who-knows-what. Will it come to pass that even as I enjoy a meal I will be considering my intestines a conspirator into turning a lovely meal of meat and vegetables into another smelly brown passenger to who-knows-where?

As much deeper you go as much more shit you find down there.

But what happens with you?

―Deyth Banger