Gravity sans Gravitas
the unbearable heaviness of being (but)
TL; DR: being on your back becomes ubiquitous
He was tired of always falling at 32 feet per second. Everyone was, but even more so when gravity, due to anomalous cosmic circumstances, became five times that.
No one knew exactly how it happened, but in a very sort period of time, things got heavy on planet Earth. Things weren’t looking up.
Everyday activities, like walking, got very difficult. Stairs became impossibly hard.
You couldn’t even lift weights while crossing the street anymore, it was just too tough.
To compensate, people started rolling* to work and school (sidewalks got carpeted.) Being on your back became ubiquitous. A lot of people lost their livelihoods because of “The Heavy”. (Trapeze artists were the first to go, of course, but stilt-makers weren’t far behind. And so on). A lot of hobbies and games disappeared too. Things like supine ping-pong were attempted, but only for a little while. Even gardening became difficult; you had to rake by literally putting your back into it.
The stock market got dragged down too. But if you owned shares in conveyor-belt companies, sidewalk-shag rug manufacturing, or other horizontal-enabling businesses, you were “flying high” (a saying that was quickly de-worded.) Still, everyone fantasized of flying, soaring, or floating…
Mothers in REM dreamt their daughters doing airborne arabesques.
And soon, there were songs, books and movies about floating. “Titanic II: Reloaded” — it floats back up and everybody is safe, Rose and Jack marry and hold their wedding reception in a dirigible — surpassed the original at the box office (after movie theatres put screens on the ceilings). There were other savvy innovations, such as reclining Teslas (Elon also went hard into developing a rocket ship to the inner earth, where low gravity would be accessible to all), and clever inventions, like easy-chairs with wheels (upsold with an anthropomorphic-banana accessory).
Life went on. Even in The Heavy, people romanced, got married, had babies. And the babies, well, they loved it, all that lying around, looking up at things. Babies, people, and things, all looking up.
NOTES:
-*in some northern countries they luged to work and school
-Laurie Anderson said it better: With each step, you fall forward slightly/And then catch yourself from falling/…And this is how you can be walking and falling/At the same time
- “anomalous cosmic circumstances” is a phrase from the official DGB Dictionary, published by the Disinformation Governance Board University Free Press**.
-**This is called a threefer (defined in the OED as, well, it’s not even in that dictionary, but basically a twofer plus one), as the asterisked above is misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, all rolled up in one***.
-***With some uninformation sauce on the side.
-as always, all the images, are from “The Window” by K.I.A. photo-installation project; 24/7/365/1 location, unstated. More about: nu4ya.com .
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