On the Edge of Time - Jens Lekman

October 27th, 2018

I’m writing you one last time Annika Norlin

It was nice to see you that morning at the station

I’m sure you were a warrior in a previous incarnation

Me, I must’ve been a rabbit or an ostrich

Or a pile of trembling leaves sown together with cross stitch

My anxiety has been holding me hostage

I’ve developed this problem with a really tough itch

I went to the clinic to get a prescription

Cried a little in front of the physician

Ointments and sedatives and antibiotics

Went home with a bag full of legal narcotics

The best is the sedatives, they work well but softly

I don’t scratch myself in sleep, I pass out like a baby

When I wake up I’m rested, I’m calm and happy

The only bad thing is the strange dreams that haunt me

I’m deep in the woods, in a village with teepees

The branches from old oak trees hang heavy

A woman carrying a baby greets me

Says she’s glad that I came, she’s been trying to reach me

She shows me around, the villagers are happy

They give me some wine and flowers to greet me

Their society’s based on a loose form of anarchy

They’ve dealt with the climate, injustice and patriarchy

Cause this is the future I can tell from their technology

But they use it for good and they use it so sparsely

They are not but slaves under their own machinery

The cogwheels turn only when they think it’s necessary

And the woman grabs my arm and she looks me in the eye

She’s contacted me cause she’s worried bout our time

This future is only one of many lines

That we can potentially walk down you and I

When I wake up I giggle cause it seems kinda cringey

I think about their village, what a bunch of fucking hippies

This must be because I read that book by Marge Piercy

Where some people from the future make contact with Connie

A woman in a mental institution in the seventies

And show her their world that’s one of many possibilities

And instill in her the hope to fight for humanity

I loved that book, but as a document of history

Cause now it seems strange to hope for anything at all

When every step forward seems infinitely small

Save the polar caps from melting by recycling milkbottles

While the CEO’s are flying their pets to skilodges

How vulnerable it is when someone says what they want

Instead of just saying what they don’t want

How easy it is to laugh at someone’s utopia

After decades of being spoonfed dystopia

I rub my cortison ointment on my eczema

I take my sedatives and crawl up to the heater

Keep treating the outside, ignoring the inside

Keep treating the symptoms, not the root of the problems

And in my next dream the woman’s back again

This time she’s shouting cause her signal is fading

I wake up sweating, my skin is itching

I put some ice on it and sit down in the kitchen

And outside the leaves are slowly falling

Over pigeons, buildings, CEO’s and children

I’m gripped by a love for this world that we live in

And I think about a quote from Ursula Le Guin:

«We live in capitalism.

Its power seems inescapable

So did the divine right of kings

Any human power can be resisted

And changed by human beings»

There’s a dying light in the distance that beckons

As the clocks are rapidly running out of seconds

This is where I get off I reckon

Take care of yourself, your friend Jens Lekman