If you’ve ever spent time performing a menial task you’ll know that after
about nine hours you’ll forget you ever had a life outside of it. Your entire
existence before you began, along with any possibility of a future beyond it,
seems somewhat fictional. I used to work in a box factory; I shit you not.
Every three minutes and 14 seconds I had to move a stack of six unmade boxes
from one machine to another. After the first two piles of boxes my physical
being took over the task and my mind was left to wander freely about the
universe. Last week I had to drive to my dead aunt’s funeral; she lived, and
died, about 1500 kilometres away. After the first 40 minutes of travelling I
completely forgot about the reality of the world; I drifted into the familiar
trance-like state. When I arrived at the small town where my aunt was to be buried,
my dad asked me where I’d had to change the tyre. I turned to look at my car;
the driver’s side front wheel was clearly not the original; it was the yellow
capped emergency from the boot. I tried to think back to the most significant
event of the journey but I couldn’t recall the tyre change. The only thing I
could remember from the trip was the mobile funeral service my mind had come up
with along the way. The purple and green logo my subconscious state had chosen
for the company simply didn’t work.