Some famous dude once said “If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you if you do it long enough” or something like that, and it left me wondering for a while. It left me thinking about things, and I came to a realisation, and then did billions upon trillions of hours of research to ensure that what I am about to say is irrefutable unless the right amount of research to help further and challenge and shape it comes forward, which it won’t because I was that thorough.

So a while ago I wrote about chickens and the power they have known as a Chicken Bawkade. I also wrote about how their beak P.S.I is comparable to the bite P.S.I of great white sharks, and hope they will be the dominant species in the future, and so, alas, I find myself writing about chickens once more. I find myself drawn to them, for they seem to be the answer to many questions out there, and once more they are the answer here.

You see, when that person who said the thing said the thing, some people think it has something to do with becoming introspect; with looking inward and seeing what lies there, and perhaps unearthing it and accepting it, and moving on to become a better person. However, it turns out that they weren’t. You see, they were going for a walk and came across an abyss, as it turns out, and as it further turns out, when there, they heard a click and saw eyes. Many, many eyes. But this person only saw the eyes after hearing the cluck, and they only heard the cluck after staring into this abyss for a while. Not sure why they decided to do so – maybe they went through a bad breakup, I don’t know – but they were there, and they stared, and they heard and eventually things saw that person. They stared back. The “abyss” stared back.

It is believed that there was a feather and the flapping of some wings, and the sounds of shuffling too, but that is unclear.

So anyway, I’ve looked into this, and perhaps the cluck was a giveaway, but the shape and positioning of the eyes also suggest chicken. So I looked further into chickens and chicken society and all those things, and as it turns out, chickens have the right kind of body shape, bone density and squishiness among some and the right kind of firmness among others to be able to neatly slot in and against each other in large formations to help stay warm, and fit into the right kind of profound physical space. Naturally, when this happens, rather than illuminating it (especially when it’s a space that goes below ground) it darkens, for all light becomes absorbed and denied by the great mass of chicken. As such, where the chickens rest becomes abyssal in appearance, and perhaps ominous.

You get a hint of danger and mystery, and an apprehension about the unknowable, but it’s all just a bunch of chickens congregating to stay warm and stay safe, or perhaps find a way to look into our perceptions of self and make us question what it is that we know of ourselves; to see if we really are able to conquer that which is what we don’t know of ourselves unless we look, or to see if there is anything conquerable at all. However, chickens also like to be left alone, and so if we stare long enough into the abyss, the chickens will find some sort of irritation and discomfort and start staring back.

There is no grand silence, but there is a moment of quiet that seems to run an eternity when we look within, and the chickens are there, looking too. They are looking to see what is true, and they make us think about what we must tear down and what we must accept to become a more honest version of ourselves. To be come a better version of ourselves, but we don’t realise and instead we just believe ourselves to be looking inward without the assistance. We think we look into our own abyss, but it’s there and its external to us, and we look at it without even realising that our fine, feathery friends are looking back, providing guidance, and eventually wanting us to go away.

Of course you need to make sure you don’t stare too long, because if we don’t leave these roosting aves alone by the point where they’re wanting us to leave, they might resort to increasingly direct measures. They might start bawking or flapping their wings and shuffling about en masse, and if it really gets too far, to the point where the person staring into the abyss won’t leave, then they might just move on up and engulf the person into them, thus bringing them into the abyss. For they did not go to it by that point internally, and so the external chicken abyss goes to them, consumes them, makes their world one of darkness and eternity in all directions, and thus they are forced to face that which they had chosen to stare from at a distance.

If you’re going to stare at the abyss, you need to deal with the one internal to yourself. You are now being forced to deal with the internal turmoil symbolically represented by the external chicken, and you need to find your way out of them, but you can’t until you accept that you need to leave and deal with your life.

And so, as you now know, chicken isn’t just the abyss, but it also is the abyss. Until we know to start looking inward without an external indicator of looking inward, we are just staring into a pit that is full of chicken, looking to rest and keep warm, yet providing guidance to our need to realise ourselves and work toward becoming better versions of ourselves.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 16:43:41

Decent speed.

I’m pretty sure I had the beginning of this idea back in 2018, when I wrote down “Chicken is the Abyss”, and then procrastinated. Would remember here and there but never got moving on it, until now. Silly and fun writing.

Written at work.