My Severed Self


(or The Reintegration of an Innie & Outie to Find The We We Are)

One of the beauties of Severance, like all notable television, is that it works on multiple levels.

You have the Apple show’s conceit: In a not-too-distant future, we will be able to manipulate, separate and even erase unpleasant memories. Severance imagines an America where the work self has no contact with or knowledge of the home self. It ponders what Americans — and corporate America — would do with that chasm. Think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets The Office, as filmed by Stanley Kubrick.

But the show works on just about any parallel it’s mapped onto: workplace politics; sexual politics; politics politics. Consider some of the subtler messaging:

  • Red and Blue political leanings. Note the use of reds in the workplace, which is a corporate wet dream of labor exploitation and capitalism unbridled. Blues dominate the outside world, where men are neutered, women are masculinized and dominant — and both have become comatose in Wokeness.
  • Unionizing. The workplace ”innies”, who know nothing of colleagues beyond their cubicles, team to contact their “outies”, who presumably live a freer and better life. Apple+ must have quietly uncorked the champagne when Amazon lost its union battle with the heroic unionizer Chris Smalls earlier this month.
  • Women’s and civil rights. It’s no mistake than the Eagan family, founders of the shadowy Luman Corporation, has had only one female head of the Board. And Lumen minorities are limited to mid-level management and carnival prizes for busywork.
  • COVID. Department heads know nothing of the other departments: who leads them, what they do, how many there are, nothing. It’s as if they’ve been quarantined.

But its most intriguing dynamic goes deeper still: the politics of consciousness. Could you work a well-paying job if it were literally mindless? Would you literally mind eight hours of amnesia? I think I know a few people who would leap at the chance like a bullfrog on a roasting toadstool.

It all makes for arresting television and self-application. If your innie self and outie self met after years apart through “reintegration” (as the show puts it), what would you tell your work self about life outside the workday? What does your outie know that your innie should?

I never thought about the question until my forced reintegration in 2015, when my paper gave me the axe. Since then — after losing my job as a writer — did I learn that I was actually a writer. I guess sometimes you have to do something for free to know it’s what you love doing.

Which would be one of the first things I’d tell my innie. Here are some others:

We see a projected world, not a reflected one.

Save for intent, faith and science are two sides of one coin.

We don’t deserve this planet, and she knows it.
Human consciousness was an error, and the planet will correct it shortly.
The pandemic taught us what we can live without.
Boredom is underrated. You know who never gets bored? The hungry.
Time machines exist. They’re called memory and hope.
When enraged, count to 10 before you speak: Anger melts in time like butter on a skillet. Technology is a wonderbra: It lifts and separates us.
WE are The Great Filter.
We all gotta shoulder something.

Open Letter to a Puppy, Chapter XI: Sit, Uber, sit.


I have it on good source that, pretty soon, you may be able to call an Uber for Fido.

That source is my multiverse self. Which apparently lives somewhere in London.

I discovered this Brit doppelgänger more than a year ago. His name is also S. Bowles. But Sam. He must have thought putting a period after the ”s” but before the ”b” gave him a unique gmail address, or even a working one.

It does not, Sam. It comes to me.

Don’t feel bad; I hear at least once a week from companies with urgent sbowles notices for Seth or Stephanie or Sarah. I had one ”Sami,” though that may have been a typo. And Steven Bowles, you asshole, at least use an original pseudonym on your conservative slackwit sites.

But Sam, you sound legit. And I get a frightening amount of personal information in mis-sent emails. Like your penchant for McDonald’s late at night. Or that time you moved. I feel a little creepy looking. But it’s tough not to read an email with a receipt not only attached, but printed in the body of the text. Just sayin,’ it pays to copy edit. Where was I?

Taxis for terriers! That picture above arrived in my email last week, and I nearly had a carpet wee wee. This would be a godsend to stranded pet owners — and pets. And I know a half-dozen people who would leap, LEAP! at the chance to be a canine cabbie. My heart sank a little when I discovered it’s an England-only kennel club.

But that may mean it’s headed here. We love our grandparents’ stuff: the war medals, the shouty politics, Monty Python. And your love of pups. Bless your filthy Western European hearts, you’ll let Sir Barksdale lick his balls and off your warm cafe plate, in that order.

But share a ride with fur and slobber? I think I have that comfort spread covered.

So too, would America, I suspect. Our numbers are too large to ignore — particularly as domestic pets crutch us through a still-bubbling pandemic.

And as Uber has proven: If there’s profit in it, there’s motivation for it.

So bring on the dandered cavalry. Sam, I hope you have a pup — and a valid email. And Chuck & Jadie, tell you what: If and when it gets here, not only is the first ride on me, you can have both window seats.