2015-07-01

He sat in a patch of weak winter sun. Lukewarm at best, poking from between clouds. He wanted to feel its warmth, he wanted to have the heaviness inside him thaw. Not today sighed the wind.

Not today.

Because what is life really but some chronology of insanities? One blind leap of faith after another, until one last leap ends in oblivion.

Tiptoeing on the shore. Because what else is there to do? The tail end of your twenties, and already you feel you've lived too much. You've imagined yourself into the lives of almost everyone around you. Found them lacking. Just some people on the internet excite you, some glimpse of what life could be, what it has to offer, what you've already tasted. But now you're in the 9 to 5, by your own choice you've sold your soul. To make another man rich, giving him the best of you, you labour like a prostitute, and what you have left are the crummy evening hours, the darkness when you're drained after a whole day working towards a monthly stipend: pay bills, buy food, acquire single items off the endless mannequin parades in the windows you must walk past in the icy morning air on the way to work. They're trying to sell you stuff before the sun has even risen.

And sometimes this makes you feel like you're enslaved. Because you're not free, not really, not when you stop to think about it. Riddle me this: if you didn't have to, would you go work every day? If there were no bills to pay, would you subject yourself, sell your time? Because inside you know you're a slave. You're working against your will, you're contributing only by coercion. Pawn to the powerful, some stagehand in the colossal machinery of empire. You don't matter. You try to eke out some existence in your free time.

A snigger at this absurd expression: 'free time.' Because mostly your time is not free. Ain't that the truth.

Electric lights. A tiny patch of 3pm sun hits your cubicle. You get a "save the date" email from an old friend, an American. He's getting married and he wants you to come. Next year. Something to work towards, I guess. Because what else is there to do? Electric lights.

Your buddy wants you to give him time to work on these little business ideas. But neither of you have any idea what you're doing. Your education hasn't prepared you for the desert of the real.

Bills and the bank. That payment service you signed up for has just charged you an annual fee equivalent to all your earnings. You have $3 left. Fuck that.

You need to buy a car. You need to get health insurance. You need to get designer jeans. You need to buy a house, or at least rent a place of your own. You need to do as you're told.

A snigger, a snarl: you don't need any of this.
You don't need any of this.