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Tonight, I am filled with disgust.
It makes me grit my teeth and clench my jaw,
my toes curl and my fingernails dig into the soft flesh of my palms,
as I look out upon the vastness of "civilisation"
through my cloudy, paraffin-sealed, graffiti-covered pane of glass
next to my well-worn, stained, gray bus seat.
Why the fuck are we doing this?
We have created a rat race for ourselves, that we mockingly call life,
but unlike the rats, there is no prize waiting for us at the end.
Look out your window.
What do you see?
Light pollution obscuring your view of the stars.
Smoggy haze misting throughout the city, leftover from the daily oil uptake and exhaust production of our common lives.
Electrical wires crisscrossing overhead, obscuring the remaining glimpse of sky through the murk.
Since when did glimpsing a tree through the multi-story, steel, and glass, and painted buildings become a novelty?
And the smell!
Hardening cement, week old oil in the deep fryer, a pool of leftover diesel discarded and forgotten on the ground.
Cars zoom along next to you at 80 kilometers per hour, with no thought or concern about anyone as they pass, absorbed in their own little worlds.
There is no natural inquisitiveness as to the well-being of fellow humans.
Or if there is, it is well concealed, smothered by the facade that dictates nonchalance.
Neon signs flash in your face, and rubbish gusts gently across the path in front of you.
But do not worry about it. At no point should any of us despair to ever regain a semblance of the humanity we once boasted.
This is not life.
This is habituation with standards set by those who are even more farther in than we are.
This is faithlessly conforming to the expectations of others and the revolvement of our society around a predescribed set of rules. Around money. Around "progress".
Rush, rush, rush.
Get to your job on time.
Finish your homework.
Go to class.
Cook your middle class family dinner every night.
And do not forget to pay your rent.
Complete every task everyone expects of you, having performed them for so long you have forgotten the reasons why. Having lost sight of anything else. Of everything else.
Walk the well trodden path,
along the black asphalt road,
and over that glass bottle and plastic sack laying discarded on the grass.
Allow yourself to be inundated with the flashing lights and flapping signs, the flow of the world around you.
After all, we designed this.
Is this not what we wanted?
