20 :
We were born ordinary people. Ordinary lives, not especially rich or poor, not ugly, not beautiful, not exceptional, just plain and simple plain and simple. We learnt how to stretch the merest fractions of cash into a meaningful, if meagre, existence. We learnt how to subsist on the Value food ranges that were as tasteless as our homemade haircuts. Our evenings – knowing that the pretty ones we desired were well out of our reach – became exercises in depravity. Not being depraved, but in deprivation. In the absence of things.
The pretty ones were taken, swayed by those with money, charm, and guile, spirited away from us. Knowing we could never achieve the art of beauty, we began to find the ugliest women we could, and win her affections. They had something I could never have, and they used it to get someone I could never have.
Ugly women never ran from us – some were snotty – some knew our game – some were flattered – but all knew that in an age built purely on surface and appearance, that those without Mother Nature’s soft influence weren’t even a pretty face. They had to make up for this in other ways – having a personality, an open mind, or something else that distinguished them. A pretty face can get away with being vaccous, stupid, a trophy. Those who do not have the benefits of selective breeding have to find an alternate talent – something more. We had to rely on our wits and gile to get by.
The day after the evening before, where we all chase the least attractive lady there is, we meet up, discuss our success at being failures, and start all over again. A gang splintered by age, by time, by children, by work. We meet in our twos and threes, quietly, to post-mortem. To discuss. Embarassing text messages are often enough to prove (or not) your relative success at the task. Sometimes you even get sent a text message, although it arrived on someone else’s phone.
Maybe he didn’t like her very much anyway. Maybe when they were making love, in the early hours, he knew that this, this wasn’t love, but something near enough to do for now. Maybe nobody was fooling anyone.
Sometimes, we find that purely by chance, we actually like the person inside. We actually want to talk to them again. We actually want to meet them again. After a time, we even think about the future. It’s a long time to be alone, the future. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where we agree to pair off, join the great adventure with us, breed, conform. It’s what we do.
Slowly we become our parents. Slowly we become everything we thought we’d never be. A process of a thousand small steps take us away from what we thought we were, and turned us into everything we hate. You can’t fight it. You can’t even outrun it. Time always wins in the end.
Most of us live for today, not tomorrow. What if there is no tomorrow? What if there is no future? What if the Mothership lands or death comes raining down from the sky?
That’s the way we live our lives these days. Struggling to get by, without a big picture, a long vision to hold. There is no big picture. We’re obscured under the trivia, the shit of everyday life, trying to survive, trying to pay the gas bills, the electricity bill, the water bills, the council tax, the rates, the rent, the phone bill, the television bill, the food bill, the bus pass, the train pass, the credit card, the personal loan, the pension, the car. There’s always one more thing we have to pay for that keeps us perpetually just out of reach of financial security.
And all so I can keep going to work to keep earning money to keep going to work. I don’t know who it was, but the fundamental emptiness of leisure time is the lie that keeps our lives going. The time we aren’t working is the time we’re just empty vessels waiting to be filled by something. Love. Sport. Music. Movies. The Internet. All distractions to keep us sedated.
To keep us from thinking about who runs the world, and why. About who’s running the world, and who’s making the decisions, about why those decisions are being made, and why they’re genetically breeding a better tomato, because Nature And God didn’t do a good enough job.
God in heaven help us, because we are too dumb to help ourselves.
The pretty ones were taken, swayed by those with money, charm, and guile, spirited away from us. Knowing we could never achieve the art of beauty, we began to find the ugliest women we could, and win her affections. They had something I could never have, and they used it to get someone I could never have.
Ugly women never ran from us – some were snotty – some knew our game – some were flattered – but all knew that in an age built purely on surface and appearance, that those without Mother Nature’s soft influence weren’t even a pretty face. They had to make up for this in other ways – having a personality, an open mind, or something else that distinguished them. A pretty face can get away with being vaccous, stupid, a trophy. Those who do not have the benefits of selective breeding have to find an alternate talent – something more. We had to rely on our wits and gile to get by.
The day after the evening before, where we all chase the least attractive lady there is, we meet up, discuss our success at being failures, and start all over again. A gang splintered by age, by time, by children, by work. We meet in our twos and threes, quietly, to post-mortem. To discuss. Embarassing text messages are often enough to prove (or not) your relative success at the task. Sometimes you even get sent a text message, although it arrived on someone else’s phone.
Maybe he didn’t like her very much anyway. Maybe when they were making love, in the early hours, he knew that this, this wasn’t love, but something near enough to do for now. Maybe nobody was fooling anyone.
Sometimes, we find that purely by chance, we actually like the person inside. We actually want to talk to them again. We actually want to meet them again. After a time, we even think about the future. It’s a long time to be alone, the future. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where we agree to pair off, join the great adventure with us, breed, conform. It’s what we do.
Slowly we become our parents. Slowly we become everything we thought we’d never be. A process of a thousand small steps take us away from what we thought we were, and turned us into everything we hate. You can’t fight it. You can’t even outrun it. Time always wins in the end.
Most of us live for today, not tomorrow. What if there is no tomorrow? What if there is no future? What if the Mothership lands or death comes raining down from the sky?
That’s the way we live our lives these days. Struggling to get by, without a big picture, a long vision to hold. There is no big picture. We’re obscured under the trivia, the shit of everyday life, trying to survive, trying to pay the gas bills, the electricity bill, the water bills, the council tax, the rates, the rent, the phone bill, the television bill, the food bill, the bus pass, the train pass, the credit card, the personal loan, the pension, the car. There’s always one more thing we have to pay for that keeps us perpetually just out of reach of financial security.
And all so I can keep going to work to keep earning money to keep going to work. I don’t know who it was, but the fundamental emptiness of leisure time is the lie that keeps our lives going. The time we aren’t working is the time we’re just empty vessels waiting to be filled by something. Love. Sport. Music. Movies. The Internet. All distractions to keep us sedated.
To keep us from thinking about who runs the world, and why. About who’s running the world, and who’s making the decisions, about why those decisions are being made, and why they’re genetically breeding a better tomato, because Nature And God didn’t do a good enough job.
God in heaven help us, because we are too dumb to help ourselves.
posted by Mark at 7:35 AM
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